Future consequences

The Rev Dr Martin Johnstone reflects on the importance of prophetic leadership.

THE vast majority of what I have learned about leadership over the years has been through observing others, perhaps particularly those that some of us might not automatically think of as leaders.

I am thinking particularly of friends whose bravery in the face of grinding poverty, and relentless commitment to their community, have been an inspiration.

These friends are sometimes challenging to be around. They tend ‘to call a spade a shovel’ – to state things as they see them even if it makes more timid people (like me) feel somewhat uneasy. They are prophets because they can read what is going on in our deeply unjust world and are not afraid to name that reality.

I am thinking about people who have been brave in the face of organised crime, who have shamed public authorities over appalling housing, and who have struggled for the rights of children.

As well as learning from people, I have also tried to read a bit about leadership. Recently I have been reading Reality, Grief, Hope – Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks by Walter Brueggemann.

Over the years, I have become more and more convinced about the importance of prophetic leadership, uncomfortable though it often is. Such leadership is particularly uncomfortable for leaders who have institutional, or organisational, responsibilities.

If there has been one thing that I have lamented more than anything else, it has been the dismissal in recent years of the critical voice and challenging insight by those in so-called leadership. I remain grateful to those who have challenged and criticised my leadership, although I didn’t always express it at the time. They have encouraged me to be braver in my words and actions and, I hope, to be a better leader.

Too often we conflate the role of prophet with some sort of ability to foretell the future. Prophecy, however, is much more about understanding the future consequences of continuing to live as we do.

Brueggemann has a wonderful description of the double-sided nature of prophetic imagination. He describes is as “a calling … to walk our society into the crisis where it does not want to go, and to walk our society out of a crisis into newness that it does not believe is possible.”

In some ways the first part of the prophetic task is the easier one: holding a mirror up to expose all that is wrong; helping us to see more clearly the enormity of the challenges that we are facing. Sometimes, however, that can tip over to simply carping against those we don’t agree with. Prophetic leadership is better than that.

The second part, however, is even harder and – if I am honest – Ihave met few people who are able to undertake this prophetic task effectively. At a global level we can perhaps think of people such as Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr who were able to imagine a future seismically different from the past and lead people towards it.

“ Over the years, I have become more and more convinced about the importance of prophetic leadership, uncomfortable though it often is.

I have had the privilege of also seeing this prophetic leadership being exercised up closer in, for example, the prophetic leadership of Irene, who helped to set up a children’s charity in the east end of Glasgow. Or Sandra, who along with others, imagined a community, where the drug dealers would not win. Or John and Karyn, as they faced the appalling scale of violent deaths, imagined a different approach, and got people to believe change is possible.

Let’s not be afraid of prophetic leadership and, as much as possible, let’s exercise and encourage it. We need it. ¤