How Not to be a Jerk

Thoughts on Success, Elon Musk, and Jesus

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. 
Henri Nouwen

We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?Steve Jobs

I love biographies. Like baked goods, a good biography is a guilty pleasure. I recently read Walter Issacson’s latest on Elon Musk, aptly named Elon Musk. Isaacson also wrote the only authorized biography of Steve Jobs, also named Steve Jobs. I read Jobs 3 times it was riveting. Did you know Steve Jobs’ favourite creation was the iPad?

Anyway, as I read about Musk’s life, I was heartbroken for him, frustrated by his fierceness, and intrigued at the parallels between him, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos.

Beyond being crazy rich white guys, each has made a significant impact on our modern world. They have sought to punch a dent in the universe and succeeded. They have given us:

The iPhone
Pixar
Tesla
Paypal
SpaceX
Microsoft
Amazon

They have each built empires of technology, wealth, and influence. In some cases, they positively shifted the music industry, film, space travel, automotive, and financial industries. But at what cost?

Reflecting on his time working alongside Elon Musk, Tesla co-founder Michael Marks said this:

…some people are just assholes, but they accomplish so much that I just have to sit back and say that seems to be the package….

Maybe if the price the world pays for this kind of accomplishment is a real asshole doing it, it’s probably worth the cause.

But I wouldn’t want to be that way.¹

Musk, Jobs, Gates, and Bezos are notorious for their heinous behaviour toward employees and coworkers. And each has left behind in their wake relational breakdowns from divorces, neglected and estranged children, and lawsuits.

But society permits innovators and technocrats a special pass to be, well, “assholes.” To berate, belittle, and mistreat people for the sake of progress.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson with a portrait of Eugene Peterson behind.

THOU SHALL NOT TOUCH THE LORD’S ANOINTED

We see a similar pattern in some of the Western churches. Many contemporary pastors and leaders adopt corporate metrics of success and models of leadership. A quick survey of bestselling Christian leadership books describes leadership in terms of influence and tells stories of charismatic leaders conquering insurmountable odds.²

This has created incubators of malformation that prop up a key leader at all costs.³ Meaning an amazing charismatic leader draws thousands yet is verbally abusive, emotionally and spiritually manipulative, or worse leads deeply fragmented lives but they “do great things for God.”

"If you look at the numbers and money, American churches in some ways are the most successful churches ever. And yet, I think it could be argued, we're at probably one of the low points because of the silliness and triviality that characterize so much of church life these days,” notes Eugene Peterson.⁴

We have also traded the religion of Jesus⁵ for the gospel of upward mobility.⁶ We equate the move of the Holy Spirit with the size of someone’s congregation. This leads to a hyperfocus on numerical growth, buildings, budgets, and brand recognition.

How many times have you heard a megachurch pastor quote Acts 2:41 and say see the Spirit is adding thousands, this must be the work of God. Some leaders have mastered the art of using “the vocabulary of God’s truth disconnected from the truth of God.”⁷ And instead of peace, justice, and generosity, we get butts, budgets, and buildings.

We replace spiritual maturity and authority for social media followers. And prophetic preaching for kitschy TED Talks undergirded with pop psychology at best or eisegesis feel-good sermons about “wealth, health, and personal prosperity” at worst.⁸

As Marva Dawn writes:

One of the most severe failures in churches today is that so often preaching has become therapeutic instead of proclamatory. The point of sermons is not to tell listeners how to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps….

Rather, we [ought to] preach to paint so beautiful and compelling a vision of the kingdom of God that we enable the hearers to inhabit it.⁹

Yet what does it cost someone to gain Instagram followers, book deals, speaking tours, and multi-site campus, but neglect their family, bully their staff, and live deeply compartmentalized lives?

Now, spiritual health and numerical growth, progress, and innovation are not mutually exclusive. It is just extremely difficult to be a healthy leader in a megachurch model of ministry.

No, The issue is that we have turned the gospel of Jesus Christ into a religion that equates the work of God to bigger, better, and faster. Bigger buildings and ministries, better technologies and power, and faster numerical growth.

When “success” for pastors and spiritual leaders is defined by similar metrics of Fortune 500 companies, we’ve already lost. As Henri Nouwen rightfully notes: “It is this drive for more that has brought us to the brink of a war that cannot be won.¹⁰

The call to pastoral and spiritual leadership is not about building “platforms” or “influence” but is a call of followership. That is of following a particular leader – Jesus of Nazareth – and being shaped and formed into his likeness not the likes of billionaire CEOs or celebrity pastors (two terms that ought to be mutually exclusive).

I like the image of a pastor as a shepherd.

People both in and outside of the church of Jesus Christ look around and are unsettled. We know somewhere deep in our hearts that “success, fame, influence, powers, and money do not give us the inner joy and peace we crave.”¹¹

So, we must ask not only what would Jesus do but how would Jesus do it. Thankfully, Jesus also had profound biographies written about him too.

WASHING FEET

In the gospel of John, the biographer details Jesus’ last meal before his crucifixion. The evangelist writes:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. 5 Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.¹²

There is much to say about Jesus’ prophetic act and on the importance of John capturing this moment on the final Passover. But what I want to focus on is the posture of Jesus towards his followers. Let’s work through this line by line.

V3 | The writer lets us know that Jesus knows that God has given him lordship. This means that Jesus knows that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one who would come to rule, reign, and redeem over all of creation. And what does he do with this radical power?

V4 - 5 | Jesus gets up from supper and takes the posture of a slave. Richard Bauckham reminds us:

Washing someone else's feet was an unpleasant task, which no one except a servant or slave could be expected to do. So, menial a task was it that in a household with a hierarchy of slaves and servants, it would be the duty of the slaves, not of the servants who performance less demeaning tasks such as waiting at table.¹³

In this act, Jesus does two things.

First, Jesus overturns the cultural norms of power and status. Jesus, the Cosmic King reminds us that he came not to be served but to serve. Again, the first call of a pastor or church leader is to follow the footsteps of Jesus our chief cornerstone. To follow Jesus means “picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are derivative from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus.”¹⁴ It is not enough to do things in Jesus’ name and not do things how Jesus did them.

In washing his disciples’ feet Jesus sets a new pattern of leadership. This act means we have new metrics of success. Thus, leadership is not defined by vision casting or charisma but by the “ease and spontaneity with which he or she does the little, annoying, messy things – the things which in the ancient world the slave would do, the things which in our world we always secretly hope someone else will do so we won’t have to waste our time, to demean ourselves.”¹⁵

Second, in this act, Jesus redefines leadership from distant and hierarchal to local and lowly. Washing someone’s feet is an intimate and earthy act.¹⁶ In this movement Jesus demonstrates to his followers that earthly kings use power and dominance - he uses service, humility, and proximatey.

In this biography, Jesus establishes a new social order defined not by technological or financial growth but by holy and mundane intimacy. Leadership in Jesus’ name and the Jesus way is not about spotlights, speaking platforms, or butts in seats but about a life of faithfulness in mundane acts.

SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It sounds like a children’s Sunday school answer, but we go to Jesus. Put differently, we reclaim a Christological vision of leadership. That is leadership defined and shaped by Jesus. By beholding Jesus, we gain his wisdom and His heart and are formed into his likeness.¹⁷

A leader who pursues Jesus humbly and wholeheartedly may not receive a reward of thousands of followers, book deals, or celebrity friends. But their reward will be far greater, for it will be Christ himself.

1. Isaacson, Musk, 167.

2. These descriptors come from the following: John C. Maxwell, Developing the Leader Within You (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993); Maxwell, 21 Laws of Leadership; Craig Groeschel, It: How churches and leaders can get It and keep It (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2008); Bill Hybels, Courageous Leadership (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).

3. The disheartening cases of Marc Driscoll, Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels, and Robert Morris come to mind.

4. David Wood, "'The best life': Eugene Peterson on pastoral ministry," The Christian Century 119, no. 6 (2002), http://www.christiancentury.org.

5. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1976).

6. Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 34.

7. Eugene H. Peterson, The Word Made Flesh: The Language of Jesus in his Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 151.

8. “Americans believe in a gospel of optimism” writes Professor and Author Kate Bowler. Bowler has done an incredible job at surveying the prosperity gospel and its insidious nature on the spiritual livelihoods of Americans. See Kate Bowler, See: Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved(SPCK, 2018); Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of The American Prosperity Gospel (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013).

9. Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 150.

10. Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ, 13.

11. Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ, 34.

12. John 13:3-5 RSV

13. Richard Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 198.

14. Peterson, The Jesus Way, 22.

15. N.T. Wright, John For Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 11 - 21, Perlego ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).

16. Wright, John For Everyone.

17.  This is a reinterpretation of a quote by Marva Dawn. Dawn and Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call, 149.