Leadership in a Pandemic

Leaders

I often reflect and muse about leadership, both broadly and in the context of discipleship in communities of faith. A commitment to life-giving and healthy leadership has always been an important component of any community’s ability to thrive, even bloom. Vibrant leaders must reflect, be lifelong learners, and be nurtured both individually and collectively, whether they lead a business, own a garage, or pastor a church.  Without these elements, without knowing your stuff, a leader is going to cause harm. This stark reality has only become more apparent during a pandemic.

I have watched leaders in my faith community wrestle with waves of closures and reopening of churches. I have seen people in lay and formal ministry try to care for and support those going through the grieving process. In these places, leaders have to care for people who have been unable to gather to journey with loved ones through their final days, let alone the inability to gather collectively to say good-bye.

While the pandemic has been hard for all kinds of communities, another potent challenge has been the fentanyl crisis. People from all walks of life have been affected by challenges with pain, mental and physical. In these hurting times, this opiate crisis is robbing people of lives that should be full. Families are impacted by not only such unimaginable loss, but the stigma that comes with addiction. In this confluence of a pandemic and an opioid crisis, faith communities have endeavoured to care for the hurting while looking to leaders in the political sphere to help navigate what too often has become unnavigable.

I have the honour in my current work to be involved in journeying with people as they live into leadership in The United Church of Canada. These people, who arrive in person and virtually, come from coast to coast to coast in Canada. In these sacred places of learning, the realities of joy and challenge in people’s lives become a focus. Whether being a presence of care, advocacy, or communion with the Holy, people have to know their triggers and challenges, strengths and blessings.

In the midst of grief and joy, people in faith leadership have dig deep into their beings to  ensure they not only do not cause hurt to others, but also are able to be nimble in the midst of life’s unpredictability. This kind of leadership, which is a discipline, means we must be able to care for ourselves, in order to care for others. This orientation to (self) care, however, becomes challenging when leadership partners in other parts of Canada are themselves not well.

Leadership

These partners, in particular, the political, set the tone and tenor for how our larger communities hear one another. We live in a social contract in our democratic context that, at its most aspirational, ensures the common good. This social contract, which in my circumstance, is often captured in a faith understanding called the social gospel.

The social gospel, as a component of our shared democratic contract, depends on communication that is transparent, open to ensuring that voices are not marginalised, and accepts that those in political leadership represent everyone in their constituency, not just the people they like or who share their world view. This social contract does not deny that we have differing opinions and allegiances. It does, however, require those in political leadership to balance their subjective influences with an objective one that holds the collective well-being as a – if not the – primary value.

I am not certain in this time of pandemic that our political partners have fulfilled their part of our contract. There have been various political responses across the country. The range of reactions has served to highlight the different geographic and political divides in Canada. The pandemic has brought into focus – even exacerbated – a national tension between a libertarian world view and the common good.

Political leaders, with varying degrees of success, have wrestled with difficult choices to preference collective well-being at the expense of certain freedoms. The gauge as to whether political leaders have or have not fulfilled their part of the social democratic contract, I suggest, is reflected in whether we have endeavoured to care for the least, even at the expense of economic considerations and/or partisan relationships.

If my suggestion, above, is explored further, we must then consider two interwoven realities: pandemic and opioid death rates and the support for our universal health care system. Central to this weaving is the degree to which the people who work in clinics and hospitals across the country are supported.

From my faith context, being compassionate to the Other is always a sacred touchstone. This hallmark of care has strong parallels with those whom Canadians call first responders and the caring professions throughout the health sector. When I look to my Canadian political partners, too often I see health care systems overburdened, stressed, and on the precipice of collapse. I see ICU beds overflowing, death rates rising, and too often there are hollow platitudes. Sometimes there is even an explicit disregard for the well-being not only of the ill, but also the people whom we call clinicians, nurses, caregivers, and doctors.

Good

Leadership in this pandemic has brought to the fore conversations long idle in my country. One conversation, which has come into focus, is the constant pruning, whittling, and reduction of funding to the universal health care system, which forms part of the Canadian identity. Another one is about a universal basic income that invites us to consider that no one’s dignity is defended unless everyone’s is. These two conversations are hallmarks. They reflect deeper undercurrents of ways in which a social net might be woven. Such a weave possesses the resilience to ensure all Canadians have equitable opportunities to thrive. These are admittedly not easy conversations to explore if we are only talking at each other.

We have arrived at a place and time where we can begin to engage in further enriching the common good in Canada. But for this to happen, difficult conversations must begin. In order for such potential to become reality, it requires not only voices of the advocate, the cry of the prophet, but also the political leadership to bravely step into a world more compassionate, not polarised. They either help create such a world by their leadership or they contribute to the diminishment of what already is.

Political leadership means not pandering to the vocal few at the expense of the many and listening with humility to critique. How we foster such conversation in the social commons is incumbent on us all as we imagine a post-pandemic world. If we can tend this soil well, I am hopeful that all who respond to leadership’s call in our shared social contract can fashion a future where no one is left behind, others do not disappear, and no more voices are silenced.

#MayItBeSo