The Leadership Revival

Just yesterday I came across a brief op-ed piece with that title (see here), written by New York Times columnist David Brooks. If you don’t yet follow Brooks’ work, you really should. His work is not only well-written and informed, but consistently fair. In any case, in this particular piece Brooks laments the quality of the leaders—not people, per se—entering public life and, in response, offers some advice meant to address this deficiency. How, in other words, can good people turn into better leaders or, as Brooks nicely puts it, “How [can these people] translate the poetry of high aspiration into the prose of effective governance?” His advice, I think, would work equally well were we to substitute “public official” or “politician” with “aspiring pastor” or “seminarian.” In fact, it’d be a useful exercise simply to reflect on each of Brooks’ points—there are only three—and consider what implications each may suggest for those of us who are pastors-in-training or who train them. Of course, if anything particularly resonates with you, please don’t hesitate to share it.