I have a love/hate relationship with leadership.

I am a classic case of a “reluctant” leader. I possess a messy mix of confidence and insecurity. I initially pursued the pastorate out of a love for teaching and a desire to help people grow in their faith, but along the way, I’ve been drafted into a position of leadership.

For years, I despised the word “leader” and did all in my power to deny that I had any relationship to it. But I have come to terms with the title. I am at peace with being a leader. I am one… whether I like it or not. God has gifted me to be in a position of leadership. It would be selfish of me not to exercise this gift, regardless of my discomfort with it.

Once, I naively assumed I could exert great influence apart from wearing the mantle of leadership. Now, I realize that one does not come without the other. Along the way I have come to the realization that it is not leadership itself that I have reacted against in the past, but a certain style of leadership. I despise authoritarian, domineering, controlling leadership. I find these qualities stifling to the life of faith, hope, and love. If leadership is defined by one’s wielding of authority, then I am not – and do not wish to be – a leader. However, if leadership involves possessing a personal vision of rich blessing for the common good and developing influential strategies to bring this vision to life, then I most definitely am a leader.

And yet, hounding me all along my leadership journey has been an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. I am well aware of countless weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. I have no illusions of omni-competence. I am flawed in many important aspects of leadership. Repeatedly, my overwhelming sense of inadequacy has been alleviated by my growing awareness that God’s strength is most evident in human weakness. Now, I have a book that develops this theme in a helpful, constructive way that should benefit any leadership team: Dan Allender’s Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles into Strengths.

Limping Leaders

Dan Allender believes that broken, limping, reluctant leaders are the kind of people God chooses to bless in Christian ministry: “It is God’s design to use reluctant servants to usher in glory” (23). He admits that this is outrageously absurd: “What I am about to write is ridiculous” (18).

When the average person thinks of a leader he or she imagines a physically attractive, well-educated, charismatic person tough enough to make hard decisions but tender enough to be sentimental on Mother’s Day (27). These are all deemed strengths in our world. But since, in God’s economy, weakness is strength, we should assume that “leadership that mimics Jesus will not be normal” (55). Allender writes, “Here is God’s leadership model: he chooses fools to live foolishly in order to reveal the economy of heaven, which reverses and inverts the wisdom of this world” (55).

Oddly enough, the best leaders are reluctant leaders who are not driven by selfish ambition and love of power or reputation. Allender writes,

We should bless men and women who have done their level best to escape leadership but who have been compelled to return and put their hand on the tiller. We should expect anyone who remains in a formal leadership context to experience repeated bouts of flight, doubt, surrender, and return. Why would this be God’s plan? Why does God love the reluctant leader? Here is one reason: the reluctant leader is not easily seduced by power, pride, or ambition. (18)

God’s “limping leaders” embrace the “strange paradox of leading: to the degree you attempt to hide or dissemble your weaknesses, the more you will need to control those you lead, the more insecure you will become, and the more rigidity you will impose – prompting the ultimate departure of your best people” (3). In contrast “an environment conducive to growing and retaining productive and committed colleagues” is created and sustained when a leader faces, names, and deals with his or her own failures (2).[1]

Why do limping leaders limp? Because they are broken. How do they achieve brokenness? By falling off their throne: “This is the terrible secret about leadership and life: we achieve brokenness by falling off our throne” (70). An awareness and acceptance of this brokenness – the willingness to admit that one limps – is the key to God-honoring leadership: “A broken leader is no longer driven by the need to impress people or to secure their approval. A broken leader has already known shame, so there is little fear of being found out or further exposed as a failure… she doesn’t live and die by the way others judge her” (73).

Limping leaders have the courage to admit their weaknesses, frailties, and sins and the faith to believe that God will use even these flaws in ministry to others. Allender illustrates this with Paul’s confession to Timothy:

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:12-16)

Allender’s comments offer a powerful example of owning one’s sins and weaknesses and seeing God’s grace actively at work in and through them:

Paul used the present tense – being the worst of sinners was a current reality for him – his sinfulness is seldom spoken of in comparison to the list of heinous sins in the earlier part of the chapter. But this is what Paul was really saying: “Put me up against perverts, killers, and whores, and I beat them all hands down. I was a mess, and I am a mess far greater than any of you. Yet I am your apostle. I am the gospel leader to the Gentiles.” In one fell swoop, Paul eliminated the possibility of any leader’s serving with even a hint of self-righteousness.

So why do most leaders live in fear that they will one day be discovered and known, exposed and humiliated? They know they’re a mess, but they hope against hope that no one else will notice. (55-56)

The Hidden Dangers of Vulnerability

It is dangerous to be a limping leader. People desire the perception of perfection over the reality of brokenness. Leaders willing to admit their weaknesses will inevitably face challenges and difficulties from others. Allender warns, “Your honesty empowers those who want to control and dismiss you: they can use your own words against you” (172).

But the dangers of feigning invulnerability outweigh the risk of exposing one’s limp.

Even more importantly, there is a matter of gospel witness that is explicitly connected to one’s weaknesses, frailties, and failings. Only a limping leader truly reveals the message of grace at the heart of the gospel. I resonate with Allender’s confession: “It is an odd business: the more I live, the more I fail. The more I fail, fall forward, and am caught by the arms of grace, the more I reveal the message of the gospel.” (176)

If a leader is meant to be a model to the community, a representative of God, and a sacrament of grace, then a leader must be willing to fall, fail, be broken, humbly confess, and rise again by the tender mercies of God. A leader must be willing to be open, vulnerable, and – by most people’s perception – weak.[2] This is the way of the limping leader. If struggle with God is the essence of a relationship with God, only a limping leader shows evidence of God’s blessing, love, and grace.

Quotes excerpted from Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles into Strengths by Dan B. Allender
© Richard J. Vincent, 2006