Need for Spirituality in Leaders

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In writing about the need for spirituality in leadership, Professor Winter says,

It is little wonder then that the real stumbling block in the way to a solution to the social problems is not an economic, political, or sociological one. The determining factor is the decision whether humanity is to be studied from a standpoint of nature or spirit. Is personality autonomous or automatic? . . . Is man a child of nature or a son of God? Shall we interpret the spiritual by the natural or the natural by the spiritual or natural by natural and spiritual by spiritual? Shall we prefer an external control for men or an interior self-control? Our leaders whose spirituality we are considering, stand at the cross-roads, facing these questions.


Our age is engaged in exploiting the natural resources of the world to an astonishing extent. We are capitalizing on its material, wealth, and power and are largely, oblivious to its vast, undiscovered spiritual resources. An age of steel is not apt to be pre-eminently an age of the spirit. The passionate hunger in our civilization is for power and possessions and we obtain these in abundance. Who can tell what spiritual resources will be amassed when the same heroic effort is spent in seeking the satisfaction of an equal spiritual hunger? We have attained scientific control and exploited the natural world; now we must attain spiritual control and exploit the resources of the personal world.

It is pre-eminently the day of organizations. Societies have multiplied on every hand, and the machinery of the church is complex and multitudinous. This may be cause for thankfulness, but it cannot too often be repeated, that apart form the Holy
Spirit's control and direction, all is dead.
The advantages of the moment are not to be despised. Those who would go back to primitive simplicity must deny the guidance of God in the centuries. Let all be yielded to the fire and power of the Spirit for cleansing and energy, and the pulpit will be the greatest force in all human life, and every organization of the church will throb and pulsate with Divine energy.


We can see the hand of God in some developments, but altogether too often true that the hand of God is when there is too much emphasis on the things of the material world and there is much forgetting of the things of the spiritual world. One fine preacher said of a highly organized congregation that you could hear the whirr of the pulleys and the slap of the belts, but sometimes you could not hear the still small voice of God.


We must have men too much awed by the greatness of life to discuss minor issues in the pulpit. Ability to "run a Church" the familiar modern plan is a gift which is too commonly divorced from the ability to feed spiritually hungry people or to help thoughtful people to see the rational claims of spiritual livmg. Superficial evangelism is too often a cheap substitute for hard, vital thinking about spiritual reality.


How often we dismiss truth from ages past as not applicable to our contemporary situation. This wisdom and insight applies in government, society, education, faith communities, families . . . timeless and true.

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