Henri Nouwen on Leadership

While at my daughters house I picked up this little book, In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen and read it one morning. He gives insight into what he learned from his move from teaching at Harvard to the living with the mentally handicapped at L’Arch community in Toronto.

“These broken, wonded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things – and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments. I’m telling you all this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.” p. 17