Poor leaders with too much time and too much money on their hands who have no idea how to reach a current lost generation, and no idea how to train their people to live in the Babylon of our big cities, and disciple them beyond an events-based ministry, won’t last. Not that they see it yet themselves. Or if they do they may be thinking like King Hezekiah, that at least it will be peace in their time. These are not leaders who are prepared for wartime. They are peacetime leaders.

The Need For Futureproof Leaders
In my new book Futureproof: How to Live for Jesus in a Culture That Keeps on Changing, I outline the manner in which the seismic shifts in the West are putting pressure on the church as well as the wider culture. And I point out how the church is equipped to deal with these pressures and changes in a way that the world is not. It is Jesus’ church after all.
But there’s a missing component in it, or at least something that I did not emphasise in the book, and that’s the topic of futureproof leadership – the types of leaders that the church is going to need as it goes forward.
Now that’s not to say that my book isn’t applicable to leaders in the church, as I run plenty of seminars for church leaders on the topic. However, it seems to me that the type of leader that the church will need going forward into the “away game” era of Christianity in the West is going to have to be different than in the “home game” era.
Futureproof Leaders Will Know Themselves
The biggest problem facing leadership in my theological tribe is the sheer lack of insight many current leaders have about their poor behaviour and problematic personalities. Too many leaders have low IQs, are insecure, insensitive and unwilling to think that they might need to change. They haven’t done the hard yards of personal self-examination.
But if you get to year fifteen of your ministry and you grumble about the fact that you can’t find good staff who stay for any length of time, then the problem might be you!
I say that off the back of some fairly unhelpful – and downright ungodly – examples of leadership within my own theological orb and experience over the past few years. Indeed the worst leadership examples I have seen, the most insecure and those displaying ungodly attitudes and behaviour, have been within my own tribe. At times it’s been shocking to hear the sheer self-interest and desperate deception being undertaken by terrible leaders whose main agenda is to self-justify and save their own position.
And as someone who has blown the whistle in a very public way in one such case, I have ended up being a person to whom many others who have fallen victim to such ungodly leaders, wend their weary way with equally familiar tales of woe. There’s nothing new or surprising about bad leadership stories. Nothing original.
Of course that’s not to say that such bad leadership is not to be found elsewhere and in other theological structures, and that I just haven’t seen or experienced it because I’m not familiar with other tribes. But it is to say this: the theologically reformed tribe to which I belong can often pride itself on its theological acumen, and not only on the acumen of their theology, but the safety that such acumen brings.
There’s often an implicit – sometimes explicit – understanding and it goes like this:
Now of course there’s some truth to that. Theology shapes practice. And it shapes your heart. But don’t underestimate your hard heart. And don’t underestimate your determination to use your good theology to justify your poor practise. I’ve heard the word “gospel” put in front of so many other words in order to shut down argument, reject correction, and control communities, that I’ve become suspicious of it being used. It’s become the tip of an iceberg that has sunk many a church community ship.
It’s simply not the case that once the North Star of theological orthodoxy is lined up, then the rest will pretty much sort itself out.
So you think your latent psychology, your upbringing, your unspoken expectations, your sinful assumptions, your subterranean drives, the types of people you can work with; all of that will follow in the train of your theological orthodoxy? Not true!
As I have experienced, and as I have heard from dozens of leaders and ex-leaders who have fallen under the wheels of the most theologically orthodox and ardent leaders they have ever known, yet who were at the same time, graceless, insecure, self-interested, greedy and vain, good theology is not enough.
Clearly it’s not enough. Character is so central. And two of the best preachers I have ever heard on an ongoing basis were completely lacking on godly character. Yet somehow their preaching gave them a hall-pass – for a time at least – among those who considered that the good (the public platform) somehow outweighed the bad (the private personality).
How we could ever come to that conclusion given how the God of the Bible constantly warns that he knows the heart, and that he will expose what is done in secret, is kinda beyond me. Yet we have done. And we continue to do.
The sheer shock people express at the huge gap between how they have been treated by a leader, and the leader’s platform or public ministry which ticks all of the theological boxes, is all too common. The questions are always the same: How did this person get into this senior leadership role? How did his or her peers turn a blind eye to allow this to happen? Why, if this person is supposed to be so godly and servant-oriented, are they so ungodly and so greedy for gain?
Now of course this has always been a risk for the church since Diatrophes in 3 John, who “likes to be first”. But from where I am sitting, it’s become an increasing problem. And at a time that the church can hardly afford it.
Futureproof Leaders Will Be Junkyard Dogs
But here’s the good news, I’m starting to meet a generation of leaderships – futureproof leaders – who won’t put up with these flabby vestiges of late Western Christianity. They’re realising that they’re going to have to be braver than many Christian leaders in the recent past.
Futureproof leaders in the churches that flourish will be more junkyard dog than thoroughbred. They won’t be waiting for the conditions to be right to go into leadership.
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Written by Robert E. Wright |
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
If Tony Fauci et al really cared about Americans, they would have funded more studies about what enhances or inhibits natural immune response, not funded bat virus research in China. They would have tried to boost Americans’ overall health, not shut down gyms and force masks onto their faces. Most importantly of all, they would have left no stone unturned in the search for effective therapies instead of putting most of their eggs into the vaccine basket.

Since the New Deal, it has been in the best interest of the U.S. government for Americans to drop dead the day before they start to collect Social Security or other entitlements. They will have contributed all they could to the role that Uncle Sam forced them into and exeunt stage left on cue, having given the performance of their lives as Ophelia in Hamlet. In the Shakespearean tragedy that America has become, the hero’s hamartia (fatal flaw) is trying to do too much, to achieve several ultimately incompatible goals.
Recognition of the perversity of the government’s overall incentive structure does not mean there exists a murder of bureaucratic crows hellbent on fragging you the day you retire, like a grizzled detective in a cliched cop drama, just that there is a tendency for public policies to hasten your demise. The perverse incentive explains why a government that spends trillions of your dollars every year can no longer effectively do the one thing it was created to do, protect your life, liberty, property triad. In fact, lately it has taken resources from you to give to your sworn enemies in televised acts that are difficult to distinguish from treason.
In sooth, the government should recuse itself from regulating healthcare at all, or get out of the life annuity game (Social Security). The two are incompatible and that explains why government agencies spend billions funding ways to kill you, or bleeding your wallet when you get sick, but precious little on how to keep you well.
The flawed Food Pyramid and various agricultural subsidies, for example, helped foment the obesity problem that so greatly impeded efforts to reduce Covid mortality rates.
Less corpulent Americans may have died from Covid because government policies incentivize doctors to overprescribe antibiotics, which weakened immune systems while creating antibiotic resistant “superbugs.” Although the connection between antibiotics, the human gut biome, and human immunity has been known to scientists, little has been done to inform Americans that antibiotic use comes with a potentially high immunological cost.
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After tides ebb, they flow. Low tides are followed by high tides. This is the central metaphor in Justin Brierley’s new book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. “In this book I will make a bold proposition—that Matthew Arnold’s long, withdrawing Sea of Faith is beginning to reach its farthest limit and that we may yet see the tide of faith come rushing back in again within our lifetime.”

In the latter half of the 19th century, the poet Matthew Arnold, on his honeymoon, was walking with his bride along the rocky shoreline of the English Channel as the tide was going out. The sound made him think of “the Sea of Faith,” which was once at high tide, “at the full” around the world. “But now,” he wrote in the poem “Dover Beach,” “I only hear / Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.”
But after tides ebb, they flow. Low tides are followed by high tides. This is the central metaphor in Justin Brierley’s new book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. “In this book I will make a bold proposition—that Matthew Arnold’s long, withdrawing Sea of Faith is beginning to reach its farthest limit and that we may yet see the tide of faith come rushing back in again within our lifetime.”
In a time when church attendance and affiliation in the United States are plummeting, a phenomenon called, as in the title of a book on the subject, “the great dechurching,” that is a bold proposition indeed. Nevertheless, Brierley sees the tide turning in the failure of the New Atheists and in a new openness to faith that he sees emerging in contemporary thought.
Brierley is a British broadcaster with an extensive apologetics ministry and a presence on radio, YouTube, podcasts, the blogosphere, and, with his previous book Unbelievable?, in print. His modus operandi is to hold conversations about faith with prominent scholars, authors, and public intellectuals. He also hosts debates and discussions between atheists and believers.
This has given him a firsthand look at the rise and fall of the “New Atheists.” In the first decade of the 2000s, four authors came out with bestselling books that energized skeptics and brought atheists out of the closet. These so-called Four Horsemen were neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith (2004); philosopher Daniel Dennett, author of Breaking the Spell (2006); journalist Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great (2007); and biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion (2011).
These were “new” atheists because they did not just deny God’s existence in a philosophical way. They were forceful and aggressive. They argued that God, the people who believe in Him, and religion in general are evil. As Hitchens put it in the subtitle of his book, “Religion poisons everything.”
Atheists rejoiced that their convictions were being aired in the public square. It appeared that atheism had become socially acceptable. With the help of the internet, conferences, and even “atheist churches,” they began to think of themselves as the “atheist community.” And this great awakening for atheists was accompanied by a new zeal for evangelism.
In 2012, atheists organized a march on Washington, D.C., called the Reason Rally. In this “Woodstock for Atheists,” some 20,000 to 30,000 demonstrators heard from authors, bloggers, and celebrities, and listened to bands like Bad Religion. Richard Dawkins called on the crowd to confront religious people: “Mock them! Ridicule them! In public!”
Meanwhile, it occurred to the community that they needed a better word for themselves, since “atheist” had a negative connotation, so they searched for something that conveyed their positive identity as the devotees of science and reason. So, with the approval of Dawkins and Dennett, many started calling themselves “Brights.”
Thus, the New Atheists became, in the language of social media, cringe. The arrogance, smugness, and condescension of the Brights turned off the general public, the supposedly “not bright.” And mockery and ridicule, which became the dominant rhetorical tactic of the movement, is not an effective way to persuade people, much less create converts.
The old atheists—the serious scholars and professional philosophers—disassociated themselves from the New Atheists. One of them chastised the Four Horsemen for engaging with unsophisticated fundamentalist preachers while being unwilling to interact with serious Christian thinkers like William Lane Craig.
Then, in 2011, at the World Atheist Convention, came “Elevatorgate.” One of the relatively small number of women in the movement gave a presentation on the inappropriate sexualization of women in the online atheist community. Afterward, as she was going to her room, one of the participants hopped on her elevator and sexually propositioned her! When she complained about the incident on social media, a large number of the Brights—including the most prominent of the Horsemen, Richard Dawkins—responded to her with characteristic mockery and ridicule.
Others came to her defense. Soon there was a cascade of sexual harassment revelations about other prominent atheists.
Elevatorgate led to a split in the atheist movement. One faction identified itself as “Atheism+”—that is, atheism plus social justice, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and other tenets of progressivism. Or, as Brierley calls it, an “atheism-with-moral-requirements.” Other atheists, standing on the principle of free thought, decried this woke agenda with its cancel culture, anti-scientific moralism, and suppression of individual liberty.
Atheists began spending all their time—and their extreme vitriol—in attacking each other rather than religion.
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