In The Fellowship of the Rings, the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there's a moment when Gandalf loses his way in the dark twisting tunnels beneath the mountains of Moria. "I have no memory of this place," he announces. His ragtag band of followers is frightened by the news. Then Gandalf looks at one tunnel among a maze of them. "Oh! It's that way," he says.
"He's remembered!" one follower says, elated.
"No," Gandalf says, "but the air doesn't smell so foul down there."
Sometimes that's all a leader has to go on: a whiff, a whim, a glint, a gut feeling. We really don't know which way is ahead. We have no memory of the place, and no vision of the future. We're left to hunches and guesses.
We just know that, at some point, we must decide. A bad decision is sometimes better than none at all. We know that impasse creates fear, and fear breeds blame and division. And division, once opened, is hard to close. So we decide, sometimes on no better grounds than air that smells less foul.
I wish it were more scientific than that, anchored in hard facts and algorithms. Or I wish it were more mystical, derived from dreams and visions. But most of the time a leader decides, and acts, on sheer faith rooted in well-honed instincts. Sometimes we leap, and hope someone catches us, or at least that the ground isn't far below.
At times a leader decides on sheer faith rooted in well-honed instinct.
I led a church for 24 years, getting it gloriously right, getting it disastrously wrong, but, more often than either, getting it close enough. I muddled through. I second-guessed myself. Folly and wisdom mud-wrestled inside me. Doubt and faith played peek-a-boo with me. There were times when God seemed to speak audibly: "This is the way, walk ye in it." Most times, though, it was a maze of possible routes. All I could do was test the quality of the air in various directions.
Sometimes leadership has no irrefutable laws governing it: it's messy, murky, quirky, without map or playbook. An example: choosing leaders. This is one of the most important decisions we make. We have biblical, historical, and practical guidelines for choosing leaders. But these only take us so far. All of us have been on a team with someone who meets all the biblical criteria for leadership but is still a nightmare.
In my years as a pastor, I chose good leaders and bad leaders, and many in between. Along the way, I learned to pay heed to my intuitions, and when I didn't, I paid for it. Such intuitions, by their very nature, are impossible to quantify (and easy to let naiveté or paranoia corrupt).
But I learned the following:
Don't rush past red flags. Some of my biggest regrets have come from ignoring a deep check in my gut.
Ask hard, uncomfortable questions of potential candidates. Don't settle for vague answers.
Ask hard, uncomfortable questions of yourself. What attracts me to this person, or tempts me to dismiss them? What need or fear in myself am I indulging by pursing or dismissing this person?
Look for leaders among unlikely people. Jesus chose leaders others had passed over. Some of the finest leaders I've known weren't initially on anyone's radar (and some of the worst came highly acclaimed).
Overcome the fear of being the one contrary voice for or against someone. Many potentially brilliant leaders never get a shot because no one argues strenuously enough for them on the basis of a mere intuition. And many bad leaders get loose in the church because one person doesn't speak up.
In the end, there are no guarantees.
But sometimes the only difference between getting lost and finding our way is noticing where the air smells sweeter.
Mark Buchanan teaches pastoral theology at Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta.
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