Leading with Love
Dear Church,
I found myself with a few minutes to spare yesterday while waiting in the doc’s office for my annual check-up. I did what so many of us do with a few spare minutes and opened the news app on my phone to discover the first wave of reporting on the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Seeing the number 14 (now 19) next to the word children triggered a sadness in me. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t disbelief. Though I believe those other two to be normal human emotions attached to such horrifying news. It was a heavy sadness, and I began to cry in Dr. Meno’s examination room. I just couldn’t stop it, and the tears are back as I type, as they were back as Cindy and I sat on our couch last night.
Incidents of mass violence perpetrated by deranged individuals with extremely dangerous weapons are commonplace in this country we all love. While I believe this issue, violence, is a moral issue, others have made it exceedingly political on both sides of the aisle and in the middle. The issue has been so politicized that when I speak up about this struggle before us I get hit by traffic going in both directions. “Jimmy, you are not doing enough as a leader in regard to this issue. When are we going to hear it from the pulpit?” “Jimmy, there is no room for politics in the pulpit. It makes me not want to come to church anymore.” Don’t believe me? Hop onto my Facebook page and check out the conflict that erupts in the comments with the usual talking points from the right and the left. So. Much. Noise.
As a moral leader in our community, I am tasked with and even paid to begin to create a vision for solutions to the moral problems we face and to give care, nurture, healing, and hope in the face of the moral challenges before us. I commit to you that I will work harder and more deliberately to explore different solutions. We must become honest with ourselves and one another. We are the ones tasked with solving these problems. We cannot afford to rely on our elected leaders on both sides of the aisle who offer the same failing solutions. I have no idea the course we will take on this path. I do know the first step is LOVE. My hunch is that LOVE is the second and third step, too. WE ARE THE ONES WHO MUST ACT TO PREVENT THIS HORROR. Leading, together, and leading with love is the only option the Gospel delivers to us.
Onward through the tears,
Jimmy
