Essay 3, Chapter 5: The Burden of Leadership: A Theology of Faithful Presence in Practice

“The Burden of Leadership: A Theology of Faithful Presence in Practice” is the fifth chapter of the third essay of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World. The abstract of this chapter, from Hunter’s website, reads as follows:

Everyone exercises leadership to varying degrees for we all exercise relative influence in the wide variety of contexts in which we live. By the same logic, we are all also followers in a sense, for even where we exercise leadership, we are held to account—we follow the dictates, needs, and standards of others.

Faithful presence in practice is the exercise of leadership in all spheres and all levels of life and activity. It represents a quality of commitment oriented to the fruitfulness, wholeness, and wellbeing of all. Faithful presence generates relationships and institutions that are fundamentally covenantal in character, the ends of which are the fostering of meaning, purpose, truth, beauty, belonging, and fairness—not just for Christians, but also for everyone. It is an assault on the worldliness of this present age. The burden of shalom falls to leaders.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

In this chapter, Hunter redefines the Great Commission in social, rather than geographic, terms. “Go into all the world,” according to Hunter, also means to go into every area of life, every occupation and realm of social life, not just going into every physical nation.

The argument is made that every person is both a leader and a follower, to different extents in different areas of life. We all have to learn Christian leadership, learning to lead without falling into elitism. Much of this goes back to the proper use of power which Hunter discussed in Essay 2.

In the second part of this chapter, Hunter speaks of a covenantal nature to our social relationships. In his words, “The practice of faithful presence, then, generates relationships and institutions that are fundamentally covenantal in character, the ends of which are the fostering of meaning, purpose, truth, beauty, belonging, and fairness—not just for Christians but for everyone.” (p. 263)

The third section looks at faithful presence as practice, the idea of intentionality in pursuing excellence in our lives as part of our service to God.

The fourth section addresses the burden of leadership. Again, this is not about occupying positions traditionally considered as leadership, but the way in which everyone influences those around them. Christians are to be influencing the world to bring God’s shalom to the world around us.

(Sadly, this is a chapter where Hunter tries to make his ideas practical, yet it turns out to be one of the hardest chapters to explain in concrete terms. The following chapter contains a summary of the book and does a much better job of explaining what Hunter is trying to say)

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