How the Powers Seek to Subvert Our Leadership
Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of pastors from various countries in Africa. They sent me a series of questions that they wanted me to address, and I sensed that at the heart of a few of their questions was they were measuring of themselves with each other regarding the size of their church. I wonder where they got that from?
I know in my experience as a young pastor, when I met with other pastors, one of the first questions used to be: “How big is your church?” Most of us have inherited a limited view of success: how many come to our church service, our budget and size of our buildings.
We have inherited these questions and too often we measure our own sense of worth and value on how well we are accomplishing these marks. We often size each other up based on these criteria.
The question I want to ask is this: Where do we get our ultimate sense of worth and value from?
“Where do we get our ultimate sense of worth and value from?”
Too often we are tempted to get our value, worth, and sense of identity from what we accomplish, and can easily be motivated to accomplish in order to be loved, to be valued, which shapes our sense of prestige and honor.
It is not that fruitfulness is unimportant. We need to live into the tension of being faithful and fruitful, if we want to be faithful to the Great Commission Jesus has given us. But we must remember that faithfulness is our responsibility, and fruitfulness is ultimately in God’s hands. As we live into this tension, we will be tempted to get our sense of value from what we accomplish, instead of from being a beloved child of God. Our motivation to faithful and fruitful must be grounded in Christ and the love of God.
“…we seek to be fruitful because we have taken the time to bask in God’s love…”
John put it this way, “We love because… he first loved us.” We don’t seek to accomplish in order to be loved, rather, we seek to be fruitful because we have taken the time to bask in God’s love, and that is what compels us to sacrifice for the sake of his kingdom.
Before looking at how the principalities and powers seek to subvert our leadership, it would be important to define the contours of leadership. Leadership entails our identity, praxis, and telos. Our identity deals with our being, and how construct our sense of self. Our praxis is about our doing, how we lead, what we do, how we use power. Finally, our telos is about what we are becoming, where we are going and leading others toward. Our ultimate telos ought to be life in God and New Creation.
The Principalities of Image, Institution and Ideology
So how the principalities and powers seek to subvert our leadership? William Stringfellow is a relatively unknown author in evangelical circles. His life spans close to six decades (1928-1985), in which he wrote 15 books and scores of theological articles. He was a contemporary with Jacque Ellul. They were friends and interacted regularly. His seminal work on the Powers, Free in Obedience, was published in 1964.
“…experience the vulnerability of daily life..”
In his formal education, he pursued his passion for the gospel and politics. He studied at Bates College, the London School of Economics and received his law degree from Harvard Law School. While most of his Harvard classmates served the elite in Manhattan, Stringfellow called East Harlem his home where he lived in a rat-infest, one bedroom apartment. As a lawyer, he represented prostitutes, the poor, and those at the margins of society. Today Stringfellow would be described as an early missional practitioner who understood the importance of incarnational living. He knew that if he were to serve those in the ghetto, he needed to “experience the vulnerability of daily life” becoming poor to meaningfully connect with the poor. It was while living in Harlem that Stringfellow came face-to-face with the principalities and powers, which were often the institutions that were supposed to be serving those living in East Harlem.
While time does not permit me to give you Stringfellow’s full understanding of the principalities and powers, let me share with you three ways in which he has translated the principalities and powers into our current vernacular. That would be the principalities of image, institution and ideology.
Image
Image is a common principality, for each person is accompanied in their life by an image. Stringfellow gives the example of Marilyn Monroe. There is Marilyn Monroe, the person, and Marilyn Monroe, the image. Two distinct identities claiming the same name. While the person of Marilyn Monroe is long dead, the image continues to exist, possibly more alive today than ever. Public image is a principality, in that while it bears one’s name, it exists independent of a person. Our public image lies beyond our control, and it is in conflict with us until we give ourselves over to the image. The principality of image desires full devotion. It demands “that the person of the same name give up his or her life as a person to the service and homage of the image. And when that surrender is made, the person in fact dies, though not yet physically. For at the point, he or she is literally possessed by their own image.”
Institutions
Institutions are principalities as well, for they seek ultimate allegiance. One of the primary ways that we as humans look for meaning in our lives is through our work, which typically takes place in some kind of institution. But the fall is pervasive and includes all institutions, including the church, which can get caught up with its own fame and fortune. The guiding principle of any institution, be it a university, a corporation, a church, a union or a movement, according to Stringfellow, is its own survival. He writes, “Everything else must finally be sacrificed to the cause of preserving the institution, and it is demanded by everyone who lives within the sphere of influence – officers, executives, employees, members, customers, and students – that they commit themselves to the service of that end, the survival of the institution.”
“While promising benefits, it is ultimately an invitation to bondage.”
When the institution exists for itself, it seeks all who are in its domain to surrender their lives so that the institution lives on. While promising benefits, it is ultimately an invitation to bondage.
Ideology
Probably the most recognized principality today is that of ideology, though most do not realize how ideology enslaves them. Ideologies are the countless “-isms” that seek to take people, especially leaders, captive. While it seems obvious to many that communism, fascism, racism, and nationalism are ideological principalities and powers that dehumanize people, it is likely, in Stringfellow’s opinion, for Americans to not recognize humanism, capitalism, rationalism, and democracy as powers. All ideologies are principalities, for they each have common characteristics, namely they have absolutized themselves and demand from the individual and society unconditional loyalty.
“…survival of the nation because ultimate and worthy of devotion, service, loyalty, and if need be, physical sacrifice.”
Ideologies have their own accounts of sin and redemption, and like every principality, ideologies claim sovereignty. They give a sense of meaning and significance to people. Stringfellow goes on to point out how Americans are persistently and perpetually assailed with the idea that their ultimate significance “depends upon the survival of the American nation and its ‘way of life.’” Hence, survival of the nation because ultimate and worthy of devotion, service, loyalty, and if need be, physical sacrifice. But ultimately, service and devotion to the principalities and powers is service to the god of this age, and results in bondage to idolatry and dehumanization.
It is important to realize that, for Stringfellow, the principalities of image, institution, and ideology often share characteristics of each other, so they shouldn’t be sharply distinguished. For example, there is Hitler the person, Hitler the image, but there are some aspects of ideology and institution bound up in his name. In the same way, nation as institutional powers tend to be combined with ideological principalities, like America with capitalism and democracy or Russian and China with communism.
I demonstrate in my recent book, The Scandal of Leadership that the principalities that Stringfellow has articulated correlate with the three contours of leaders. The principality of image relates to the identity of the leader, the principality of institution relates to the praxis of the leader, the principality of ideology relates to the telos of the leader, in each of these spaces the powers seek to misalign our desires.
And just as the principalities are interconnected and shouldn’t be sharply distinguished, the identity, praxis and telos of the leader also overlap and interconnect. The first step in overcoming the Powers is being able to name them. In the words of Walter Wink, we need to be able to name and unmask the Powers if we hope to engage them and overcome them.
Want to learn more from JR Woodward about the topic of healthy leadership? Join us for our FREE online workshop on Wednesday, February 28 | 1-2p ET / 10-11a PT.
