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Herbert Henry Farmer
Herbert Henry Farmer (November 27, 1892 – January 13, 1981) was a British preacher, theologian, and academic whose ministry within the Presbyterian Church of England blended pastoral preaching with scholarly insight across six decades. Born in Highbury, London, to William Charles Farmer, a journeyman cabinetmaker, and Mary Ann Buck, he was the youngest of four sons in a working-class family. His academic talent emerged early at Owen’s School in Islington, earning him a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honors in Moral Sciences in 1914. A pacifist during World War I, he worked on a farm near Cambridge instead of serving in the military, later pursuing theological studies at Westminster College, Cambridge, where he was ordained in 1919. Farmer’s preaching career began with pastorates at Stafford (1919–1922) and New Barnet (1922–1931), where his heartfelt yet intellectually rigorous sermons gained notice, calling hearers to an obedient relationship with a God of both judgment and grace. In 1931, he joined Hartford Seminary in the United States, serving until 1935, when he returned to England as Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge (1935–1960). He later held the Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (1949–1960), preaching and lecturing on divine-human encounters and Christian ethics, notably in his Gifford Lectures (1950–1951), published as Revelation and Religion (1954) and Reconciliation and Religion (1951). Author of works like The World and God (1935) and The Servant of the Word (1941), he shaped countless ministers through his teaching. Married with family details unrecorded, he passed away at age 88 in Birkenhead, England.
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Herbert Henry Farmer delves into the complexities of leadership, emphasizing the challenging dynamic between a leader and their followers. He highlights the delicate balance leaders must maintain - being ahead yet not too far ahead, speaking two languages simultaneously, and seeing truths that followers may not yet grasp. Farmer underscores the essential quality of a leader's ability to understand and empathize with their disciples' perspectives, even when those perspectives differ from their own, as crucial for effective leadership.
Two Worlds
"Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?...They say unto him, We are able" (Matt. 20:22). There is always a certain obliquity, a certain element of cross-purpose, a certain displacement of perspective and vision, between a leader and his followers. That is what makes leadership the most difficult and sometimes the most heart-breaking of tasks. To be a leader you must be ahead of others; yet not too far ahead. You must talk two languages at one and the same time, your own and theirs. You must be one of them and yet not one of them, in their world and yet out of it, sometimes entirely out of it. You must see things which they do not see and for the time being perhaps cannot see, things which, none the less, alone determine the path you want them to choose to follow. A leader has to work with his two eyes as it were out of focus, one apprehending the truth, the other the half-truth, or even the untruth, which holds the minds of his disciples in thrall. If he lacks the capacity for this, if he cannot put himself in his disciples' shoes and look out on life in some measure through their eyes, he lacks the first essential of leadership and is doomed to failure. And, of course, the more transcendentally great he is in character and vision and desire the bigger the distance between him and followers, the more he towers above his contemporaries--then the more urgently necessary, and the more impossibly difficult, will this essential quality of appreciating two worlds at once become.
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Herbert Henry Farmer (November 27, 1892 – January 13, 1981) was a British preacher, theologian, and academic whose ministry within the Presbyterian Church of England blended pastoral preaching with scholarly insight across six decades. Born in Highbury, London, to William Charles Farmer, a journeyman cabinetmaker, and Mary Ann Buck, he was the youngest of four sons in a working-class family. His academic talent emerged early at Owen’s School in Islington, earning him a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honors in Moral Sciences in 1914. A pacifist during World War I, he worked on a farm near Cambridge instead of serving in the military, later pursuing theological studies at Westminster College, Cambridge, where he was ordained in 1919. Farmer’s preaching career began with pastorates at Stafford (1919–1922) and New Barnet (1922–1931), where his heartfelt yet intellectually rigorous sermons gained notice, calling hearers to an obedient relationship with a God of both judgment and grace. In 1931, he joined Hartford Seminary in the United States, serving until 1935, when he returned to England as Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge (1935–1960). He later held the Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (1949–1960), preaching and lecturing on divine-human encounters and Christian ethics, notably in his Gifford Lectures (1950–1951), published as Revelation and Religion (1954) and Reconciliation and Religion (1951). Author of works like The World and God (1935) and The Servant of the Word (1941), he shaped countless ministers through his teaching. Married with family details unrecorded, he passed away at age 88 in Birkenhead, England.