Two speeches worth hearing
I have watched this autumn’s Labour and Conservative party conference leaders’ speeches and come away with more hope than I expected. Andy Burnham, giving his first speech as Prime Minister, and Kemi Badenoch, leading the Opposition, set out visions for the country that could hardly be more different, yet both were coherent, and both included something we’ve heard too rarely from conference platforms: a willingness to own past mistakes of their own party.
Burnham told his party he would offer the country hard truths rather than the usual tub-thumping, and was frank that Labour’s leadership had not always listened. He has also critiqued some aspects of the governments of the Blair / Brown years which he was part of. Badenoch has made acknowledging the failures of the last Conservative government a theme of her leadership, despite being part of that government herself. You may quarrel with how either of them frames those failures – I do, in both cases – but a leader who can say “we got that wrong” in public is doing something healthy for our common life. And being able to learn from our mistakes is good for all of us, leaders or not.
There was political point scoring and knockabout of course, there always is. But underneath it I heard two serious accounts of what Britain could become. Both leaders are plainly in charge of their parties, with no serious rival waiting in the wings. Badenoch’s most likely previous challenger, Robert Jenrick, left for Reform in January after she removed him from her party, and Labour seem to have entered a rare period of stability, with no obvious alternate king waiting to be crowned.
That stability within the parties of both government and opposition matters beyond the parties themselves. A government is at its strongest when it faces a coherent, united opposition that can hold it to account. And a government is at its best when it can communicate, beyond the conference hall, what its vision for the country actually is – assuming, of course, it delivers on that vision. Time will tell.
Saul: reaching for what was not given
Watching all this, I found myself thinking of the nature of leadership and the need for clarity and focus. Saul, the first king of Israel came to mind. Saul didn’t fail as a leader for lack of gifts, but because he kept reaching for roles that had not been given to him. He was anointed king, not priest and not prophet, but he would not stay within God’s actual calling on his life.
Take, for instance, the episode at Gilgal: tired of waiting for Samuel, Saul offered the burnt offering himself (1 Samuel 13:8-14) – this priestly task was not supposed to be a King Thing!
Even earlier than that, his people did not know what to make of him because he could not stay in his lane. When he fell in with a band of ecstatic prophets, the bystanders asked, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Samuel 10:11-12). This wasn’t Saul’s place – this style of ecstatic, frenzied prophecy was limited to those born into specific families – a group called the navi. Again, not a King Thing!
That is Saul’s tragedy: he held an office which he hoped to hand down to his sons, yet he kept grasping at offices that come only by a different calling: sacrifice, prophecy, even divination. He wanted the authority of every role without having been given any but kingship.
David: inhabiting the calling
The contrast is written later the same Gilgal passage. When Saul makes his unlawful offering, Samuel tells him that the Lord has “sought him a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). That man is David.
David’s faults were real and terrible. But he inhabited the role he had been given and didn’t grasp at others. Twice he had Saul at his mercy and refused to harm “the Lord’s anointed” (1 Samuel 24 and 26). He longed to build a temple for God, and when Nathan told him it was not his to build, he accepted it (2 Samuel 7).
The clearest difference is in how each man faced their own failure. Confronted by Samuel, Saul admits he has sinned, but in his very next breath asks Samuel to publicly honour him. (1 Samuel 15:30). His confession is a face-saving exercise only. But when confronted by Nathan, David says simply, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). His confession is all about honesty before God.
Which brings me back to the conference halls. It’s good to hear leaders admit mistakes. The deeper question is what the admission is for: managing a reputation, or genuinely learning from mistakes and setting a new course.
Not managers writ large
So what do we want from our church leaders, and how can we take care to avoid asking for the kind of leadership we don’t really want?
When we talk about church leaders, I think what we should really want is someone after God’s own heart. We do not want the leadership of a chief executive, a company director, or even a good head teacher. We do not want managers writ large, and we do not simply want visionaries, or even some kind of “worship leader-plus”. Those gifts may all have their place in the running of a church, but they are not the core calling.
We need to look afresh at the pattern of leadership Jesus himself models: the servant king, who washes feet and does not cling to power selfishly but humbles and empties himself and is obedient to the will of God.
And we need to look not only at outcomes of our leadership but at the discipleship and formation which the journey their leadership takes us on inspires. What are our leaders helping form people into? Are they encouraging Christlikeness? Are they modelling a holy pattern of life? Are they nurturing humility, duty and service, and inspiring people towards justice, hope, peace and loving service of others?
It’s not only about what gets done, but more about the people we become.
What kind of people?
That is the question I would put to every party leader: I want to hear your policies, and I want to hear your plans, but tell me this as well: what sort of people do you hope to lead? What is the character of the nation you would seek to encourage as Prime Minister? And how will you summon and inspire that character out of us, and help it grow?
The same kind of question belongs to everyone involved in church leadership, myself included: not “what will you achieve?” but “whom will you help us become?”
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