LEADERSHIP AND BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Two Great Questions and Two Kate Answers
I was recently invited to respond to two great questions as part of a conversation with a group of Christian leaders in North America. Here are some of the thoughts I shared, together with why I believe these questions are particularly important during Black History Month.
1. Where are we in the world at present? What has happened?
I think we’re living through a period of profound disruption, disorientation and exposure.
Systems, institutions and assumptions that have shaped the world we know are being shaken. We’re living with polarisation, distrust, inequality, conflict, technological disruption and enormous cultural change. It is, quite literally, the end of the world as we know it, although not necessarily in the apocalyptic sense that some fear!
And we’re learning the truth about ourselves as Christian leaders, churches and organisations. Things previously hidden beneath layers of assumption are now much more fully on display.
There’s something of Ezekiel 37 about this moment for churches and Christian leaders in every walk of life. God, in His grace and mercy, is taking us on a tour of a valley of reality and asking, “What do you see?”
And what we see greatly depends on where we’re standing and who we’re standing with.
Some talk about the age of certainty giving way to an age of chaos. But that is only really true for those parts of the Western world, and the Western Church, that could afford the privilege of certainty in the first place. For many people, the world has always been volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
Women have known things about power that men haven’t had to know. Black and Brown people have known things about institutions that White people haven’t had to see. People on the margins have experienced the underside of systems that others experienced as successful. And much of the Majority World has learned to lead and follow Jesus without the stability, resources and cultural influence that the Western Church has come to regard as normal.
Perhaps chaos hasn’t suddenly arrived. Some of us are simply experiencing for the first time what others have been navigating for generations.
That is one reason Black History Month matters and must be more than simply an opportunity to celebrate a few exceptional Black figures. Black History Month invites us to confront histories that have been hidden, distorted or ignored and to recognise the wisdom, courage, creativity and faith that Black communities have cultivated in the midst of struggle.
Crisis is revelatory. It inevitably exposes who we are, what we really value and, in Christian terms, which gods we’ve actually been serving and which story we’ve really been facilitating.
I believe that this moment is exposing our assumptions about power, growth, success, effectiveness and leadership itself. We’ve privileged efficiency over relationship, expertise over wisdom, individualism over community, scale over depth and measurable outcomes over formation. We’ve become addicted to more: more growth, reach, activity, platform and productivity, without always asking what all that “more” is actually for, or where it is leading us.
The truth is we’ve often been taking our learning from the wrong places and perhaps even asking the wrong questions. Rather than simply asking, “How do we overcome the chaos?” perhaps we should be asking:
“What is the chaos revealing?”
“Whose wisdom have we overlooked?”
“Who are we becoming within it?”
But this is also a genuinely dangerous moment, particularly for Christian leaders. Because chaos is not only revealing who we are; it is also revealing who we could become, depending on whether we have the courage to take hold of the God-given opportunity within it.
Some things need to be preserved. Some need to be reformed. And some need to be allowed to die so that something more faithful, and closer to the heart of God, can emerge.
2. What are the implications for leadership?
Where do you want me to start?!
The task cannot simply be about finding better techniques for holding the old world together, particularly when that world has never worked equally well for everyone involved.
For one thing, leadership as performance is no longer enough.
We have to let go of the pressure to appear strong, certain, successful and in control. Sometimes the most important thing a leader can say is, “I don’t know yet, so let’s listen and discern together.”
We also need to let go of heroic, command-and-control and endlessly expansionist leadership, the idea that one or two exceptional people hold the vision, possess the answers and carry everybody else.
And we definitely need to let go of leadership that prizes homogeneity. In a complex and rapidly changing world, sameness becomes a serious weakness, as we are seeing played out on the world stage.
The world is simply too complex for that. I’d argue that it always was.
We need more diverse, collaborative, discerning, courageous and adaptive leadership. Diversity that isn’t simply about having different faces around the table but ensuring that different voices genuinely shape what happens at the table.
Black History Month reminds us that Black people are not recent arrivals to leadership, mission, innovation, theology or social transformation. We have always been present. We have always contributed. But our presence has often been obscured, while our contributions have been unnamed, underestimated or appropriated.
Representation matters, but representation alone is not enough. It is possible to be visible without really being heard, present without possessing influence and included without having the power to shape actual decisions.
We need people whose sex, ethnicity, culture, class and experience of power enable them to see things that those who have traditionally led, particularly White men in the Western context, may simply never have needed to see.
That is why who we do life and leadership with matters.
If everybody around me looks like me, thinks like me, reads the same books, attends the same conferences and experiences power in broadly the same way, there are things I simply will not see.
Difference is not a problem to be managed; it is a source of wisdom, correction, creativity and resilience.
We also need to pay much greater attention to who leaders are becoming. Because leaders are not detached change agents dispensing transformation to everybody else. We are agents who are also being changed for better and for worse. We are part of the systems we are trying to change, carrying assumptions, habits, privileges, fears and wounds shaped by those very systems.
Our untransformed wounds don’t remain private. Neither do our insecurities, privilege, ego or need for control. Eventually, they become leadership practices, cultures and systems that other people are forced to inhabit.
So we need leaders who understand power differently; who listen before they pronounce; who create capacity rather than dependency; who make the way wider for others; and who understand leadership as stewardship and responsibility rather than ownership and control.
And as Christian leaders, we must always remember, thankfully, that there is already a Saviour, and it is not us! We need to understand our roles correctly. It is God who initiates, calls, reveals, empowers and brings transformation. Our task is simply to listen, respond, obey, act and take responsibility.
In other words, we are not the source of transformation. But neither are we spectators.
So our task isn’t to hold the old world together. It is to become a different kind of people who are capable of recognising and participating in what God may be bringing to birth.
That’s why formation before fruitfulness matters.
During Black History Month, the questions before us are not simply, “Which Black people should we celebrate?” or “What events should we organise?”
The deeper questions are:
“Whose stories have we failed to hear?”
“Whose wisdom have we failed to recognise?”
“Who are we doing life and leadership with?”
“What can they see that we cannot?”
“And what must change when Black history becomes part of how we understand our shared history, not only in October, but throughout the year?”
