“..For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute..” 1Cor4v9-10
“We are.. but you..”
“You are.. but we..”
⚖️ Comparative Praise.
Paul’s sardonic-comparison as a mode of leadership-in-particular has a [1.1] 📦 Content and a [1.2] 👠 Style. ~ And, that sardonic-comparison Style offers a mode of being-Christian-more-generally in the way it is [2.1] ⚖️ Comparative and [2.2] ⚔️ Combative
📦 [1.1] Leadership & the Content of Comparison
We could take the sardonic-comparison’s Style for granted and consider only the Content being referenced. Paul is weak and his addressee is strong so might we seek to be that, and consider weakness/disrepute/poverty as qualities to study in detail and emulate as such - so then to be able to make the content of the comparison.
#What’s the difference? Enduring in the archive of my subconscious are these Dre/Eminem/Xzibit lyrics ~ a verbatim comparison could be made by the downwardly mobile Christian minimalists, seeking to distinguish themselves by the worldly possessions they don’t own. A notion which Lecrae knowingly entertains: bragging in not carrying money. It is, however, easy for this competitive I-have-less-than-you tit-for-tat to become perverse or bland in the hands of a less skilful rhetorician - but the Paul-as-Holy-Fool’s rapport should be instructive to us and encourage this (largely absent) style of preaching-by-lampooning. Can we? How can we?
“..What's the difference between me and you? (What?)
About five bank accounts, three ounces, and two vehicles..”
What’s the difference?
“..Rather have a dollar in my pocket than a million..”
Rebel Intro
👠 [1.2] Leadership & the Style of Comparison
👒 We could consider the use of sardonic-comparison as a form of communication irrespective of Content. So it is moot that Paul is weak and his addressee is strong, but rather the question is how we might seek to say such as that. Being weak/strong is difficult, but saying it is its own acute challenge. It would be all good and well to be a poor vicar to a wealthy congregation, but to speak it out loud and to imply a moral distinction - that would be to make a thing of it, that would be scandalous, that would be difficult, that would be possible only on the basis of formidable pre-existing understanding - an understanding in the abstract of the role of leadership and leadership’s SLA to deliver critique, AND a formidable understanding of one another and a grounding of unconditional personal love and mutual purpose in so relating.
👑 Where does preaching-by-sardonic-comparison fit in a theory of leadership? As previously, in reflecting on Paul’s mode, manner and medium, there is something alien but alluring in the unBritish directness of his delivery. Seldom, if ever, am I presented with preaching with this sort of winsome and weaponised you-address that we find in this you-vs-me comparison. It seems unChristian to be so comparing, unkind to be so critical, unedifying to be so sarcastic. And yet, Paul does, and it is loving to do so. Paul does and it is spiritually effective to do so. How should I then?
🤴 Comparison: A Universal-Application Leadership Style?
So, again, to the question of church-leaderships, and what it is in Paul’s leadership that I find compelling and don’t experience elsewhere. Where are Paul’s patterns of good leadership universal, and where are they bespoke? And so, is sardonic-comparison an approach for the many or the few?
What in the excellence of Paul’s leadership here exemplifies qualities or performances that are applicable universally to leaders? Can we say, all who lead should practice sardonic letter writing as an essential ministry tool? Or can we only say it is universally a good to communicate?
What in the excellence of Paul’s leadership here exemplifies qualities or performances that are particular to the peculiar subset of leaders which Paul represents? Can we say that there exists a niche species of leader who has a strategic role to use a timely reforming coruscating and unhinged tone of critique - and so what Paul is illustrating here would be excellent if imitated by equivalent species to equivalent contexts, but could be damaging universally applied? Or can we say only such a subset of (eg apostolic) leadership is leadership-proper, and so more contexts (eg church communities) should adapt to expect such a form of critically intense leader within their leadership structure (ie. though some of Paul’s attributes apply only to leader-apostles, and that leader-shepherds might find that this inappropriate, however, any church of any medium size ought to have represented within its leadership team, a Paul-qua-apostolic-voice)?
🎯 Comparison: A Limited-Application Leadership Style?
If sardonic-comparison is for the few, how do we discern who and when? If there are different leadership species, is this display of sardonic-comparison purely attributable to Paul leading-qua-apostling? Or, even within that, is Paul’s sardonic-comparison modality a reflection of a specific occasion where an optional style is relevant under certain very limited conditions?
What taxonomy of leadership styles and leadership methods would help us to esteem certain excellences and to critique certain negligences whilst allowing for massive variation in character-type, context and calling?
How far are we hampered by a homogenised theory of leadership? What are the conceptual preconditions for a license for church leadership that would conscion such idiosyncrasies as Paul’s mode here?
Is there an alternative language to talk about differentiated leaderships?
Is there a diagram of leadership styles that aligns with Prophet-Priest-King, or the five-fold-ministry, or five-voices, or the enneagram - that would position the appropriate excellent use of sardonic-comparison?
👍 Comparison: A Good Leadership Style?
When does sardonic-comparison contribute to the goodness of good leadership? What is good leadership? What is success? If sardonic-comparison is a means, what ends justify what means? Is there an overarching leadership metric? Can one judge a leader, regardless their prophet/priest/king mantle by a measure of broad effectiveness (ROI, net-to-gross, conversion metrics, customer-retention, total-holiness as a social-impact metric..)? And on that basis could one position sardonic-comparison part to play in this?
😇 Gifted leadership - innately magnetic and numerically multiplying, the gift of apostleship, the magic of creative entrepreneurship, a leader who is born-not-made, the gift of the gab, an attractiveness physically, or musically, or otherwise that lends itself to the performance of a compelling stage presence? Is successfully delivering sardonic-comparison a gift that some just naturally have?
🏃 Faithful leadership - doing the doing of facilitating the life of the community with robust regularity, a solid and stoic resilience that risks staid dogma if it is not matched with compassion in its application, but the quality of keeping-on-keeping-on is non-trivial as an aspect of leadership. Is sardonic-comparison an obedient work to faithfully labour at - regardless the nuance or collateral damage?
🧑🔧 Skilful leadership - Solomonic wisdom in judging complex cases, synthesising group complexities, innovating dynamic order, a leader who has studied leadership as a practice and makes informed active decisions to perform a role of leadership - not on the basis of sheer winsome bravado, but the studied and particular intentional approach to leading. Is sardonic-comparison a skill to learn?
👇 Suitable leadership - the just-right mix, the goldilocks vicar, the matched idiosyncrasy of Mr Right Now who despite being of average talent, has exactly the experience, language, persona for the context. Is sardonic-comparison a relevant tool the use of which is dictated entirely by context - that any leader might directed to use when circumstance blatantly calls for it?
🏋️ Comparison: An Intense Leadership Style?
😳 There is something in Paul’s engagement here which is just straight-forwardly intense - maybe that’s mostly what I’m being struck by (?) - Paul is unabashedly full-on full-stack full-frame Paul. I’m fumbling for the axes of leaderlinesses as if they were a fruit bowl of varied fruits, and as if sardonic-comparison were some quality of some fruit - like the bendiness of a banana, and so to say when that should be propelled to extremity of excellence. Perhaps sardonic-comparison is an arbitrary rhetorical inflection, incidental in its detail, but striking and notable in the severity of its expression which is symptomatic of at-easeness with the intensity of enmeshment of the leader in the role as leader, and the voltage of the work being undertaken by the body-corporate which is dependent on that intensity of that leadership? What Paul finds to do with his hands, he is doing the doing of it with all his might. Is there a spectrum of intensities of leadership from an advisory role as merely-technical-administration-of-practicalities through to form of leadership that is:
↔️ broader in the reach of intimate minutiae it speaks to with authority.
↕️ deeper in the strength, rigour and integrity with which is gives boldly directive instruction.
⬆️ higher in the ambition for the symphonic excellence achievable by the thoroughly led orchestra.
📊 Varieties of Intense Leadership: Consultant / Combatant?
If arrayed on a spectrum of intensities, what is leadership, and what characterises the range?
🧑💻 Leading by advisary instruction - true, there are ‘leaders’ who ‘lead’ but not-by-example, they do so at an aloof distance spouting advisory reports. Perhaps this role is legitimate, as the specialisation of certain technical roles serves a complex society but it is a muddying of language to call this detached bureaucratic instruction ‘leadership’.
🦆 Leading by example is good, but not really more than its tautology. The mother duck and her column of ducklings diagramatising leadership in a linear, simplistic, Grand Ol’ Duke of York task - achieved by the rectilinear propagation of robots.
⛵ Leading by illustration and inspiration - rather as the proverb attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Igniting spiritual aspirations in the hearts of the led is a mode of leadership that will illicit more holistic followership and more diverse creative agency. This also is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Regardless the necessity of inspired hearts for the telos of the work, there is yet a need for a coordinating role for the governance of the whole.
🧑🏫 Leading by living a life that’s both exemplary and explicatory of leadership (See notes on 1Cor4v5-6) - living an intentionally examined and explicable life is hardcore. This is no mere anecdotes from the leader’s life to furnish a sermon with a human touch. This is no mere token transparency as a charade of political accountability. This form of leadership is successful if, by total access to the total life of the leader, it discloses the DNA of the vision, the source of their power, the essence of their method and so it facilitates imitation of its imitators’ imitators. So Paul, writing letters about writing letters - there is a generational long-view, that considers the truer call and commission for leaders is to sustain a momentum towards the good long after they have gone - this by straining to make the excellence of their leadership perfectly replicable.
🤼 Leading by speaking a word that is comparative and combative - leadership is enacted on an unlevel playing field against opposition. Leadership is imperilled by dissent and civil war and factionalism and apathy. Leadership cannot assume the purity of heart or steadiness of self-knowledge in the minds of the led. Leadership cannot take its legitimacy for granted, cannot take language for granted, cannot rest on the laurels of past leadings. Paul uses stark comparisons to clarify moral antitheses, to orient the good, to calibrate signal from noise in the distribution of power and wealth - Comparison makes this stark: this-and-not-that, weak-and-not-strong, deliberately-and-not-accidentally. And Combat makes this urgent, it reflects the non-trivial responsibility of the leader to severely purify the led ~ assuming the leader has begun this with himself - 1Co9v27.
“We are.. but you..”
“You are.. but we..”
⚖️ [2.1] Comparison is Comparative
😒 Comparison is inevitable. Within the humble advice “don’t compare yourself to others” there is a dilemma - how can I then calibrate my privilege? (But perhaps that is the point, it means to be evasive advice ~ as the “judge-not” tattoos are a defensive play by reckless individualists? Don’t-compare is I might give within a bourgeois sentiment intended as a subtle deflection of scrutiny, to preserve my privilege?)
💯 Comparison is necessary. You have to compare. I cannot gift someone what they already have. To be a blessing is precisely to identify a differential in resource and to transfer from the I-that-has to the you-that-has-not. Just so, more broadly, in discerning vocation, there is a need to compare and contrast. As check-your-privilege is a critique via juxtaposing, so imitate-me is leadership via differentiation.
🏃♀️ Comparison is destructive if/when it burdens the disadvantaged with a guilt of falling relatively short of an unattainable standard, or when keeping-up-with-the-Joneses becomes an iterative arms-race to material excess. But. Redemptive comparisons must be a necessary part of sanctification, as in spur one another on Hb10v24 and to outdo one another in showing honour Rm12v10 - so much the better if this can be explicit, and simplified as normal and celebrated as ritual and baked into the language of our liturgy and the practice of our welcome and the fabric of our fellowship.
👥 Comparison is intersubjective - it’s the difference between you and me In this way it defines the bond that bind us in our us-ness. By comparison we become we and we generate a framework of norms and ideals and exceptions in our community? Comparison is the method of detailing our social contract.
“..Already you have become rich!..”
💸 I have been brewing this long hope for a digital financial stewardship platform that enables disclosure. In the vein of Stanley Hauerwas’ piece on the imperative for Christians to be open about their earning, despite the difficulties this would present.
📲 Reading this passage gives me to think that such a platform should have the capacity for this sort of Pauline sardonic-comparison exchange. Not that that should be the main discourse, but perhaps it should be the beachhead, the icebreaker, the proof-of-concept. The financial management app Cleo has a chatbot with a function to “roast” users on demand, which is to poke fun at excess spending at McDonalds etc - they have learnt it’s not easy to get this tone right but it suggests there is the appetite, the precedent and room to grow in this sector.
🤖 In reverse ~ learning from Cleo. Considering what we are happy to hear from a bot, which would be impolite from a brother, how can we shift the conversation to a sharper form of fraternal exchange that is more productive of holiness, financial prudence and holistic flourishing? How can I become a plausible and winsome comparative interlocutor? Paul leads from the bottom in order to orientate his followers. The claim that he was considered as scum cannot have been mere rhetoric, or the letter as a whole wold become implausible. As John the Baptist’s I must become less Jn3v30, I must become servant of all Mk9v35 etc.. So, not that we should become robotic, but it is interesting to consider that the subhuman nature of bots and how that could help pattern what it looks like to be servant-of-all.
“We are.. but you..”
“You are.. but we..”
⚔️ [2.2] Comparison is Combative
“..For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel..” 1Cor4v15
👨👦 Paul moves from this lambasting and lampooning in love to a commentary on his being their father in the absence of good-enough fathering. I would also equivocate this combatitivity with the sort of worlding that I would say is basic to archetypal fathering. It is fathering that should pattern the relationship between leader and led in church. Fathering should be the level of intimacy and at-ease-ness that allows and encourages that the leader can and should tease as a preaching style, ridicule as discipleship, mock as a mode of edifying? Not easy, given wide-spread bad-fathering, to use ‘fathering’ as the pattern.
⚔️ Notes on Combat:
🤡 Banter. The combative and apparently harsh voice reminds me of St Mary’s level of banter from the stage - faux-aggrandisement, and general laddish disparagements of the worship leader’s baseball cap etc. Perhaps it’s reactive and over-compensatory irreverence was distracting pointless theatre, perhaps it was an in-joke for an in-crowd that alienated outsiders, but, for me, largely, it established that there was a secure brotherhood who had an active relationship of trust, somewhere at the core of the staff team that banter was a game and the fruit of it would be well-tested, well-fathered, well-rounded and accountable individuals that I could trust.
🌱 Nurture/Challenge. I also consider 41, and exit-interview reflections that the nurture 41 offers could be stifling to the spiritual growth of individuals, that the cuddle of enwombment would barrier the edginess and chaos needed for productive creative practice. There has to be within the leadership a counterbalancing voice bringing a disruptive challenge in love. The wilderness has to be given access, and so has to be given a voice, and that voice will take on the voice of standing before a mountain - the challenging voice, personifies and serves as ambassador for nature’s actuality and terror - albeit in a contained and permitted way. This in the voice of the father.
🤼 Rough and tumble. Jordan Peterson on rough and tumble play is interesting. There is a need (and an eager desire by children) for a form of physical sparring play - by such play children learn the rules of the game, and indeed they learn the learning of the rules of all games, they learn where the fun stops, they learn how to be a good playmate, which is how you learn to cooperate in all things with all people in the world. Physical sparring is a learning to be physical, learning the conditions of being a body. There is a particular role for fathers in this, and one could say where other elders offer such play they are doing so as-fathers in a fatherly manner. So sardonic-comparison as a verbal game should socialise Christian ‘infants’ into a world-facing game.
🗯️ Agonism. Alistair Roberts on masculine agonism is also interesting on this, in my longing to experience both receiving and giving this sort of leadership-via-strong-tone-critique, I want to know the conditions and the barriers to this. He asserts, and would recognise, there are differences between male and female discourse - and the dissonance in mixed company can lead to self-censorship, and a neutering of the best of both. Some of the agonism that would strengthen a band-of-brothers is eschewed, not even out of deference or chivalry but for the sort of incoherence that would arise in seeking the same but across mixed company. There are fewer and fewer legitimately mono-gendered contexts, and accordingly, I would moot, diminishing forums for an excellence of agnoism
⚔️ Two applications:
⬇️ How can I do combat with those I lead? How can I nurture the cultures which I lead within, so that they are receptive to loving combat? How can I be low enough to present as authentic, gentle enough and humble enough to be allowed in, ambitious enough to draw people up towards the great cause of personal and social reform? What sort of tone or humour or signifier of vulnerability would lubricate this form of exchange? How can I sign post that this is what followers are signing up for? How can I be brave enough to initiate?
⬆️ How can I invite combat from those I am led by? How can I give consent and encouragement to the church leaders in my life, to call me out, to check my privilege, to exact a critique of my character, to be bold in reforming me? How can I be submitted and how can that be made explicit while still remaining a dialogue between two spiritually mature agents? How can I be brave enough to initiate?
🛠️ On this point, I was interested to discover that it is likely I (and we all) have been misrepresenting iron-sharpens-iron Pr27v17, rather it carries the pejorative sense of close contention leading to bittering of a sharp tongue. Exegetic and historic exactitude aside, it is interesting to think on when a sharpening of sharps metaphor is invoked and if/when it is not applicable.
⚰️ Church leadership is a death sentence.
“..I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death..”
🔥 Some hyperbole intended, but also.. Church leadership and the leadership of community houses should involve more gnarly nakedness and public shaming as standard. There is a motive force to the closing of the apostolic canon - that wants to sanitise church leadership. No more Pauls, no more risky radicality, no more innovation, no more difficult conversations, no more sardonic-comparison. Now a polite eldership of invulnerable leaders conduct banal husbandry and wait for the end. Rather, set yourself alight and let the world come and watch you burn.
Note to self. More on Anglican Leadership language