Alumni Article Spring 2022

To be a rén leader means leading wherever your place of influence is (whether that be in your home, workplace or the church) with compassion and kind-heartedness.

May bank holiday is always a time in the life of the College when we have an opportunity to stop and think about leadership, as we take a day off from our weekly teaching or learning, and attend (or watch online) the Leadership Conference. The conference is truly global with 130,000 people from 186 countries gathering together in a virtual space to learn about and reflect on leadership in the world today. I certainly appreciate taking that time each year to stop and reflect theologically on my effectiveness and impact as a Christian leader, and consider how I might grow in my own vocation as a pastor-teacher as I lead others in the lecture hall and in public worship.

As a contextual theologian who has spent six years now ministering in South East Asia, I have found in the great wealth of tradition, culture and history that exists in Asia, great riches to learn from and apply to my own learning and leadership. The work of the contextual theologian is the work of a weaver or seamstress or tailor. To “com” “textere” to stitch or weave together two different pieces of fabric or cloth. For me, that has involved trying to stitch or weave together my theology with the cultural context(s) of Asia. But each one of us is called to take out our theological knitting needle and try and weave together our theology with our context.

I’ve been thinking recently of what I can learn for my own leadership development by looking east to the classical Chinese virtues. These virtues include rén (compassion), yi (righteousness), li (ritual propriety), zhi (wisdom), xin (trustworthiness), zhong (loyalty), xiao (filial piety), and jian (frugality). These virtues have significantly influenced all aspects of life in China for over two millennia. Of these seven virtues, the first – rén – has a primary place as the “the virtue of all virtues” (Yang et al., 2008:35). I think it is a great foundational principle for Christian leadership. To be a rén leader means leading wherever your place of influence is (whether that be in your home, workplace or the church) with compassion and kind-heartedness. But, as anyone who has studied any ancient language will remember, there will always be a semantic range of meanings in the act of lexical analysis. And rén has a range of meanings. It is about more than just loving the people you lead. The Chinese character or pictogram for rén is created from two components: “human” and “two”, thereby implying that being rén involves an inextricable relationship with another. This breaks down the Western emphasis on individualism in leadership. Rén leaders need others. Being rén also speaks of one’s “human-ness.” It is said in the Analects that that being rén is to be “human” and being human is being rén (rén zhě rén yě). So a rén leader only leads authentically when they are truly being themselves. This reminds me of the words of Irenaeus “the glory of god is a person fully alive,” and the journal entry of Kierkegaard where he prays “and now with God’s help I will become myself.” That’s being a rén leader.

Although I now find myself in Plymouth leading the South West teaching centre, the eastern virtue of rén is still of value for my own leadership in this very different context. And I wonder how you can be more rén in your own leadership in your own contexts? My prayer for each one of us is “may God increase our rén. Amen”