A Prophet, A Priest, and a King

Most of my reading lately has been while doing a stair step machine or riding my bike on a stationary trainer in the mechanical room of our basement between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. Yesterday morning I finished Leading with a Limp by Dan Allender.

The premise of the book is that leaders lead most effectively when they have disclosed their failures to the ones they lead. Not to win sympathy. To free yourself and to free others.

There were several parts of the book that moved me. That shook me. That brought back pain and opened up wounds from my own story. The fact that in sharing your story with others can many times lead to people wanting to manipulate you or use your story against you.

The last chapter, in particular, was the most interesting. It is titled Three Leaders You Can't Do Without: Why You Need a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. Many times in a group, organization, job place, etc. There are people who play one of those three roles. Sometimes a person may play two of those three roles.

A king builds infrastructure for the needs of his people and protect them from harm. As he works for a fair and just society, an king juggles crises, decision making, allocating resources, talent development, and issues of survival and growth. (p. 189)

A priest helps create meaning for the people in her organization through story. Storytelling is neither just an entertaining pastime nor just an interesting way of communicating facts or values... A story is not just interesting; it actually delineates how to live. (p. 191) A priest uses symbols and helps the body connect to the soul through the physicality of worship.

Most people want to grow, but the price of growth is pain. A grapevine will not produce excellent wine grapes until it is pruned. It is the way of all growth and excellence: submission to pain through discipline is the only route to maturity... As a representative of discipline, a prophet is an odd interplay of coach, poet, visionary, and therapist. He disrupts the paradigm of comfort and complacency. But when he shouts at me, he also invites me to desire and dream of redemption. When he comforts me with the vision of what will one day be my future, he calls me to create it with a commitment to honesty, care, and justice. (If he were not a prophet but a good priest, he would tell me a bedtime story and comfort me. He might even bring me a cup of hot cocoa.) But, a prophet is a far cry from a priest. The odd presence cries out, invites, and keeps telling me to move. A prophet exposes our turn to indulgence and self-congratulation. He points out our self-righteousness and underscores the evidence that our current condition is not true, good, or lovely. And, often, in order to expose the unrighteousness of the current way of being, he allows himself to be a fool. A prophet exposes what is not right in part by arousing the dreams of redemption. She poetically touches ache for what is not and calls forth a vision of what will come. A prophet is more a poet than a rabble-rouser, and her poetry often contains dense metaphors and complex symbols to tap into the deepest parts of the heart... It's no surprise, then, that the prophet-poet-disrupter is often shunned as being too weird or eccentric. To normal people, a prophet may be intriguing but unpredictable and dangerous. So often prophets are not welcome in "normal" company; instead they find solace in communities of prophets who are notorious for being self-absorbed and destructive... They want to challenge the status quo of the king and the priest. As a result prophets are often killed or sent into exile. And it's easy to understand why. Few people want their lives disrupted by visions, poems, and stories that wreak havok on the comforts of daily life. (pp. 194-196). Dan also notes that typically prophets do not come from happy homes.

Can you guess which I am? I am a prophet. To a lesser degree a king. And to a very small degree a priest.

The interesting thing, as a leader I am, and you are, called to be all three. Because Jesus is all three. It flies in the face of "playing to our strength" leadership advice, yet the paradox is that we may, in our family life, as we play a role in a ministry, workplace, or organization, mostly use our strengths. Yet, in the wild humor of God, He will use our strengths to get us into situations where our weaknesses are exposed and used for his glory. Because Jesus is a King, a Priest, and a Prophet, we are called to be as well. We will, and must, continue growth in each area.

Leaders also need to make room for all three dimensions in the space of their souls. It may sound like I'm actually suggesting that you become a haunted and deeply divided person. But actually, we are often called to fulfill all three offices – to disrupt complacency, to bring comfort to heartache, and to direct others to life – in one sermon or a single counseling session. We must, therefore, create space in our organizations and in ourselves for this kind of rich, creative complexity. (p. 197) Broken and limping leaders need one another. The king left alone will become a dictator who hates chaos. The priest on his own will fall into accommodation for the sake of avoiding conflict. A prophet alone will indulge in drama and self-absorption for the sake of escaping boredom. They need one another to elude the trap of their own narcissism. (p. 198)