Nya mbôrôcan be seen as deriving from difficulties of definition, and
the complexity and extreme rarity of the personality in question. This
explains the empirical limitations.
Because such a personality is rare and because the definition of the
Nya mbôrôis so broad and diverse, people will experience only cer-
tain aspects of the person and will therefore have a partial or distant
view of him : experiences of this personality are often contradictory,
depending on whether the contact is close to or from a distance. So it
is difficult to find unanimity on the subject of the Nya mbôrô. How-
ever, when such a person does exist in a community, he dominates by
his natural authority and his legitimacy is seldom called in question.
In the last analysis, the Nya mbôrôis a human being with all his
capabilities and limitations. He is a rare species which has existed in
the past and still does exist, for the history of our families and villages
records a number of figures who have been outstanding in their time
and place. In our reflection we have sought to theologise the concept,
assuming that the Nya mbôrôis basically a product of God himself.
His formation continues in the training school of the family, popular
wisdom, educational institutions and religious confessions. But
despite this basic hypothesis about the concept and the life of the Nya
mbôrô, the latter remains a creature exposed to the fall and subject to
failure : this is what makes him human. Some propositions of Christian
ethics may help to overcome these human limitations of the Nya
mbôrô.
- Implications for Christian Ethics
a) Leadership from a Christian Perspective
The principle or criterion of responsibility may be understood in
terms of Christian ethics as the duty of each individual to conduct his
or her life in a way that takes into account the wellbeing and life pos-
sibilities of others.^5 The notion of responsibility here may be seen as
summarising the reality of Christian ethics applied in the life of soci-
ety.^6 Professor Christoph Stückelberger, a Swiss theologian and ethi-
cist, links the concept of responsibility to that of power (Macht – Ver-
antwortung)^7 showing the correlation between these two values. In
his view, responsibility should correspond to the power an individual
or an institution effectively has. Likewise, if a person or a group of
people has responsibilities, then that person or group should also have
the power necessary to assume the corresponding responsibilities.
Here responsibility is expressed before God and before the commu-
nity served by the individual (or the group), the people who are
affected by the action in question. Thus, from the Christian point of
40 Responsible Leadership : Global Perspectives