Exercising Power and Influence was the topic, as Gordon College president D. Michael Lindsay spoke at Upper House to a group of about eighty influencers. The luncheon talk was co-sponsored by Upper House and Made to Flourish, a local pastor’s network.
Lindsay, who earned his PhD in Sociology, has extensively researched leadership and written two popular books reporting on his research. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, came out in 2007, and View From the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape the World, was published in 2014. The latter book contained results of one of the largest studies of leadership ever conducted, including interviews with 550 top leaders.
Lindsay discovered that faith makes a difference in leadership. But his lament over evangelicals loss of moral leadership in our culture was one of the top takeaways from the talk.
One of the three key points Lindsay made was that good leaders understand the importance of symbolic leadership. Good leaders, like Steve Jobs of Apple and Kevin Plank of Under Armour, embody the values of their company.
“I don’t think the Christian community understands how much symbols matter,” Lindsay said. Christians who get caught up in the current political struggles risk wasting their witness. “The most potent form of Christian witness is sacrifice.”
Lindsay told the story of a Christian airline executive whose brilliant idea earned his company huge profits. Instead of taking the million dollar bonus he was due at the end of the year, he figured out a way to funnel it to World Vision to benefit the poor instead. And he convinced many of his fellow executive vice presidents to do the same with the bonus they were due to receive from his brilliant idea.
He also told how Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, decided to give up his coveted indoor parking space to his elderly secretary. “These small but significant gestures become part of the way we embody the Gospel,” he said.
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was another leader that Lindsay studied. An experimental cancer treatment had given her mother 15 additional years of life. When the Bush cabinet was debating what became known as PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa, there didn’t seem to be a lot of support for it.
Rice was the last to speak and she described how much she personally benefitted from her mother’s support through those additional 15 years of experimental treatments. “She told her story and changed the history of a continent,” Lindsay said. As of 2018, PEPFAR claims to have saved more than 16 million lives.
As a college president, Lindsay spends a lot of time with young people. He said he was impressed with the spiritual maturity of many of the students he’s talked with, and their commitment to justice. He believes their concerns about hypocrisy in the church need to be taken seriously.
“Institutions are shaped by the presence of Christians,” Lindsay said, referring to businesses and organizations. But he could also have been talking about the U.S. “We need to have a salt and light presence.”