The tagline for the Shifting Waters Leadership Institute (SWLI) reads, “Private Excellence. Public Brilliance. Leadership from the Inside Out.” These lines emphasize the need to experience internal healing and transformation that overflow into external impact.

The theme of personal restoration finds a tangible illustration in the practice of kintsugi, a Japanese art form that churches, self-help practitioners, and even pop culture have embraced as a metaphor for finding beauty in brokenness. In the word’s etymology, kin means “gold,” and tsugi means “to join” or “to mend.” Instead of discarding a broken cup or plate, an artisan mends the fragments back together with a tree-sap lacquer and gold dust, highlighting the fractures while creating something even more valuable. 

It is indeed a beautiful illustration: Each of us is cracked and broken — through harm done to us and through our own limitations and mistakes — but through the blood of a tree, God is restoring us into something even more valuable than gold. It is well worth reflecting on this picture as we consider our own personal formation and how it influences our leadership. 

However, if we stop there, we miss the full picture of what God is doing — not only in our own lives but also in connection with other people. This truth finds an artistic parallel in a form of kintsugi called yobitsugi. As yobi means “to call,” this variation involves “calling to mending” or “calling together,” using the same techniques with lacquer and gold but with different pieces of pottery, from different vessels or even different cultures.

Here, then, is the rest of the metaphor, going beyond personal renewal to a more expansive vision for the church, the world, and God’s plan for the renewal of all things, not just us as individuals. It’s not that the first kintsugi metaphor is inaccurate or that our individual transformation isn’t part of God’s plan. But we were never meant to stop there.

What does this look like in leadership? As discussed in SWLI’s webinar, “The Unfinished People: Why We Cannot Lead Alone,” it means refusing to treat people as disposable, valued only for what they contribute to your story or your cause or organization. It also means refusing to treat people as objects to be served, improved, made better by your efforts. It means going beyond the question, “What can you do for me?” or even, “What can I do for you?” but instead asking, “What can we become together?” 

Living out the answer to that question isn’t always easy. There are times when being in community is challenging and uncomfortable. But just as our own transformation is an ongoing process, so too is the transformative commitment to be formed with others and not apart from them — and that is the “call together” of yobitsugi.