For the past several years, a certain kind of conversation has been common for me with church leaders. Here’s a sample:

In the recent past, I was solely attentive to the slow but steady encroachment of restrictions from some elements of the ideological left. Now, I fear, we must guard against the possibility of tyranny emerging from segments of the political right. What saddens me the most is the degree to which numerous saints aid and abet such developments out of fear of the former.

When church leaders assume that they can only scan for attacks in one direction, they leave Christians vulnerable to different dangers. What the church needs, then, is what Trevin Wax calls multi-directional leadership—leaders who demonstrate faithful versatility. And that’s what Wax commends in his new book, The Multi-Directional Leader: Responding Wisely to Challenges from Every Side (The Gospel Coalition). Wax applies multi-directional leadership to the most contentious issues facing churches right now, including race and politics and gender.

You often hear about slippery slopes, presuming that they always slant downward from right to left. But “troubling trajectories can go in more than one direction,” Wax explained to me in this week’s episode of Gospelbound.

This is the greatest challenge for Christian leaders in our time. But unity and truth can still triumph in our divided age.