Quaker renewal: The gift of leadership
Craig Barnett continues his series on Quaker renewal
It is often claimed that Quakers don’t have leaders, but this is not quite true. In a Quaker Meeting leadership is shared among Friends holding many roles – including clerks, elders, overseers, nominations, children’s and outreach committees, among others, and it is also practised more informally by those who minister to the community in many different ways. All of these Friends need to exercise the gift of leadership.
Leadership is a form of service to the community. It enables things to happen, by taking responsibility for supporting, enabling and encouraging others, and it is essential for any group to function. The tasks of leadership are not usually highly visible or dramatic. They include motivating, encouraging, thanking and welcoming, making sure that information is shared and clear arrangements are made, helping the group to stay on-topic and summing up the outcomes of discussions. It is also a function of leadership to remind the group of ‘right ordering’ (the Quaker community’s agreed processes) and to discourage the most vocal individuals from dominating a group. Good leaders support and enable others’ gifts and leadings (including others’ potential for leadership) instead of suppressing everyone else’s initiative, as often happens in organisations where all authority is monopolised by a few individuals. The Quaker approach to church government, which early Friends called ‘Gospel Order’, is a way of recognising and distributing leadership, while keeping it accountable to the community as a whole. In a Quaker Meeting, authority means being ‘authorised’ by the community to exercise accountable leadership.
But there are many Friends today who see every suggestion of leadership as authoritarianism. Many of us have experienced groups where authority has been abused or monopolised. Some who have been hurt by the misuse of authority in other contexts come to a Quaker Meeting expecting it to be a ‘leaderless group’ where ‘everyone is equal’. The testimony to equality is sometimes mistaken for a belief that everyone is the same, instead of recognising the equal value of our very different gifts and experiences.
This suspicion of leadership has contributed to a Quaker culture that often serves to squash individual initiative, responsibility and enthusiasm. Those in leadership roles may be accused of being hierarchical when they try to fulfil the responsibilities given them by the Meeting as a whole. This creates a strong temptation to be timid about exercising leadership, for fear of provoking Friends who don’t accept the authority of elders or other appointed roles. Part of the challenge for those who hold leadership responsibilities is to be faithful to the authority entrusted to them by the Meeting, even at the risk of being criticised or resented. Sometimes this may mean challenging Friends who insist on getting their own way in opposition to the discernment of the whole community. This, too, as difficult and sometimes painful as it is, is an essential form of service – helping to prevent the community from being bullied by its most aggressive members.
In those periods when the Quaker movement has thrived, there have always been significant numbers of Friends who have practised leadership on behalf of the community. The revitalisation of our Quaker communities relies on encouraging the development and expression of the gift of leadership within our Meetings. Quaker communities, as with all other human groups, need people who are willing to take a share of leadership responsibilities, including the difficult and challenging ones, in order to thrive. Leaders are not a special kind of people with extraordinary abilities. The principal quality needed for leadership is simply a willingness to embrace some responsibility for the flourishing of the whole community.
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