Two Styles of Leadership

Cultures and communities cannot grow without leadership, but it should also be noted that they cannot fall apart without leadership either.

There are two basic styles of leadership. Both of them can be done right, and both of them can go badly astray. Let us call them the inclusive and exclusive forms of leadership.

Inclusive leadership gathers, recruits, encourages, inspires, and welcomes. When it goes well everyone feels uplifted, and isn’t this grand? Isn’t it wonderful? Inclusive leadership goes wrong, when it does go wrong, because of the pressure to downgrade and dilute standards. If you don’t lower the standards, then some people will be excluded and will feel bad about themselves. People will be excluded, and the impulse of the inclusive leader tends to go in the opposite direction.

Exclusive leadership sets a high standard and just heads on down the road. If you want to be part of the next big thing, better shake a leg. Exclusive leadership recruits by example, not by persuading. Take it or leave it. You can come with us to the shining realms of excellence, or you can remain here in shoddyville. Suit yourself. The obvious temptation here is one of pride and self-sufficiency.

When both styles of leadership are far gone, they begin to include and exclude as ends in themselves. The point is to create a club with everyone in it, on the one hand, or to create a club with virtually no one in it on the other. The old mission, whatever it was, is long forgotten, or is understood now to be largely beside the point. “They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” (Gal. 4:17, ESV).

But every Christian community, with church and kingdom both, with cathedral and parish both, needs both kinds of leadership. Pastoral leadership is inclusive. Cultural leadership is exclusive. Church leadership is inclusive. Kingdom leadership is exclusive. One of our first tasks is to come to understand this, and to learn how to rejoice in it all.