One of the signs of a true leader is those who follow, but this so often has been a success marker for narcissistic leaders: those who might get all the gushing praise yet lead people to a place where they serve the leader’s selfish purpose and nothing else.
There’s one way to raise up real leaders that works 100% of the time. The real leader, one who is reliable in their pursuit of excellent outcomes for people and not just the process, is a wounded healer. They’ve learned through harsh life experience how to care for people, and they learned this through being cared for through their struggles.
Think about how you were raised up to be a leader if you are one. Or think about someone you admire as a leader. Chances are they were mentored through a very difficult period, they were cared for, they received pastoral care, and the kindness of a human soul or souls who behaved like Jesus would have behaved.
They learned firsthand how to be supported, and in being supported they learned how it feels to be loved. They saw the incredible value in it though noticing how valuable they were personally through the care they received. They received a priceless gift, and in receiving something they couldn’t possibly give back, they decided to give back through paying the care they received forward.
I think that the church has gotten the whole formula for leadership development wrong over the years. The church has not valued enough true pastoral care of those who are suffering. In this, the church has not valued the true leaders in the church, and they are the pastoral carers.
One example of this failure is how little value has been placed in the function of pastoral care that it’s outsourced to lay people when it often needs a pastor or counsellor. Another example is how abysmally pastoral care pastors have been treated so often. This is because narcissistic ‘leader’ pastors have felt threatened by a pastoral care pastor’s ability to create rapport in their relationships, which is the trust they’ve been given.
All this reflects how the church has neglected the critical function of pastoral care for decades. Far too much emphasis for far too long has been placed in church growth, CEO model ‘leadership’ and evangelism.
Imagine a vision of the church caring for people who are at a transformational point in their life such that they receive the care they’re so needy of that paying that care forward is a springboard into leadership. How many people receive a calling through having experienced what Paul calls a care that “comforts those in any trouble with the comfort they have received themselves from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
There is no better leader in the church than the one who has received the comfort of God through the care of another. That person will have received what can only be termed as a miracle, in that they felt God’s care in and through a human being—a leader in the vein of Jesus. A person like this has been hand-picked by God to be a leader.
We need more of these leaders in our churches and in our world who have been schooled in empathy through the empathy of others so that they are compelled to grant their own empathy to others.
There is humility in the leader who has been helped by others and they help others because of the help that they have received. The world needs more humble leaders who have experienced care and healing, and because of this, can lead others to care and healing.
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