[Book Review] Dedication & Leadership by Douglas Hyde

Rev. Michael Langer

Perhaps the most well worn book on my shelf is my second copy of Douglas Hyde's Dedication and Leadership. Several decades ago, the publishers decided it made economic sense to truncate the original title, Dedication and Leadership: Lessons from the Communists. The first edition of the book was published in the United States in 1966. Since then it has been reprinted over a dozen times.

As the original title implies, Douglas Hyde was a senior communist leader in England in the 1940's. He served in the prestigious role as news editor of the London Daily Worker, the communist party newspaper of Great Britain. Hyde converted to Christianity in 1948, left his post in the communist party, and joined the Catholic Church. The story of his conversion is detailed in Hyde's earlier work, I Believed.

I was introduced to Douglas Hyde in 2006, soon after I was approved as a church planter during my final year of seminary. At the time I was 40 years old, had four young children, and 15 years of experience in sales management and marketing. With my newly minted Master of Divinity degree, the seal of approval of the denomination's church planting assessment board, and a brief apprenticeship as Assistant Pastor at a St. Louis church, I returned to my hometown of Iowa City, Iowa to scratch-plant a church in the midst of an economic and natural disaster.

A scratch-plant is another way of saying, no one knows you are coming, no one asked for you to come, and you will have to gather all the people yourself. Over time, this will morph into imparting a mission and vision for the new church, and then training leaders to carry that mission and vision forward. Dedication and Leadership was not only educational, it was inspirational.

Within the pages, Hyde lays out the process of moving an individual from belonging to believing, and from lukewarm participation to fully-committed participation in mission. Early on, Hyde makes it clear that he is confused and increasingly disillusioned by the general state of apathy within the church in England, especially given that their message is so far superior to that of the Marxists.

“The majority of Communists are ‘first generation’. This means that others, frequently Christians and Christian missionaries, had them in their hands long before they went to the Communist Party. One can, and must for honesty’s sake, be more specific: often these people are identical with those who are available to Christians to instruct and use in the sense that a disturbingly high proportion of them, particularly those who form the hard core of the Communist Party, were once Catholics. In other words the Communists train and use successfully people with whom Christians had failed.”

Hyde's frustration is matched by his passion for correcting the issue. He understands the importance of what we might call whole-life discipleship, albeit for a tragically flawed ideology and worldview.

“Older Christians, believing that you cannot build perfect worlds and perfect societies from fallen men, too often take up what is at best a superciliously tolerant approach to youthful idealism—when they do not ignore it altogether. The Communists take it and use it. Communism becomes the dominant thing in the life of the Communist. It is something to which he gives himself completely. Quite obviously it meets a need, fills a vacuum at the time when he is first attracted to it. More significant is that it normally continues to be the dominant force in the life of the Communist for as long as he remains in the movement. The Communists’ appeal to idealism is direct and audacious. They say that if you make mean little demands upon people, you will get a mean little response which is all you deserve, but, if you make big demands on them, you will get an heroic response. They prove in practice that this is so, over and over again. They work on the assumption that if you call for big sacrifices people will respond to this and, moreover, the relatively smaller sacrifices will come quite naturally.

What he unpacks in the rest of the book is the importance of whole-life discipleship for anyone and everyone showing an interest in Christianity. Drawing on his experience as a communist party leader, he unfolds perspective and technique intended to bolster the message of the leaders within the church.

In a way, the author seems to be channeling his contemporary, C.S. Lewis, who famously wrote, "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

He relates the story of the years he invested in a man named Jim, developing a young, unattractive, and profoundly stuttering candidate for communist service. Rather than pushing this excited, but flawed, new convert off in some corner of the office where he would not be seen or heard, Hyde sends him out, day after day, to hand out tracts to passers-by on the streets of London. Finally, after many days of stutteringly proclaiming the "good word" Jim asks, "What is so great about Communism anyway? I am getting asked questions I do not know the answer to and I want to do better." This, Hyde says, was the declaration of dedication he was waiting for. Eventually, Jim is transformed into a clear-speaking party leader who is, in turn, training others in the ways of Communism so that they can change the world.

Hyde, however, is focused not so much on devotion to God but on the mission of God as he understands it. This, in my opinion, is where the reader must use caution in applying the Yoda-like guidance that Hyde offers. Over and again, Hyde imports Marx's "change the world paradigm" as his goal.

“If he has grown up in Christian circles he will know that Christianity, like Communism, demands the whole man and that Christians were intended, and are expected, to change the world. That they, too, should be active; that membership of a church is not like membership of a club. That in theory, at least, the Christian should be relating his Christianity to his whole life and to the world about him, all the time, everywhere. Yet in practice, although Christianity has taught him that total dedication is something to be admired and something to which one should aspire in one’s own life, a Communist may be the first totally dedicated person he has met. Or, if that is putting it too harshly, the Communist may be the first dedicated person he has met who is not wrapped up in his own salvation but is devoting himself to the transformation of society and to changing the world.”

As a young church planter, Dedication and Leadership was a master class on developing leaders from amongst the crowds without seeking the best and brightest. The best of Hyde reads like a training manual from David at the cave at Addulam.

In 1 Samuel 22:1-2 David is on the run from Saul, he is alone, tired and hungry. He is also vastly outnumbered. What he needs is an army of elite fighters that can help him defeat Saul and his army. That is not what the Lord sends him.

"David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men."

What David got, instead, was a bunch of Jims. But under David's leadership those men became David's mighty men.

Here is where the reader must use discretion in applying Hyde's instruction. Despite articulating the importance of whole-life discipleship, and offering a extremely helpful paradigm in which to do so, Hyde's focus on changing the world betrays his own incomplete discipleship. For all his dedication and leadership, Hyde did not understand two important aspects of Christianity: grace and purpose.

What Hyde saw in Christianity was largely a works-driven affair. Not the faith produces works that James talks about, but the kind of works that becomes overly burdensome. Further, Hyde fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of Christians. It is not "to change the world" but to "participate in Christ's mission of making all things new." As a result, Hyde would become increasingly disillusioned with the ability of Christianity to take back England for God, and by the time I Believed was in need of a second edition, Hyde refused, because he no longer believed in the Christian faith as he had originally understood it.

The lessons of Dedication and Leadership are many, and it is rightly commended as a lens through which to view the importance of whole-life discipleship that leads to intentional participation in Christ's mission of making all things new. However, it also shows the perils of believing that we must use Christianity to Make America Great Again or Build Back Better.

In the final chapter of Acts, the Apostle Paul finds himself under house arrest in Rome, where he will remain for another two years. His appeals to the Jewish leaders ended with most of them walking away. Yet, the book of Acts, ends with these verses,

Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.” He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. (Acts 28:28,30-31)

Rev. Michael Langer is President of Faithful Presence.