[The Bookshelf #67] Being and Belonging
And so many other B words, it's not even funny
What I’ve Read Recently
Faith-based organizations have a gender problem. While these organizations are staffed by just as many women as men, and while donations to these organizations come more often than not from women, they are still led overwhelmingly by men. Identifying the implications of this disparity and finding practical solutions are the central concerns of Creating Cultures of Belonging: Cultivating Organizations Where Women and Men Thrive (IVP) by Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard.
Before getting into my thoughts on the book, disclosure time. During grad school I studied with Beth Birmingham in a course on organizational leadership. She would open each class with a short reading from a book that has since become a favorite of mine, one I’ve reread possibly more than any other: Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus. The vision of leadership I gleaned from that book, and from those rich classroom discussions, is one that gives me hope when all around me I see the collateral damage of leadership debacles. There’s another way to lead, I remind myself. A way that is prayerful, relational, and vulnerable—and that its transformative power lies therein.
So, yes. In reading this book I’m biased. I’m biased because I know the kind of leadership Dr. Birmingham teaches, the kind of leadership she lives. I know it and am compelled by it.
Birmingham and Sallinen Simard have worked within a number of faith-based institutions. They know what it’s like to be part of a healthy, life-giving organizational culture. And they have enough life experience to see the warning signs when something’s not right. They want organizations to do better work, and to be better places to work.
Significantly, the authors ground this “love letter to faith-based organizations” in theology, in data, and in their own personal experiences.
While there are churches that sincerely hold complementarian views regarding women in pastoral leadership, faith-based parachurch organizations (with apologies to the IRS) are not churches. And vice versa. Nonetheless, when a parachurch organization is governed by theological beliefs precluding women from serving in leadership positions, this organization has the ethical responsibility to disclose that fact up front. A talented woman with legitimate leadership gifts deserves to know that this is not an organization that will value her personal and professional growth.
Men deserve to know that too. In my many years working for faith-based nonprofits, I have worked on teams led by women and on teams led by men, and I can tell you I would not want to work for an organization that, as a matter of policy (stated or otherwise), restricts leadership positions to men. Some of the most talented, creative, and tenacious leaders and colleagues I’ve had the privilege of working with have been women. Teams without full female participation are not better teams. They’re just not.
New research confirms that organizations with a gender gap are at a competitive disadvantage. For one thing, as older generations retire and new generations join the workforce, these younger workers take it for granted that qualified women should lead—and that young women should be given equal opportunities to gain those qualifications. Organizations with a glass ceiling will struggle to hire and retain the smartest and best employees. Without these folks on the team, they won’t be as effective in solving the very problems they exist to address. (The implications here for donor bases should be obvious.)
I hope this book is read far and wide within faith-based nonprofit circles. I hope it’s read by executives and boards, that its arguments are taken seriously in those rooms where organizational possibilities take shape. I hope it’s read by donors who, through their partnership in an organization’s mission, have earned the right to nudge leaders in healthy new directions. And I hope it’s read by lots of people like me: mid-level leaders who don’t necessarily have the power to change an organization overnight, but whose day-to-day words, actions, and priorities can and do make a real difference for the actual women and men we have been entrusted to lead.
I would love to see the entire faith-based nonprofit sector become equitable and dignity-affirming; may it begin today, with my team and the shared work God has given us to do.
What I’m Reading Now
During a visit to West Michigan last month, we paid a visit to Books & Mortar in the East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids. I usually live by the credo that it’s practically a crime not to buy something when you visit an indie bookstore. IYKYK.
On this particular visit I was drawn to a paperback copy of Krista Tippett’s 2016 book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living (Penguin). Anyone who has listened to the On Being podcast and public radio show knows (and—correct me if I’m wrong—loves) Tippett’s soothing voice and the calm, spacious nature of the conversations that unfold. This book is an extension of those conversations, and reading it feels a lot like listening to the show.
A word about what this book is not. A work of systematic theology? Nope. An airtight apologetic for orthodox Christian faith? Not that either (not directly, anyway). No, this book is something different: an invitation to a posture, to a way of being that can shape the nature of our faith in wonderful—and yes, faithful—ways.
The granddaughter of a preacher and a graduate of Yale Divinity School, Tippett is candid about the present nature of her own faith, such as it is: “The longer I live, the less comprehensible I find the notion of a God who listens, yields, takes account of our struggles.” She continues:
And as uncertain as I grow about some of the fundaments of faith, in a way that would have alarmed my grandfather, I grow if anything more richly rooted in one of the most inexplicable things he taught me: God is love. I understand the contradiction here. I am unable to state, with conviction, that God exists in any way that sentence would have made sense to me in childhood or makes sense to me now intellectually. I have my eyes wide open to horrors that unfold in my city, and halfway across the world, in any given moment. But I apprehend—with a knowledge that is as much visceral as cognitive—that God is love. That somehow the possibility of care that can transform us—love muscular and resilient—is an echo of a reality behind reality, embedded in the creative force that gives us life.
That’s how Tippett describes her own spiritual situation, the vantage point from which she surveys the world. And it may not seem to you or to me to be solid enough ground. Even so, the people she invites onto the show—the people who populate these pages—all come, by and large, with their feet firmly planted somewhere. Whether it’s the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, or an activist Catholic nun, or a theoretical physicist who can’t get over the mysterious “elegance” of string theory, each guest brings his or her own faith commitments to the table, and each is given the freedom to speak on the basis of those commitments.
One of the first On Being conversations I can remember listening to was with Richard Mouw. As you probably know by now, his work has come to mean a lot to me over the years, though at the time of that 2010 conversation I barely knew his name. On the show, Tippett invited Mouw to offer an “evangelical view” on the difficult task of restoring political civility in our fractured society. And he did so clearly, faithfully, and humbly, all with a joyful sense of humor. Here was the president of an evangelical seminary, on NPR, speaking at length about how his particular faith and theology shape a vision for mutual flourishing in society. It was an intoxicating conversation to listen in on as a twenty-something grappling with the complexities of the world in which I found myself at the time. It was a conversation full of so many thrilling possibilities for faithfulness, and citizenship, and neighborliness. It felt brand new to me.
In all the subsequent On Being conversations I’ve listened to over the years, I always appreciate that Tippett insists on giving breathing room, just as she did with Mouw. Her guests (and listeners!) can afford to take deep breaths. They know they won’t be interrupted or berated or backed into a corner. There are no gotchas looming ahead. Just humane curiosity and really, really good questions. And then plenty of space to inhabit them.
Reading this book, and listening to the show, I’m challenged to become a better listener myself, a better asker of questions, a more attentive friend. And I’m reminded that curiosity about the world—and about the ways others interpret its mysteries—is in fact a virtue, not a vice.
“The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof,” says the psalmist, “the world and those who dwell therein.” And then there’s this, from John’s first letter: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.”
Let’s get in the habit of taking deep breaths. With our feet our firmly planted in Christian orthodoxy—as understood and practiced across space and time—we of all people can afford to be inquisitive about other ways of seeing the world. Who knows, we may still have some things to learn. We might even make a friend. That sounds pretty good to me.
What I Might Read Next
At the beginning of that last section, I named one credo I live by. Here’s another: if a book I want to read is written by an author from Ireland, and if the audiobook is narrated by that same author, in his or her Irish brogue, then it is a crime not to listen to the audiobook. OK, not a crime, maybe, but a mistake.
For Bono’s new book, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story (Knopf), I’m hoping to actually read it and listen to it at the same time, if I can find a way to do that without breaking the bank. It’s something I’ve found enjoyable with other books every now and then. I think this book deserves it.
If you enjoy these reflections, please pass them along.
And as always, thanks for reading.
Tim