Sermon: UU Leadership Lessons – Rev. Eric Banner & Katie Edwards

It starts when you say We
and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.

What comes to mind for you when you hear the word “leadership?” Is it a person, or people? Are they people you know, or knew, or are they public figures you've only ever seen on a TV screen or a online video? Do you think of yourself?

I ask these questions because I've noticed something in every single Unitarian Universalist congregation I've ever been a part of, and that is a serious, ongoing desire to be agents of change in the world, and a countervailing pull against the very idea of leadership, much less the practice of it.

But what I hear from you all is that you are tired, at work, at home, in your community organizations, and yes, sometimes even here at church, of feeling like there are a lot of good ideas, but somehow they never quite go anywhere. And so, for the next few weeks I want to offer to you the idea that we might want to rehabilitate our relationship to the very idea of leadership, and ask what that idea looks like when we root it in our values, our traditions, our practices, and our faith. Many years ago the Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke wrote out what he thought were the five essential points of our theology, concluding that we held to the “progress of (humankind) onward and upward forever.”

Now, in this great time of turmoil around our nation and our world, the possibility of that progress feels as imperiled as it has in many years, it feels essential that we reclaim the power of leadership, in our committee and our lives, so that we can ensure that the very things that have brought us safely thus far are handed on to the next generation with enough power and strength that they will survive to bring the people who come next what was here for us when we arrived.

So let me tell you two short stories, both from my own life, about the power of leadership, and the confusion of leadership with autocracy.

The first was almost 18 years ago. I can pinpoint the date, May 2nd, 2008. Emily was nine months pregnant with Julia. It was a Friday morning, and I was working at an office about an hour away from where we lived. Our oldest, Olivia, was scheduled to go on field trip with the rest of her 3rd grade class to a zoo and a chocolate factory an hour away, in the other direction. She needed to be at school early that morning for the field trip, and I needed to meet my carpool to get to work. My alarm went off, and Emily said to me “You can turn that off. You're not going to work today. I'm in labor.” Oh. Ohhh. Ok.

Now the only thing you need to know about our girls for this story to make sense is that every one of them was born at a birth center, instead of a hospital. The birth center nearest to our home was 60 miles away. But Emily knew what labor was like, and Emily set the tone, and she said “We'll get Olivia to school, and then we'll drive to the birth center.” I had my marching orders. I waited about an hour, and Olivia got dressed and we walked to school, where she got on the bus, and I went home and we got in the car to drive to the birth center.

If you've ever watched a TV show where a woman is in labor, you know how it's supposed to go. The frazzled husband quickly loads his wife into the car and drives as quickly as he can to the nearest hospital where they are rushed into the ER room, hoping they aren't too late. Not us. We gathered out things, we got in the car, we drove out to I70, and I put on the cruise control and headed out. When we got to the birth center Emily was so calm, so clear, about what was happening the midwives said they would check her in, and then if we wanted, we could wander around the neighborhood, where there were garage sales going on that day.

We didn't go garage sale-ing, we checked in, and two hours later Julia was born. Only years later did Emily look at me one day and say “When you drove us to the birth center, you were driving the speed limit, weren't you?” I was. 70 mph. The whole way. She was calm, so I was calm. She was the leader, and I was the assistant, and she knew what was happening and what needed to happen, and it was my job to follow directions. Setting the tone, giving good direction, and trusting that the people you are leading are willing and able to follow your lead, they all turn out to be essential aspects of getting things done. And they aren't reserved for elected officials, or corporate titans, sometimes they're one of us, or someone we know. Had Emily not been willing to step into the leadership role in that moment and tell me what to do, all of us would have been worse off. Because she led, I could follow.

But it isn't always that way, is it? For a lot of us the only examples that come to mind when we think about leadership are those that are abusive or controlling, in ways that have harmed us and harmed the people we love. As free thinkers we're suspicious of others, wanting to make sure that we aren't being hoodwinked, or just wanting to come to our own conclusions. Fred Muir called it an allergy to authority in UU circles many years ago. Leadership often feels like power, and power feels dangerous, and all too often hurtful.

So, another story. A few years after Julia was born I was in seminary. I was taking a class called “Theater of the Oppressed.” It was rooted in the teachings of the Paulo Friere, the Brazilian educator and philosopher, who thought that much of what we needed were things we already knew, but that we needed to find ways to practice, to dramatize them so we could bring the change we wanted to the world we lived in. We did a lot of activities in that class, and one day the activity had everyone line up, and get a number placed on our back. You didn't know what your number was, but you could see everyone else's number. One through thirty. The higher your number, the higher you were on the social hierarchy, the power ladder, if you will, and the lower your number, the more subservient you were. Your job was to, by interacting with others, and seeing how they interacted with you, to figure out what rank you held in the room.

Quickly I noticed that people were treating me deferentially. Submissively. Royally. I didn't figure it out until we all got to take our numbers off, but I had been given #1. I was the highest ranked person in the room, and people were treating me in ways I had never been treated before. And the embarrassing truth is, I didn't know what to do with it. The only models of leadership that came to mind when that happened were the models of power that led me to treat them not as partners in the work of building the beloved community, but as subservient people to be ordered around or dismissed. I realized as I reflected upon it later, that though I had already been a boss in the workplace, a board chair at my congregation, an elected leader in student organizations, I had never really learned how to be when power was thrust upon me and other people’s trauma and expectations were suddenly mine to deal with. And so, as they say, I didn't rise to the level of my highest aspirations, I fell to the level of my training, and my training had been nearly non-existent.

Ever since then I've been committed to two key ideas. The first is that leadership matters, and the second is that it can look different from the abusive ways so many of us were taught it. And, actually, I've been committed to third idea, that leadership that matters is leadership that's shared. Which is part of why, not just this morning, but every week, I am grateful to be part of a team of people who know how to step up and step back, to share the stage, and share their wisdom, and their leadership. One of those people is one of my favorite people, and I hope one of yours, our Executive Director, Katie Edwards, who has, as Paul Harvey used to say so often, the rest of the story.

 

Katie Edwards, Executive Director:

I need you, you need me
We're all a part of one body
Stand with me, agree with me
We're all a part of one body
It is our will that every need be supplied
You are important to me, I need you to survive
You are important to me, I need you to survive

We live in an important time. A time that calls us to lead from our UU values.

But how do we do that? As Unitarian Universalists, we are committed to a Free and RESPONSIBLE search for truth and meaning. That means, there is no right way to lead. Each one of us has our own path paved by our direct experiences.

I was once asked the question “If your life was a prophetic text, what would the lessons be?” So in consulting the chapters on leadership, here are the four highlights.

There is no right way to lead, Leadership is all about people, and people are messy.

Leadership is about power. We all have it and it’s up to us to learn to use it and bless the world with it.

Your gifts and your life experiences shape how you wield your power.

Shared leadership moves like music, dynamic and strong.

Shall we dig in?

LESSON 1: Despite expert’s best efforts, there is no right way to lead.
So disappointing.

When I went to grad school, I KNEW that I could fix the nonprofit sector if I could just learn the right way to do things. Turns out, that’s my white culture showing up. I worshipped the written word - if there was a book on it, I would learn from it. It worked to some degree - I was the executive director of an international nonprofit training organization before I was 30.

Believe me when I say, the stress almost killed me.

In one of my darkest moments, a board member flew to Denver from Texas to meet with me. He looked me in the eyes, and said, “Katie, you are worth more than your work.” He was a retired Army General, a man of faith, a follower of Christ, and a person who knew how to wield his power with kindness and compassion.

Three months later, I was on the path that brought me here to you.

So many of the organizations I worked with in that role were trying to “collaborate” - the hot buzzword of the time. To my disappointment, Collaboration doesn’t care if you know Roberts Rules of Order. Collaboration doesn’t care what your title is. Collaboration cares a bit if you have money. But real, effective partnerships move at the speed of trust. Authority is earned by being authentic, not granted by position or title.

—

LESSON 2: Leadership is about power.

I see some of you getting uncomfortable with that word. I think for most people, the word “Power” is synonymous with Control, Manipulation, Force, all bad juju….

But if we go to science - Power is a scientific concept. One formula is Power equals Work over Time. I was born for work over time.

Community Organizing principles tell us there are four types of Power:

Power Over: control, manipulation, deprivation, oppression

Power To: This is our individual agency. Our ability to make choices. And our belief that those choices matter. We have the power to pick our friends, to call a senator, to boycott a store

Power With: This is the power when you join your efforts with others. I felt this when I walked with my protest choir at the Marade last week - the power when you raise your voice with others, or build a habitat house, or host a postcard writing party to get our the vote

And Finally the Power Within: This is our moral authority. Our confidence that we know what is right and wrong. What should be done and what should not.

Each type does Work over Time in a different way.

—

LESSON 3: Your gifts and your life experiences shape how you wield your power.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but my journey has been muddy and rough. The laundry list of tough situations that I’ve been in include:

Not knowing where I was going to sleep at night

Moving across the country without a job and the only money in my bank account came from a loan

Experiencing gun violence at work and outside my home

Disabling stress-related health issues

The gifts from these life experiences mean that I have proof I can survive. That hard things won’t make me hard. I’ve had to retrain my nervous system that discomfort is not danger, giving me the ability to discern between the two.

A dear friend of mine has been an activist since before I was born, but their health has made it so they can’t march or protest. Their body can’t do it any more. So instead they teach and share their wisdom. They cook food for friends who are doing the work. They watch people’s children. They use their power to create safety and resiliency in the movement.

We don’t need Obama to come and save us. We need to save us.

Our pain and our wounds get in the way. When I was in college, I vomited trauma all over everyone I met. I felt I had a duty to share the horrible experiences that I've been through. Father Richard Rohr tells us that pain that is not transformed is transmitted. I have transmitted so much pain. But I didn’t know better. Now I do.

—

LESSON 4: Leaders need followers, and followers need leaders. But those roles are more fluid than you think.

I’m so glad the choir is here today. Choirs have taught me so much about leading and following, For those of you who don’t know how this works, when you join a choir, you get a stack of music. Each piece has different parts, instructions, instruments, and often words in a foreign language. It’s all quite overwhelming the first time you do it.

But you have one job, That’s to know your part. To practice it until you know it well. Sometimes it’s easy and fits in your range without much effort. Sometimes you think the composer lost their marbles in Neverland.

But you’re not singing alone. Sections of the choir work together by listening to each other and tuning in to what is going on. If I know a phrase that people are struggling with, I’ll sing louder; knowing that others will return the favor.

And if one person drops out to take a breath, the song still goes on.

What makes Rev. Eric and I a great leadership team is that we share the lead fluidly. We know our parts to play and we’re good at them, but also when we need to, each one of us can pinch hit for the other. You’re not gonna get the same kind of Sunday morning from me, but I’ll make sure that it happens, with help from Sarah and our clergy colleagues. Earlier this week, I needed to drop out and take a breath unexpectedly. I sent Reverend Eric a text with what I needed from him, my priorities, and my boundaries. He just sent back “got it.” And that is all I needed to know that this place was fine.

This is how we practice shared leadership. Shared power. Shared ministry.

—

The world needs Unitarian Universalists right now. It needs people who have practiced values-driven leadership styles. It needs people who know how to care for one another. People who know how to harness their power for social change. It needs people who tend to and heal their pain. It needs people who know how to channel joy in the world.

Find your power. Learn how to wield it. Practice your skills. Be a good follower. Step up when your gifts are called for.

We are made for this time.

Rev. Eric Banner
Senior Minister