What does it mean to lead when you cannot see the road in front of you? Leading without Eyes: How Faith Shapes Vision, Ethics, and Culture explores that tension at the heart of Christian leadership. While organizations prize clarity, strategy, and measurable outcomes, faith-driven leaders are called to move forward trusting what God has revealed rather than what they can verify. In a world that rewards sight and certainty, Spirit-empowered leadership begins in surrender, choosing to walk by faith, allowing God to shape vision, define ethics, and form culture from realities that are unseen but deeply true.
Imagine that you were asked to lead without eyes. Completely blind, you had to navigate the darkness and lead others down the correct path. Imagine the pressure. Imagine the risk. For Christian leadership, in many ways, this imaginary scenario describes reality.
Organizations do well to operate with a clear and concise vision, defined ethics, and maintain a positive culture. Faith-driven leadership must do this blind.
Blind Faith
In many ways, blind faith is simply faith. Defined, faith is, “is the trustful human response to God’s self-revelation via His words and His actions.”1 This definition conspicuously omits any mention of our ability to see. Faith depends upon God’s ability to reveal and our decision to respond in belief. Thus, the blindness that God invites Christian leadership to walk in involves a choice to walk without seeing, relying on that which God reveals.
The reality we experience in our daily lives does not allow access to the spiritual world or the realm of the future.2 Faith provides the assurance of these unseen realities.3 Spirit-empowered leaders lead without eyes because they lead by faith.
Seeing the Road Ahead without Eyes
Vision statements adorn the walls of organizations across America. They sit in human resource books, and they hide in the hearts of leaders. According to Peter Senge, “genuine vision” occurs when the personal vision of a leader translates to a shared vision of an organization.4 This shared vision galvanizes the organization forward toward a common picture of that which the group wishes to create.5
The faith-driven leader does not start with personal vision, but with vision from God. As Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians 13:12, followers of Jesus only see in part the complete vision of what God holds for His people.6 Therefore, the picture of the road ahead for the faith-driven leader sources from the revelation of God and invites the followers of the leader to engage in following God toward that vision.
In this style of leadership, the leader must lead with integrity, setting aside their own desire for the future in favor of the desires of God for his people. The faith-driven leader must see the road ahead without eyes. This leader must see the road ahead by faith.
Ethics without Eyes
Also known as moral philosophy, ethics is the discipline of the categorization of that which is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong.7 To lead with integrity, the Spirit-empowered leader must not just choose that which is morally good and morally right, nor must they only lead other do so. The Spirit-empowered leader must define that which is morally good and morally right in the way that God does.
Jesus walked as the word of God made flesh. Unexpectedly perhaps, Jesus did not walk merely by a list of rules, but he acted only in ways that he saw his Father act. The entirety of the ethics of Jesus summed up in this statement: “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’”8
Rather than make moral choices based on a set of rules, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter, making moral choices based upon the Rule Giver. The emphasis of the words of Jesus in John 5:19 rested not on what he could and could not do but upon whom he relied.9 Jesus invites Spirit-empowered leaders to live and lead by seeing what God does and imitating him.
How does a leader imitate God in this way? The Spirit-empowered leader looks to Jesus without eyes because those who have seen Jesus have seen the Father.10 We walk with Jesus by faith and not by sight, though we cannot see him with our human eyes, we know that our faith is real because Christ is real. We see him without eyes, so we see the Father.
Because of this dynamic, we can base our moral ethics on the biblical value modeled by Christ: reliance upon God. Faith-driven leaders do not ask about God, “What would Jesus do?” but they ask the question to God, “What would you have me do?”
Unseen Cultures
Culture is, “a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.”11 The phrase, “generally without thinking about them” implies that culture, unattended to, can serve as the unseen force that shapes the future of communities. In the fight toward success, the unseen force called culture will, if covertly opposed to the vision and mission, overcome strategy, talent, and passion every time.12
Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal compile a list of cultural symbols. These symbols include:
- Myth (the story behind the story of an organization that provides cohesion and togetherness). These narratives often originate in the birth of the organization and involve some action of the founder(s). 13
- Values (intangible characterizations of what the organization aspires to embody). The organization will live our their values even if they differ from what leadership wrote on the wall or in a human resource handbook. 14
- Vision (provides a picture of the future that aligns with the core creeds of the organization). Vision highlights possibilities within the constraints of values and myth.15
- Heroes and Heroines (reliable and visible leaders that deliver results). Not always at the top of organizations, heroes and heroines provide examples of ideal characteristics that align with the organizational culture that members aspire to. 16
- Stories and Fairy Tales (transfer information, morals, myths, and keep the exploits of heroes and heroines alive). Stories help members understand the soul of the organization and each other. 17
- Ritual (connects the individual or group to something intangible that words cannot capture). Regularly practiced, rituals help newcomers step into community and helps members experience belonging.18
- Ceremony (grander and less frequent than rituals). Periodically practiced with pomp and circumstance, ceremonies socialize, steady, reassure, and convey messages to interested parties outside of the organization.19
- Metaphor (make complicated issues into understandable images). Metaphors influence the actions and attitudes of members of the community. 20
- Humor and play (either a state of mind or an activity separate from work). When viewed as a state of, creativity and experimentation within the workplace flourishes. 21
Faith driven leaders must look at these cultural symbols as metrics to measure the gap between the invisible culture of the organization and the invisible culture of the Kingdom of Heaven. Do the myths, values, visions, heroes and heroines, stories, rituals, ceremonies, metaphors, and humor of the organization align to those of the Kingdom?
If not, the leader must lead in faith. The Spirit-empowered leader must lead without eyes, responding to the actions and words of God.
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