We should be asking ourselves constantly: Are power and leadership things I’m using to promote self, career, and prestige? Or are they being used only as a way of serving Christ?
Mark Hatfield
Referred to as “the conscience of the Senate,” Mark O. Hatfield is serving his fourth term as Republican senator from Oregon. He is the second-ranking Republican in the Senate and is ranking minority member of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee. From 1980 to 1986 he served as chairman of that committee, the second-longest tenure in U.S. history.
As a lieutenant J.G. in the Navy, Hatfield commanded landing craft at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He served in the Oregon State Legislature for six years, then became Oregon’s secretary of state and later, governor for eight years.
Senator Hatfield holds the M.A. degree from Stanford University, as well as numerous honorary degrees, and is the author or coauthor of seven books, including Between a Rock and a Hard Place and Conflict and Conscience. As these titles reflect, Mark Hatfield has often felt the tension of being a committed Christian in the public arena. During his career he has cast a lone vote several times. In this conversation, the first in a section on the leader’s personal challenges, he talks about how to maintain integrity under pressure.
You wrote Between a Rock and a Hard Place, so you’ve obviously done some thinking about this: What are the toughest pressures leaders face?
I would start with the pressures from our own egos. I think people of the pulpit and people of politics probably fight this problem to the same degree. Parishioners expect to see someone in the pulpit who has it all together. He or she’s supposed to be the living example of Christlikeness. What a tremendous burden! What an impossible role we give our ministers when we expect them to be Christ.
In political life, you’re not necessarily expected to be perfect, but you’re expected to know all the answers. That’s why you were elected.
How should we handle those expectations?
We have to accept that the expectations are there and do our best to live with them.
The real problem, though, is not the expectation but our ego, which sometimes makes us believe we are the ultimate model of spirituality. The original temptation, remember, was not to do evil but to do good: to eat the fruit and become like God. When our ego leads us up to that kind of pedestal, we’re in trouble.
We need to pray we do not begin to believe what people think and say of us. I’ve found a good stabilizing measure is to form relationships of accountability. My wife and I belong to a group that includes the pastor of National Presbyterian Church and his wife, Louie and Coke Evans, and four other couples in Washington. We get together once a month and are accountable to each other. It’s a ministry of support but also a ministry of accountability, which I think ministers need too.
I remember when I was governor for eight years, every few weeks I would have the name George Smoka on my calendar. He would come from the Union Gospel Mission and say with his commanding voice, “I’ve just come to pray for you, brother.” With that he would raise his one hand toward the heavens and place the other on my shoulder, and he would simply pray. Then he’d say “Good-by; have a good day, brother.” He’d walk out, and that was the extent of his call.
I always felt absolutely renewed and blessed by those calls. I think 90 percent of the people who called at my office were there for some request. But George Smoka never asked for a thing. That kind of support is invaluable for leaders.
You belong to probably the most exclusive club in the world, the United States Senate. In such a position, is humility more difficult to maintain?
Humility is unconscious. If you’re conscious of your humility, then it isn’t true humility. Humility is a manner, a viewpoint, an all-encompassing thing.
But humility is expressed through actions, say, a nod of the head in acknowledgment of a verbal hello. It can be demonstrated simply by stopping and listening to someone. Its essence is putting others ahead of yourself. By God’s grace it can be demonstrated by anyone in any position. A pastor may show humility through offering a healing word to a hurting person.
A real test of humility is how you handle criticism. The natural reaction is to throw up an immediate defense, a quick excuse, a spontaneous rebuttal. The humble way to handle criticism is to try to understand the reasons for the criticism, to look for what truth there may be in it.
What other hazards must leaders watch for?
Power. Power is one of the most corruptive of all influences, so one should always look at power with a very jaundiced eye. We’ve seen in the history of the church the corruptive influences of power. And in individual churches there is a corruptive influence whenever a minister feels he has to be the controlling force of his congregation.
We all remember Jim Jones, who had utter control over congregations in California and Guyana. As I understand his background, he started out with the simple proclamation of the gospel. Then he began to sense a personal charismatic hold he had on people. It was a gift that was perverted and used for self-glory and promotion rather than for the Lord.
I admire Billy Graham’s perspective. He is conscious of the fact he has achieved worldwide recognition, having proclaimed the gospel to more people than any other human being ever. He doesn’t have the power of an ecclesiastical organization, but he has the power of influence and he recognizes its danger.
There’s a fine line between motivation and manipulation, between the good and evil use of power. How do you discern the difference?
We should be asking ourselves constantly: Are power and leadership things I’m using to promote self, career, and prestige? Or are they being used only as a way of serving Christ and bringing people into a relationship with Christ? In other words, are we the masters or are we the servants?
We are not masters of the congregations or constituencies we lead; we are servants of such people. As we see our lives in that perspective, God can use us. But that’s a constant battle, because the desire is always there to put self ahead, to take personal offense and let some issue rupture a relationship. I’ve often said my wife disagrees with me on many political issues. She cancels my vote in many elections, but that has not ruptured our relationship. It’s not that a good relationship comes easily; we work at our relationship. We’ve learned, though, that when we personalize issues and consider challenges to issues as personal affronts, it is because our ego is emerging.
How do the pressures of leadership affect your relationship with your family?
The home is the toughest environment of all for leaders. Why is it the ones we love most are the ones we are the most impatient with? My wife has often said to me, “I wish you were as patient with your children as you are with your constituents.” She’s right. She reminds me that I’m accountable to God and to my family, and I’m grateful for that.
I think the greatest problem we have is our allocation of time, whether or not we let our professions work to the exclusion of our families. If our lives are going to be given only to our professions, then better we had remained as Paul said, unencumbered by marriage and family. But if we do decide to marry and have a family, I am thoroughly convinced one has to set priorities as follows:
Our first priority is to God. The Bible teaches us to “love the Lord thy God with all thy strength, mind, and heart.”
Our second priority is to our family, because they are the gift of God to us; they are the joint effort of God’s creating authority working through us.
Our third priority is our profession, and if we put our job any place higher than third place, we have our priorities askew.
So it takes a lot of understanding on the part of the leader’s family, and a lot of understanding on the part of the leader. I’ve tried to communicate to my family that no matter how busy I am, I am always accessible to them. That has to be communicated verbally, but also in action.
In the midst of these pressures, what is your task as a leader? What must a leader actually do?
Three things. First, the leader must demonstrate commitment to the goals, objectives, and spirit of the program or organization he is leading. That commitment cannot be halfhearted; it has to be a total commitment.
Second, the leader must translate the institution’s objectives into the lives of followers. A leader must make the objectives relevant and helpful for people, and show he genuinely cares for them.
Third, a leader always has to be alert to change. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and the pastor’s message contains a continuity of truth. But that does not mean conditions around that truth are not changing. Cultural changes, social changes, and political changes affect every person and institution, and a leader has to recognize change and adapt, so that he or she never loses relevancy.
Whom do you admire as a leader? Who does these things well?
I wouldn’t have to think for a second to say Richard Halverson, chaplain of the Senate.
Dick came to the Senate at a time when the Republicans had just taken control. Because he was a Wheaton College graduate, Princeton Seminary graduate, and Presbyterian pastor, there was a little bit of political tension, as you can imagine. Yet into that situation came this man who met first with the pages, then the elevator operators, and then the capitol police. He visited each senator personally, and then he talked to their spouses to indicate his interest in serving them. It’s amazing the way this man has developed a shepherding role for the so-called up-and-outers, and what a response he’s received from the Senate.
Each session opens with prayer, and many senators used to absent themselves from the floor because it was one of those routine acts that people felt a little bored with. Now, most of us come to at least read his sermon or prayer because it’s always so relevant to who we are and what we are doing.
For example, one Christmas Dick prayed, “Father, help us to be mindful that you did not announce the Incarnation of your Son to the Roman Senate, but to a few lowly shepherds out on the hillside.” Another time, we were in a late session and tensions were high. He prayed at the midnight hour (which was the beginning of a new day and a new session), “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. Father, help the Senate to stick together.” Still another time he prayed that God would help the senators understand that when they are home they are not senators but spouses and parents: “Help them not to treat their families they way they’ve treated their staffs.”
The New York Times and Washington Post have commented editorially on Dick’s prayers, and out of those helpful, pertinent prayers has developed the kind of pastoral role the senators have learned to rely on in times of family crisis. One lost his grandson in a terrible tragedy. He made funeral arrangements and asked Dick to travel to his home state to preach the eulogy for his grandson, whom Dick had never met.
So your model of a Christian leader is someone who can speak authoritatively but simply and lovingly, too.
Yes, a person who is so vulnerable he makes you vulnerable. Unwittingly, and perhaps unconsciously, we sometimes feel our title, our position, and our responsibilities mean we have to perform in the exact manner expected of us. In so doing we dehumanize ourselves.
Being vulnerable means we are standing totally open as a human being — not as a pastor, not as a senator, not as a leader, not as a follower — just a human being. And there is nothing that elicits response from people more than to feel they are dealing with someone who is on their level — who feels what they feel.
Can someone who isn’t especially people oriented become an effective leader?
I know of days when even Dick Halverson has found it difficult to be in one-to-one relationships with people. He has shared that when he was a pastor, he spent much of his time in the pulpit or preparing to exposit the Scriptures, and he found casual conversation was not his cup of tea. Realizing this, he said, “I am more and more aware that Christ living in you is what really creates the ability to be sensitive and responsive to people.”
Overall, what’s your goal as a leader?
To apply in practical ways the servant leadership that Christ represented. That’s not always easy, but I don’t think the Lord taught anything to his followers that is not achievable. Christ did not say, “Come and follow me, but you’ll never really make it because I’m God and you aren’t.”
I sometimes feel great pressures as a leader. Those pressures tempt us to shortchange areas in our lives. But if we have integrity, we can live whole, integrated lives. We can’t say, “This is my public life, and this is my private life; these are my public morals, these my private morals.” What we are, we are. If that is a person of integrity, then it will show through in every setting.
Copyright ©1987 Christianity Today
