Singing the Songs of the Lord

In the time of the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people, the prophet Jeremiah could have commiserated with the problem-saturated story of a people who were in despair, far from home, and in captivity once again. Instead, he spoke the prophetic word:

Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.

Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.

Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the Lord, for upon its welfare depends your own.⁵

In essence, he was saying, "Don't cave in to your sense of despair and hopelessness." He reminded them of who they were outside of the problem and encouraged them to do what they knew how to do when they were not in exile: plant gardens, start families, and promote the well-being of the place where they dwelled. These actions were the start of a new story. Jeremiah was prophetically helping the people of Israel to "reauthor" their story in the midst of exile.

The Psalmist ponders, "How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?" (Psalms 137:4). As religious leaders, we, too, ponder how we can sing in the midst of turmoil. A narrative leader must dare to be as prophetic as Jeremiah. Even in the midst of trouble or uncertainty, the narrative leader must be able to help others stand outside the mesmerizing effects of the problem-saturated story. The narrative leader must be resilient and resourceful enough to resist internalizing the situation. Instead, by recognizing that the "problem is the problem," the conversation the leader can facilitate is one that studies with curiosity the dynamic effects of this problem on the health, capacities, and faithfulness of the congregation.

Shifting the relationship to the problem comes only when the congregation can examine these effects and deeply and resoundingly say, "No, we don't want to continue with these effects of the problem." Then a threshold to a new possibility for the congregation emerges. This new threshold arises when the leader is able to ask, "What would you like instead? Where would you like to be headed?" "What would be the first sign that we are moving in that new direction?"

A narrative leader uses questions to help point a congregation toward the possibilities and directions that are inherent in a situation but often obscured by our usual problem-saturated and internalizing approaches to the situation.

The cumulative effect of the steps outlined here allow for a conversation of possibilities to emerge in what would otherwise seem like a dead-end. Margaret Wheatley, in her book Turning to One Another, underlines the power of conversation and the role of leaders in creating the kinds of conversations that can promote deep change:

There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about. Ask, "What's possible?" not "What's wrong?" Keep asking… Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. ⁶

5. Jeremiah 29:5-7, New American Bible
6. Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning to One Another (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2002), 145.