What Does Ethical Leadership in a Changing World Require?

This question warrants a long list, but one thing belongs at the top: cultivating trustworthy communities. This is a patient and delicate process but the good news is, these communities can form anywhere—in a classroom, in a campus ministry, in a congregation, in a home, on a neighborhood block…. Anywhere there are people, there are opportunities for relationship. Wherever there is relationship, there is opportunity to cultivate trustworthy community. In turn, these trustworthy communities, made up of trustworthy relationships, equip us with the collective wisdom, care, and accountability needed to be the kind of people the world needs.

Trustworthy communities have always been needed, but perhaps part of the reason we are where we are is because too often our society has NOT invested in cultivating trustworthy communities. Instead choosing practices of exploitation and violence, eroding trust and convincing us that those around us are more likely a threat than a neighbor.

When I see many challenges around us, I fear that the world is ending. Maybe it is. Maybe (probably) parts of it should. This is scary and when we are scared it is easy to turn inward, to scapegoat our fears onto “others.” Ethical leadership when the world is changing—and perhaps ending—means resisting that impulse and instead doubling down on setting more tables, doing the slow relationship work, being bold and humble as we engage with people around us.

We need to be the kind of people and create the kinds of communities the world needs when it’s ending.

As a former youth ministry director, camp counselor and convener of congregations through my work at Augsburg with the Riverside Innovation Hub—my instinct as a leader has been to carry the bulk of the responsibility to build this kind of community and then invite others into it. But this is a lopsided approach.

Cultivating trustworthy community is a group effort. Leaders may take initiative, but the work isn’t to build for, but to set a table where something new can be nurtured—more accurately, to co-create trustworthy community.

My thinking about this has been particularly shaped through a recent book project I led. Hungry for Hope, Letters to the Church from Young Adults, released this summer, is the culmination of three years of stewarding a writing community of twenty-five people. Many of them are young adults who brought to the table their hopes, heartaches and imaginations of another way possible for the church and the world.

The process of co-creating this book mirrors the final product, which is an invitation to sit at the table together and wrestle with the questions of our time, ones that really matter to young adults (and folks of all ages!) Rev. Lamont Wells concluding remarks at this summer’s gathering landed home for me when he quoted Sharon Daloz Parks. Ethical leadership is “not about having the right answers, but about cultivating the courage to hold questions that matter and walk with others through them.” These are the first faithful steps towards co-creating trustworthy communities. These are the kinds of communities that not only are needed when worlds are ending, but are needed to seed what new worlds may begin to emerge.

For more information about the book, Hungry for Hope: Letters to the Church from Young Adults, visit the book’s website at www.hungryforhopebook.com.