The 'leadership vacuum' in the wake of Welby

After Justin Welby completes his official duties as Archbishop of Canterbury on January 6, there’s a lot more to put in place than a new Archbishop.

Welby's departure leaves more than a vacancy, it testifies to a multi-faceted crisis of leadership in the Church of England. Many have commented on his legacy, but I wish merely to observe that during his tenure, and especially at his resignation, a few long-festering narratives converged.

Safeguarding: rethinking oversight

Most prominent among those narratives is safeguarding. At a parish level, recent systemic advances in safeguarding have been necessarily demanding and quietly revolutionary. Yet, post-Makin, the emerging aspirations for safeguarding provision are straining at the existential fabric of the institution and all things associated with it. And that is because of the piercing focus on the practice of spiritual leadership in structures and in networks, the legacy of unchecked power and the abuse of such power.

We are chillingly aware of how this connects directly with leadership practice in the conservative evangelical wing of the Church of England. But I think we need to discern this as a separate strand for further reflection. We must face up to the failure of an inherited leadership model. Although we are appalled by the abuse scandals and committed to taking whatever action is necessary, there are patterns and attitudes that are so deeply ingrained that we are at a loss to unpick them. Upon the exposure of a toxic leadership model, we need to root it out and rethink pastoral ministry and spiritual oversight from first principles.

Living in Love and Faith: rethinking old tactics

At the same time, we are also rightly grieved and acutely impacted by the catastrophic failure of leadership in the House of Bishops in the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) debacle. Those entrusted with spiritual oversight of the denomination have rejected the doctrine upon which it is founded.

Yet, how much of our evangelical response to LLF leans on the ‘old ways’ of that inherited leadership model? I think there are still lingering strains of a sadly familiar melody: subtle pressure, concern about being ‘sound’, worry about what certain individuals will think, manipulative tactics, using money as a lever, informal in-crowd cabals. It must be noted that there are unsavoury practices in evidence in the harsh treatment of evangelicals by powerful liberals in some dioceses. Nevertheless, it feels like we are trying to wash our faces in dirty water.

As these narratives converge, it seems like a confluence of sewer outfalls forming a foul river of imperious self-interest and shameless apostasy. Far from a mere vacancy in Canterbury, the Church of England is in the throes of a leadership vacuum, a black hole that, rather than holding order in orbit, is sucking everything that gets too near into oblivion.

My attempts at a suitable metaphor fall short. Isaiah’s words are better.

'The whole head is hurt,
and the whole heart is sick.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
no spot is uninjured —
wounds, welts, and festering sores
not cleansed, bandaged,
or soothed with oil.' (Isaiah 1:5-6 CSB)

Yet brokenness is not a reason to despair, weakness is not a reason to give up, and darkness is not a reason to fear. Once again, we are painfully reminded of our total dependence on God, with whom alone is power we can trust. He asks no more of us than to follow in the steps of his Son.

Throughout his monumental work, Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin calls us to move from an ‘n’-shaped approach to God to a ‘u’-shaped approach. When we follow an ‘n’ shape, we try to get up to God to get him to come down to us. An ‘n’-shaped approach asks, “what do we need to do to get God to do the thing we want him to do?” A ‘u’-shaped approach acknowledges how God comes down to us in his grace to bring us to him. A ‘u’-shaped approach asks, 'How is God calling us and equipping us to glorify him in our lives right now?'

In response to the sickly state of church leadership in the Church of England, I would like to advocate a ‘u’-shaped approach.