I have had three posts in my head for the last few weeks and just have not found the time to sit down and actually write them out. So this shall be the first one and hopefully the second will be done during the weekend.

The last two weeks I had my Dad visiting!

So much fun, I love him. The main reason he was over was to go to Holy Trinity Bromptom’s leadership conference that ran May 5-6 which he invited me along to. I don’t know about you but when someone offers to let me go to something for free I usually take it, especially when that thing is a conference being held at the historic Royal Albert Hall.

Because seriously……stunning

While I didn’t find anything spoken about during the conference completely earth shattering I was struck by one thing that I saw over and over again from the stage…they were being vulnerable. Specifically they were crying, talking about their deepest wounds and being completely and unashamedly open with the 6,000 people attending.

Also half the speakers were women and it wasn’t a women’s conference! But that is another issue for another day.

In order to understand why the idea of leadership in the church being able to show their vulnerability is important to me we need to backtrack a bit. For those of you that don’t know I was raised in the church as a PK (that’s Pastor’s Kid for those of you not in the know). As such I was privy to seeing all the background goings on of the church, which is why volunteering long hours in the church has never been hard for me. It also meant that I had a front row seat when my family fell apart in rather spectacular fashion and saw how the church reacted to that. The details of the whole thing would take too long to go into right now, though we are as a family very open about it. The moral of the ramble is, that seeing my Dad go though everything he did has made me have very passionate views on the fact that leadership in the church should be able to be vulnerable. They need to be able to show when they’re struggling and not have to pretend its all fine until they self destruct. Just because someone is in a pastoral role it doesn’t mean that they are perfect and I think we often as a church can forget to extend them the same grace that we would expect for ourselves.

Something that Nicky Gumbel talked about really resonated with me. He mentioned how when he was starting out in the church the model for a pastor was, don’t be friends with you’re parishioners, don’t be friends with your curates because you might have to confront someone at some point, and basically how that’s pretty much crap (though not in those words obviously). I know for myself that I don’t simply give respect because a position states that you should have it – don’t get me wrong I will be nice and polite but I won’t take you’re word on anything  – you have to earn that. If I don’t see you being authentic as a pastor then I probably won’t listen to much of what you have to say. I’m sure you’re probably saying some good things but if you can’t own all you’re own stuff and be honest about it then I’ll only take so much of what you’re selling. I just don’t trust it, I’ve seen too much of the church to be fooled by the picture perfect image you are trying to sell me, and it makes me begin to question anything that you try and say.

It makes me think of the first small group I went to when I started going to Adore in Victoria. (I had completely forgotten this but Jessica Brussow reminded me of it later and it sounds like something I would do). I had been out of the church scene for a year or two and was slowly trying to get back into it though I was quite suspicious of the ‘church’ and the hypocrisy that I had seen in it. I also don’t normally like womens things so a womens small group was a big thing for me to try out. Evidently the first thing I said when we were introducing ourselves was along the lines of this…
“I don’t really like womens groups and I don’t want to waste my time and sit around giving the right answers to questions. I’ve been around the church a long time and I could do that until the cows come home. If we’re not going be real and honest about the shit that we’re going through then I have no desire to be here…”
Because I’m super diplomatic like that. But to be honest that is how I felt, and it’s how I feel about the church as well. If we’re just going to sit around, give the right answers and pretend everything is fine then I don’t want to be there. The world is far to messy a place to waste anyone’s time with that.

To change gears to a different side of vulnerability Rick and Kay Warren were extremely vulnerable during the conference as they shared about grief. They spoke about grieving publicly after the death of their son last April from suicide, how they stepped away from preaching for several months afterwords and the fact that their faith was really badly shaken from it all as well. As Kay put it “[at that stage] I couldn’t leave God because the world didn’t have anything to offer, so I was left with God and to be honest he wasn’t that great of an option either”. They both cried openly on stage as they spoke and to see and hear their story was one of the most moving things I’ve seen in terms of honesty from leaders about the hardships they have gone through/are going through. Vulnerability isn’t just about people screwing up, it’s about them living life in the dark and the light places and being honest about it when they are in them.

I’m starting to get a bit all over the place so I’m going to wrap this up.
The final evening of the conference Nicky brought up a few people that he had met over the last day and a half. They basically just talked about why they had come, what the conference had meant for them so far etc. The last one was this man, I’ll let you watch for yourself….

To bear witness to that moment was incredibly moving, I’m not sure that there was a dry eye in the entire place. Prince Philip Kiril really summed up for me the vulnerability shown on stage at this conference. This is a man who really would be on par with the English Royal family if Germany still had a monarchy and he was openly crying and genuinely asking forgiveness for something he hadn’t done. (Also he still has a title because deposed royalty get to keep their title even if they don’t have a throne).

So in summary,
Let our leaders be vulnerable, let them show when thing aren’t going well so that we can celebrate with them when they are. Let them be vulnerable so that we can support them through those times and they can know that they are not isolated and alone. Let them be vulnerable so that they are truly able to speak into the depth of the human experience with authenticity. But most of all let them be vulnerable because they are, like us, merely human.

HTB has been extremely generous and all the talks from the weekend are available here for free! so check them out if you want to.

What do you think, can you lead effectively and still be vulnerable?