The Vulnerable Leader

Throughout the gospels, perhaps the most shocking of Jesus’ virtues is His humility. Jesus was a crownless king, an irrelevant teacher, a rejected Savior. He spent His time with the penniless and the perverse. From a historical perspective, it makes perfect sense that Jesus would be irrelevant in ancient Israel. For an ancient Jew anticipating a warrior Messiah, Jesus was a massive disappointment, an utter anti-flex. He had no military prowess, no political experience, and zero desire to gain either one. Jesus offered no promises of liberation from the Romans and didn’t seem interested in ancient power games. Not only was Jesus uninterested in politics, he didn’t even want to spend time with the really “faithful” Israelites, and he didn’t affiliate with any of their denominations. On the contrary, he spent all of his time with the wrong people – gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we might say. He healed the unclean and restored the wayward. “For I came down from heaven,” Jesus would say, “not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” And with statements like that, the entire Hebrew elite wrote off His claim to Messiahship. Jesus didn’t offer any solutions to what seemed the most pressing issues. He was categorically irrelevant. 

Until recently, it seemed to me the deepest misfortune that Jesus’ earthly ministry would be so ridiculed, reviled, and rejected – as if he were merely the victim of a misunderstanding audience. I don’t suppose I consciously understood what it was that I believed, but my heart of hearts felt that Jesus had tried his best, and people just didn’t like His message. Maybe a different crowd would have received it better. But as I recently read “In the Name of Jesus,” an illuminating work by Henri Nouwen, I was prompted to reconsider...

Perhaps Jesus’ irrelevance was intentional. 

As Nouwen points out, the three temptations presented to Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) represented three underlying motivations: the temptation to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful. In resisting Satan’s temptations, Jesus chose contemplation, meekness, and humility. Throughout the book of Mark, Jesus encourages those he heals to keep quiet, almost as if He is afraid of everyone finding out how awesome He is (Mark 1:41-44). Many of his miracles were done in front of only a few. Whether walking on water, calming the sea, or confronting the woman at the well, many of the stories we preach whole sermons about were witnessed just by the Disciples or even fewer. Why? Why wouldn’t the Son of God want to prove Himself to the people from and for whom He came? 

Jesus was up to something bigger than the people around Him could understand.

He wasn’t there to reclaim a kingdom; He was building a new one with radically transcendent values. He had different priorities, different goals. “His Father’s will” went far beyond temporal liberation; Jesus was on a mission of eternal renewal and redemption. His kingdom, which is coming, will be built not through the monarchal, but through the mundane. This message of humble servant leadership was not just an unfortunate swing and miss with His audience; it was the intentional illustration of life in a new Kingdom. The ones who get recognized in the Kingdom aren’t those who upset governments, but those who offer glasses of water, who feed His sheep, who “let the little ones come to Him.” The heroes of the Kingdom are the irrelevant ones. 

The ministry of the apostles and the early church was not a grandiose one. The Kingdom was built in the ordinary. The earliest believers shared meals and homes, tended to the poor and needy, and prayed for the troubled (Acts 2:44, 4:32-35, 9:36). They carried the ministry of Jesus forward not by creating empires, but by cultivating relationships. 

This paradigm shift has profound implications. As Nouwen points out, the Christian leader of tomorrow is called to be a vulnerable, humble, empathetic servant. The pursuit of Christlikeness inevitably calls us out of individualistic aspiration and into community service. 

As I think about the state of American culture, I am deeply excited about the future of our student body at WCA. There is no doubt that our graduates will face questions and challenges heretofore unmet, yet I could not be more optimistic about the opportunities before them. Why? Our students are being equipped every day to live differently. We value a high-quality education for a different reason. We don’t hold high standards for our educational experience so that we can brag about our alumni achievements, though there are plenty of those stories to tell. Our primary goal is to empower thought leaders who approach our world the way Jesus did – with grace and truth, thoughtfulness and love, unconcerned with the pressure to be relevant. In a world where every new story is a political point waiting to be made, we are equipping Kingdom-minded leaders to carry the light of Jesus into every corner of the marketplace. We are not just graduating students; we are sending ministers into this new Kingdom.

In a world where every man is increasingly for himself, our message is this: in the kingdom, it pays to love. You matter. Others matter. And with Christ as our example, we can begin to love others in the vulnerable, authentic way that invites our fellow human beings into the Father’s embrace. And in so doing, we might change the world.