Leadership and Loneliness

Joseph Sherrard (Academy Class of 2004)

“The family we come home to, the spouse we wake up next to, the communities we belong to—none of these offer a panacea for the feeling of loneliness…Loneliness is in many ways a defining trait of modernity, and perhaps no one is more vulnerable to its effects than the type of leader The Trinity Forum aims to form and empower.”

There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that.  A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.

- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

On my third Sunday as a newly minted associate pastor in Mississippi, I stood behind the Lord’s Table, preparing to preside over the sacrament for the first time. As the congregation sang “Let Us Break Bread Together” and I fumbled through my Bible, trying to find the words of institution in 1 Corinthians, I felt one overwhelming and distinct thing: loneliness.

The situation was unique, to say the least.  Minutes earlier, my senior pastor, Olin, had abruptly ended his sermon, informed the congregation that he would be unable to continue the service because of his health, and been escorted out of the sanctuary by two elders.  The service was now under my direction.  I had never served communion before, and I had not prepared to do so that day.  In fact, I was not even yet ordained.  As I looked out over a sea of unfamiliar faces, I wondered how I would handle communion.  I wondered if Olin was okay, or even alive.  I wondered if I would suddenly find myself, a three-week veteran of professional ministry, as the only pastor of this sizable congregation.  And on the most fundamental level I wondered, as I stood over this symbol and demonstration of the unity of the body of Christ, if I was alone.  The event has become in many ways a parable of my first year and a half in ministry, a time which has been filled with confirmation, discovery, learning, and great joy.  But in the midst of the wonder and mystery of ministry, the sense of loneliness has been pervasive.

I speak and write as a pastor, but I know that I am not alone in this feeling, either as a pastor or as a follower of Christ, or even merely as a human being.  As I’ve sat beside hospital beds, spoken with old friends, or discipled first-year university students, many have at one time or another shared with me their similar feeling of isolation.  The family we come home to, the spouse we wake up next to, the communities we belong to—none of these offer a panacea for the feeling of loneliness.  And the tentativeness and fragility in modern society of each of those commitments is further proof of the threat loneliness poses to human flourishing. 

This feeling is not recent in its manifestation.  Thousands of years ago, the Psalmist could cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But while loneliness is unique neither to our milieu nor to ourselves, it is remarkable in its prevalence in the modern era.  In fact, it is the argument of this essay that loneliness is in many ways a defining trait of modernity, and perhaps no one is more vulnerable to its effects than the type of leader The Trinity Forum aims to form and empower.

Such a statement begs three questions: first, why is it that loneliness is such a pervasive feeling in modern society?  Second, what is it about leadership that heightens this sense?  And third, how can leaders embody an alternative to the starkness of isolation?

Loneliness in Contemporary Society
While loneliness is by no means a contemporary phenomenon, there is something about our milieu that accentuates and heightens its effects. This moment in human history is unique.  At no other time has there been the promise of more connection with others: mobile technologies, virtual communities, and highly-specialized common interest groups.  Our economy continually promises us advancements that will allow us to make more time for the things that matter most—and those ‘things’ are most often portrayed as relationships. Yet loneliness remains unconquered, and if we but scratch the surface, a profound anxiety concerning its presence emerges.

As a pastor who works with college students, I have had a front row seat to the phenomenon that is Facebook.  The tag-line confronting you as you log in to your account is, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”  There is truth to this statement, and I have found the application to be helpful in making connections with students and conveying information quickly and efficiently.  But the fact that I know a student with 1,829 ‘friends’ is a not-too-subtle indicator of the thinness of the relationships such a technology offers.  As Christine Rosen writes perceptively,  virtual friendship “shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails.  Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool.  Social networking sites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.”1 If indeed the verdict remains out on these new ‘friendships,’ the burden of proof is against them.  Technologies such as Facebook play no small role in straining the already fragile ties of relationships, thereby contributing to the larger societal trend of shallow existence.

Ironically, the one place where Rosen’s vulnerability seems to be found with consistency in our society is the therapist-client relationship.  Psychotherapy is a good, useful practice that is both helpful and necessary in the lives of many men and women.  But in the context of modern society, it also demonstrates a larger dysfunction.  The field of psychotherapy has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry of what often amounts to ‘paid friendships’—arenas where economic transactions secure a substitute for real intimacy, and thus further patient dependency is encouraged.  Even more distressingly, the techniques therapists offer to their clients often fail to provide the real transformation they intend. 

These twin promises of technology (seen in Facebook and other virtual arenas) and technique (seen in modern psychotherapy) are sides of the same Enlightenment coin that is ultimately responsible for the hyper-lonely landscape in which we find ourselves.  The liberation that the Enlightenment project offered the West has turned out to be only hubris.  In the wake of throwing off authoritarian constraints of creed, caste, and even the created order, the worst punishment has come in receiving what we asked for.  As Craig Gay writes in his penetrating study of modern life, “The otherwise optimistic stress upon liberated individuality may have ironic and unintended consequences…. A certain measure of alienation is simply the price we must pay for individual autonomy, for to the extent that we are free from others, we are also alienated from them.”2 Indeed, the great irony of the Enlightenment project of human liberation is that it has birthed some of the most brutal authoritarian regimes in the history of the world. 

The reality we face in the problem of modern loneliness is the possibility of a world created by humanity that has no room for being truly human.  Of this possibility Colin Gunton writes, “In our desire to impose form on the world and our lives we have lost the capacity to see the form that is there; and in that lies not liberation but alienation, the cutting off from things as they really are.”3 Modern life is threatened by such overwhelming loneliness because so many of the forms through which human life now flow are at odds with the content of human flourishing, and the result is profound alienation.

One hazard within my vocation is an example of this kind of alienation.  In pastors’ circles we are now nearing the end (one can only hope!) of the church growth movement.  In church growth strategies, the good and proper principle of concern for the lost has been wedded to an unbaptized modern preoccupation with statistics and techniques.  What this movement usually offers is numbers without relationships and technique without remainder.  Its appeal is not only in its apparent evangelistic success; it is also in the clarity it supposedly gives in measuring ‘success,’ i.e., numbers.  To this end, a number of techniques can be found in church-growth literature, techniques which are often surprisingly effective. 

But just as unsurprisingly, the results of such a technique-driven approach often fail to deliver the kind of community that we see the early church demonstrating in Acts 2:42-47.  The common denominator of the prayer, meals, generosity, and worship that we see displayed there is relationship.  Those disciples of Jesus knew each other’s names, knew each other’s addresses, and knew each other’s needs.  When they spoke of their savior in synagogues and town squares, they were supported by a visible, vibrant community that was not only an instrument of the inbreaking Kingdom but also a sign and a foretaste of its goodness.  The rich relationality that we see displayed in Acts 2 is so rarely found in church-growth communities because it is something that a technique is ultimately impotent to produce.  The form is alien to the content.

Lonely Leaders
In a society that is so infiltrated by the ethos of the Enlightenment, no one is free from the pressures that modern society places on human relationships or from the loneliness that it produces.  But while we are all vulnerable to loneliness, leaders are especially so. 

It is something that is intrinsic to the role of a leader.  Leaders may not necessarily stand aloof or high above those they lead, but they are nonetheless set apart.  The responsibility that accompanies the authority of a leader places them in a lonely position.  A leader might find herself a half-step ahead, calling others in an unfamiliar direction.  Or a leader might find himself in between, mediating or bridging two or more factions within an organization.  And when the leader must wear the mantle of the prophet, she may find herself quite simply alone.

The aim of The Trinity Forum is “the transformation of society through the transformation and renewal of society’s leaders.”  Implicit in this statement is the assumption that society is in need of transformation—not cosmetic re-presentation or minor alteration.  During my time at Trinity Forum Academy, I became convinced that this diagnosis was not overstated.  My friends and I were instilled with a holy discontent with the way things are both in the world and in the church.  The critical consciousness that I was given by the Academy is a gift for which I remain profoundly grateful.

But that consciousness also opens up a void of loneliness for the leaders the Academy produces.  In a cultural climate such as ours, to be a leader means necessarily to hold a prophetic role.  Many times leaders are able to work out their calling within pockets of like-minded people, dense networks of leaders who share a common vision and cause.  But when those leaders move out into the world, the isolation of their position becomes clear, whether it be in conflict with opponents or in disagreements with allies.

The dynamic is perhaps unsurprising.  It is those who have the most radical, hopeful vision for transformation that will face the most opposition and alienation when they challenge the status quo.  But that vision does not make the burden any easier to bear.  To be a leader is to be alone.

Leading in a Lonely World
The milieu that Christian leaders work in today is often unfriendly, and the stakes are typically high.  I do not think it is a coincidence that the moral failure that ensnares many high profile leaders often comes in the form of cheap and manufactured forms of intimacy: sexual infidelity and pornography.  The need for intimacy can often be suppressed as well through the “activism” and busyness that ultimately spins into dissolution and loss of focus.  If a leader is not only to survive such pressures but also be faithful to his calling, he must be prepared.

I do not discount the necessity and power of community, particularly the local church.  We are clearly called into participation in the body of Christ, and the life that is found there is crucial to surviving in a lonely world.  Societies such as the Clapham Sect also come to mind as communities which can mutually encourage and support leaders in cultural transformation.  But as fundamental as these societies are, they are not the only or even the most fundamental source of strength for the leader.

Instead, I suggest that prayer, particularly the life of prayer displayed in the Psalter, is a fundamental spiritual discipline that should be afforded a significant place in the life of a leader.  I realize that such a claim is open to accusations both of naive piety as well as bland restatement of the obvious.  But in speaking of prayer, I mean not to propose another technique which secures God’s favor, but instead a life of intimacy with the Father that provides a strong and sure refuge in otherwise bleak conditions.

Augustine and Bonhoeffer are just two of the many commentators on the Psalms who have noted how multivalent the “I” of the psalmist is.  Clearly it refers to the psalmist himself, offering up and pouring out his life before God.  But that same “I” can just as easily refer to Israel, joining together their voices in the corporate context of prayer.  And just as clearly, the prayers of the Psalms come from the lips of Jesus—not only those we hear him praying in Scripture, but also every prayer in the Psalter.  Jesus sums up the life of every individual and the life of all of Israel, offering up everything that we are to the Father on our behalf. 

In this perspective, the trinitarian context of the Psalms becomes clear. All our prayers, particularly those in the Psalms, find their shape in the Triune life.  We pray to the Father, in and with the Son, and by the Spirit.  Indeed we not only pray but we live out all of our existence in that objective, personal context.  And to make that claim is to say something extraordinary about reality.  Gay writes, “The Christian religion affirms that the ultimate nature of reality is actually personal, and indeed that God’s essential being consists in the absolutely personal communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”4

The exhortation, then, is to make the Psalms our companion in the lonely life of leadership.  To do so is not to guarantee the absence of loneliness.  Earlier, Psalm 22 was mentioned as an example of loneliness in the Psalms.  But what is so striking about that Psalm is that in the midst of desolation and seeming abandonment, the Psalmist is sure that God remains near to be called out to.  There is a conviction, deeper than isolation, that at the deepest and most profound level we are not alone.  Of this “Psalmic-consciousness” James Houston says, “Can you imagine how transformative your life and mine would be, if in place of self-consciousness was this great, intense population of all the expressions of all the emotions and all the vicissitudes of life and all of the history of God’s people past, present, and the life to come, all contained within that consciousness?  Then you would find the lonely ‘I’ becomes a glorious ‘we.’”5

To find that the ‘I’ has become ‘we’ is the quest that is at the heart of leadership today.  Doing so invites light and peace that passes understanding into a landscape that might otherwise be desolate. 

Citations
1.  Christen Rosen, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.”  The New Atlantis.  Summer 2007. 
2.  Craig Gay, The Way of the Modern World: or, Why it’s Tempting to Live as if God Didn’t Exist.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1998, 193. 
3.  Colin Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay Toward a Trinitarian Theology.  Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock 1985, 6-7.
4.  Gay 282. 
5.  James M. Houston, “The Continent of Loneliness.”  Lecture at Regent College.

After receiving his Masters of Divinity at Duke University, Joseph began his current role as an assistant minister at a church in Starkville, Mississippi. Joseph is a 2004 graduate of the Trinity Forum Academy.

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