Hybels and World Leadership

I recently listened in to a leadership conference. The evangelical leader was careful to communicate that the millions of people worldwide listening to the web simulcast were from various religious traditions, and some were wholly without faith. The curious thing is that there was an emotionally gripping song and poem to launch the conference that passionately engaged the audience in the core problems facing our world today. The leader of the conference assured us that we would disagree on faith issues, perhaps, but one thing we could agree on is that sound leadership was required to navigate the tumultuous waters ahead. Apparently this sound leadership could come from anyone with any worldview. It was in this moment that I saw the great apostasy of our age in more vivid form than I ever have seen it.

There is no need for Christ when one considers the problem of world leadership. Jesus may be another source of leadership principles, but one need not follow him in order to lead others.

Surely there is a place in this world for learning how to lead people. I don't want to say that all of what we heard was a waste of time. But this was a Christian leader indicating that leadership was the solution to the world's problems. Could it not be the case that many in the world are being lead quite well towards glorious achievement without Christ, even in churches? Again, this sounds a bit like Lewis and his observations about education. Lewis made it clear that quality education is often cited as the solution to the worlds problems, when in actuality it can make "clever devils." Perhaps conferences of this sort are only enabling leaders to be "effective devils."

It is easy for us to mix up the first things for the secondary and tertiary things. Bill Hybels has done this in a way that is more obvious to me than anything I have seen in years. He even had the audacity to make the claim that great leadership helps us to get to our desired ends, whatever those ends may be. This only moments after making the claim that the world is crying out for quality leaders to solve real problems like poverty. So which is it? Do we need leadership to better ends, or better leaders to help us secure any ends? What was irresponsibly missing from this whole conference was any indication of the true end of leadership. What are we leading people towards? It is a leadership conference that leads people only to leadership itself. That is to say, it is a leadership gathering that offers no leadership!

The implicit and sometimes explicit "truth" we were given was this: We are not telling people what they should lead people towards. We are training them in the skills of leadership itself, so that they can lead them to whatever end they desire. This is analogous to saying in education that we just want students to think, but we don't want to tell them what to think. Make them better thinkers; they will decide what to think about. Education, just like leadership, is not an effort to persuade people as to the truth of the ends of education. Does this not sound a bit like having people just run around on the athletic field while being totally unconcerned about the goal? The important thing is the activity and not the ends; the journey and not the destination; the becoming and not what one becomes.