One of my readers posted this video on Facebook. It’s a fun example of some great leadership principles.
Friday Fun: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy
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Theology: no answer but Jesus
What are the implications of the fact that God sent Jesus into the world to redeem us? First, it speaks to our worth. The God who created us in his image felt that we were worth redeeming. He died for our sins, instead of us, to reconcile us to God and to each other. None of us will ever understand that sacrifice by a holy God. So, we are valuable. Remember that as we consider this next part.
Second, according to James Plueddemann, because we are all broken and sinful, “all the problems in the world are directly or indirectly caused by sin.” Poverty, war, greed, injustice, illness and tragedies of every kind stem from a broken creation spoiled by sin. Therefore, government or business solutions are like applying a topical cream to treat cancer.
Jesus is the only solution to the sin problem… so the most competent leader in the world cannot solve any major problem without the gospel of Jesus.
The gospel alone — God rescuing us from our brokenness — is the answer for the deepest needs of humans and creation as a whole.
Third, Plueddemann adds, “the goal of leadership is to point people to Jesus.” Rather than work independently, we realize we are branches on a vine, and we can do nothing without him (John 15). Rather than draw attention to ourselves, we realize we are nothing without him. Our goal is to co-lead with him, if you will, pointing to him as the solution and primary source of any gifts and ability we have or success we enjoy.
Fourth, leaders have a model for their own leadership style. Jesus is the ideal leader who modeled servant leadership, an “astounding and universally countercultural” concept. Mark 10:45 lays out the standard for our leadership practice:
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.
So, a failure to understand what Jesus did for us leads to the misunderstanding that we are something on our own and down the ugly road of pride. This sure isn’t a feel-good post. I feel really small. Thank God that the gospel doesn’t end with how bad we are. It’s worth reading the first paragraph again.
A theology of leadership
The best book I’ve read recently on leadership is Leading Across Cultures, by James Plueddemann, former executive director of SIM International. The book is his attempt to cut through cultural variations of leadership and get down to the core of what leadership is before building back out to find culturally-appropriate expressions of leadership. I’ve tried to do this a little by digging into what made me a leader, following Dr. Robert Clinton’s theory in The Making of a Leader. I’ve also tried to develop and articulate my personal philosophy of leadership, as a number of authors have urged. I’ve taught a session on my philosophy of leading in your strengths, leading in your weakness and leading in your context. (I should blog on those for you sometime.) But Plueddemann went deeper: he challenged me to consider my leadership theology.
As a church elder, I’ve had to spend some time trying to figure out theology. I’d never really been interested in theological discussions, thinking them a bit of a waste of time. Why not spend your time applying it instead of arguing it? But it has been helpful for me to dig into what I really believe about God so that I can then realize the implications. That’s what Plueddemann says: your beliefs about God will drive your leadership practices.
Let me provide an example. If we believe that human beings are created in the image of God and will live forever, what are the implications? If we truly believe that, therefore
the primary goal of leadership is to facilitate the development of people so they become all God created them to be. The atheistic philosophy contends that people are expendable for the sake of the government. Christian theology argues that governments come and go, but people live forever. People are more important than institutions, including the organizations we lead.
I’d never really considered that logic. I obviously believe in developing leaders, but I’d never considered why before. Of course, now that I have this foundation, it means that I have probably not gone far enough in my practice. Plueddemann points out one clear application to my task-oriented tendencies:
Effective leaders don’t use people to accomplish the job; instead they use the job to develop people.
It’s worth the time to focus for a couple of posts on some other theological beliefs and how they might apply to leadership. Plueddemann gives the why very succinctly:
The purpose and the worldview of leadership are intertwined. A bad theology of leadership will inevitably result in bad leaders. Leadership grounded in God’s glory and driven by a scriptural worldview is the hope of the global church.
Reading update
Books I’ve read this quarter:
- In the Name of Jesus, by Henri Nouwen
- Leading Across Cultures: Effective Ministry and Mission in the Global Church, by James E. Plueddemann
- The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M.R. Covey
- Helping People Win at Work, by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge
- The Scarecrow, by Michael Connelly
- 9 Dragons, by Michael Connelly
I’m currently reading:
- Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint, by Christopher Witt
- Servant Empowered Leadership, by Don Page
- The Return of the King, by J.R. Tolkien (to my boys)
On my nightstand to read next:
- Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey
- First Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham
- Start with Why, by Simon Sinek
- Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath
- The Leadership Challenge, by Kouzes and Posner
- A Sense of Urgency, by John Kotter
- Crazy Love, by Francis Chan
Dr. Steve Sample always said you should read the classics. My pastor says it too: read books by dead authors. What classics would you suggest?
Mutuality
I’ve always seen servant leadership as one-way service. Not sure why, but I suspect it’s a western, individualistic interpretation of service. Perhaps that’s why I’ve had a vague uneasiness with the servant leadership concept. In In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen picks up on some of the shepherding themes I’ve been ruminating on in my studies over the last few weeks. He caught my attention with his thoughts on John 10, about Jesus laying down his life for the sheep.
Nouwen would say my interpretation of servanthood stems from my experience with the professional “civil servants.” For instance, I was watching my flight attendant a week ago as she served passengers, realizing that she was paid to meet the passengers’ needs. But it’s one-directional. It would be very strange for a passenger to try to serve her in return. You just wouldn’t see someone stand up and take her cart and ask her to sit down while they served her — though that would be fun to try sometime!
There is no dependence among nurses, doctors, police or firefighters. No mutuality. Follow Nouwen’s logic here: “Someone serves, someone else is being served, and be sure not to mix up the roles!” That leads to the conclusion that “mutuality can only be seen as weakness and a dangerous form of role confusion.” Therefore servanthood “quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others.”
How on earth can something as humble as servanthood break down into paternalism and authoritarianism? When it doesn’t allow reciprocation.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Nouwen says that we are to be a radically different kind of servant:
The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership being offered by the world. It is a true servant leadership — to use Robert Greenleaf’s term — in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her….
We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for…. The mystery is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love now the gateway for both the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
How difficult is it for you to become indebted? How difficult is it for you to receive love back again? How difficult is it for you to allow someone to serve you? These are questions that those who enter another culture face on a regular basis. Over and over again, I hear people who return from mission trips say how they thought they were going to bless the people “over there” and they ended up being blessed far more themselves. There’s real power in the “servant” allowing one who has little to give them whatever they do have to offer. To deny that is to begin to slide toward an unhealthy view of oneself.
How much do you open up about your brokenness to those you serve/lead and let them minister to you? Servant leadership is about mutuality.
Suspect your ability to handle power
As I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings to my boys, a series of moments stick in my mind: the times that Frodo seeks someone to give the ring to. Surely Aragorn or Gandalf or the Lady of Lothlorien would use the power benevolently to combat the evil of Sauron! Each one contemplates briefly the possibility of harnessing such amazing power and concludes that they wouldn’t be any less ruthless and horrific than previous owners. They therefore studiously avoid touching or looking at it, some even taking great satisfaction that they passed the test.
Last week at a leadership development event, we read together Henri Nouwen’s message, In the Name of Jesus. Nouwen is a Harvard man of great earthly success who ended up as a priest working among mentally handicapped people at the Daybreak community near Toronto. He cautions against the rationalization many Christians go through regarding power: that as long as it’s used to serve God and other human beings, it’s a good thing. He points out the irony that, throughout Church history, followers of the one who emptied himself of power have used power for crusades, inquisitions, enslavement, opulence and manipulation of all kinds and forms. Then he cuts to the point.
What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistable? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
Wow. Whether you follow Nouwen’s logic and conclude that love is the opposite of power, his words sure slice deep. He’s right: it is easier to control than to love, and yet the latter is clearly God’s command for anyone, but in particular leaders. Nouwen spoke from a long personal journey into the messy world of loving those that our culture overlooks. Control and ownership are wrong methodologies arising from wrong motivations from a wronged heart. Nouwen continues,
One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.
I remember when I worked in youth ministry that I lost count of the people who got into that field because of their own pain growing up. Few came from a healthy place and wanted others to share in that health; many more were on a personal journey to redemption and sought to help others avoid what they had experienced. But if you haven’t experienced real healing, how do you avoid temptations like power? I think Dan Allender has a lot of solutions in his book, Leading with a Limp. He suggests we confront our brokenness and allow God’s grace to redeem it. Failure and brokenness are not necessarily obstacles to leadership; they can be incredible motivators and a foundation for the right kind of servantly leadership. But those core needs must be addressed and the failures brought into the open.
Nouwen based much of his message on Peter’s example of being restored after abandoning and denying his friend and Rabbi Jesus. The lessons he learned on that beach in John 21 were to love deeply, receive love and give love to others. That was the basis for Peter’s leadership of the Church. It’s a lesson that many of his successors failed to get.
My boys were surprised when I told them I think of Lord of the Rings as a Christian story. I’m still teaching them the idea that a Christian story doesn’t mean that Jesus is a character, or that God is explicitly mentioned. Failure, redemption, fear, ambition, love, evil and desires are deeply woven into the story. And I think I can learn from the characters who suspected themselves and wouldn’t allow themselves to get near to raw, unbridled power.
Suspect yourself
Shepherds shouldn’t just be overseeing their flock to look for threats. They should be looking within. In Acts 20, Paul says to “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock… I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise… Therefore be on the alert.”
This is one of the more scary warnings in Scripture. After all, if we can’t trust ourselves, who can we trust? Am I really capable of becoming the biggest danger to my flock? If so, what should I be alert for? Here are a few questions for self evaluation:
First, what is my motivation for ministry and leadership? Jesus warned against “hired hands” who don’t care for the sheep like the Good Shepherd does. Seasonal workers who are disinclined to sacrifice too much for their flocks are a danger to the flock. Am I just doing a job, or am I fully vested?
Second, how am I using leadership for my own benefit? Ezekiel 34 offers a stark contrast between the self-serving leaders of Israel and the Good Shepherd. God warns these shepherds who have abandoned the flock, taken advantage of them for personal gain, and ignored or mistreated the weak. “I now consider these shepherds my enemies,” he says. There are perks for leadership roles. What is my attitude toward those “trappings”? And do I exist to serve the sheep and their Shepherd, or do they exist to serve me?
Third, what is my relationship with the Owner? In While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks, Timothy Laniak has a chapter dedicated to the issue of lack of trust between shepherds and owners, saying there’s a common belief among herd owners in the Middle East that shepherds will steal or eat their flock if given a chance. When you think about the bonding and loyalty that can develop when shepherd and sheep spend so much time together, betrayal would not be difficult.
When the guard becomes the enemy, the flock is in deep trouble.
The problem is that weariness, entitlement, selfishness and betrayal don’t just happen suddenly. They creep in over time. Laniak offers a couple of concrete examples. False teachers get their start when leaders let their moorings drift from God’s word and begin to allow popular trends or “original ideas” to supplement or replace orthodoxy. Or when leaders lose their nerve to speak against the things they know they need to.
Another foothold is fatique. When I’m too tired, I don’t even notice the roots of a problem. I know what to do when I face a trial. I know what to do when I see division and quarreling. But when I’m weary and right in the middle of it, I don’t recognize the trial or the disunity for what it is, and I react in the flesh.
Laniak nails the fact that no one is immune from an imperceptible shift. It has the ring of truth to it:
Becoming a wolf only takes a combination of skepticism and time.
So, what should leaders do to guard our hearts? Here are some of my personal solutions.
1. When I know what I need to do but don’t have the energy to do it, it’s time for me to move on.
This value is specifically set up to guard myself from internal drift. I got the idea from Andy Stanley at Catalyst a few years ago. It fits with one of my personal goals: to never grow old. As I’ve written before, I subscribe to Douglas MacArthur’s definition of youth: You are as young as your optimism and as old as your fears. When cynicism and weariness take over, it’s time for me to seek a new fountain of youth in a different role or different ministry area — something that will motivate me and purify my motives.
2. Give others permission to “call me” on something.
A few years ago I heard one of the authors of TrueFaced talk about the idea of accountability from a slightly different angle. He urged us to admit our weaknesses and then give permission to our followers, our team or even our kids to “call us” when they see us moving into that area of weakness, hypocrisy or sin. Because of power distance, they aren’t going to do it naturally; they have to be given permission. If we take the steps before something happens to admit we’re capable of becoming a wolf, then we’ll have some critical safeguards enabled if we start to drift.
3. Suspect myself first.
This guideline came from a marriage book I read recently, When Sinners Say I Do. It’s great advice for any interpersonal relationship, and it comes from Jesus’s urging to remove the huge chunk of wood from your own eye before trying to remove a speck from someone else’s. When I find fault with someone, I need to ask myself what my own responsibility is. There is often something I could rectify. But my tendency is to suspect others or my environment first. When I interact with the person by first owning my own fault, the encounter goes a lot better!
That’s really what Laniak is saying here: suspect yourself. “Who can accurately assess the urges prowling in the darkness of our own souls?” David is a prime example. During the time that kings go to war (external threats), he stayed home. And in beginning an affair with Bathsheba, he became the wolf inside the camp. His cry in Psalm 51 and 139 is for God to search him and root out any wicked way. That’s my prayer as well today.
Restoration
Because the LORD is my Shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the ‘waters of rest,’ he restores my soul.
In While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks, Timothy Laniak says the idea of “restoration” in Psalm 23:1 is about returning. David uses the same verb as Jeremiah used to predict Israel’s return from exile. Sure, restoration is about satisfaction, that feeling when your deepest needs are met. It’s about rest, solitude and regeneration. But it’s the idea of returning that sticks with me.
First, returning to a former state. It’s helpful when you’re in the midst of a crazy-busy period to have a marker you can refer to when life was manageable, your days filled with joy and you had a deep satisfaction. For me, the ultimate answer is a place I can never go back to. It’s a world of naive innocence in the first year of my marriage, before the pain of our first miscarriage, when all our relatives seemed healthy, when our friends’ marriages seemed solid and before the economy turned upside down. Life was simpler and the pace more comfortable. Optimism and hope were the prevalent words to describe the year I’m thinking of. I can remember having more time to celebrate, think and enjoy life.
You know how you’re going through life at a frenetic pace and suddenly a smell or a sound takes you back to a moment years in your past? Restoration for me is about catching “throwback” moments when I’m spending time with God in the morning, when I get a chance to jump in on a pickup game of soccer or volleyball or when I participate in the joy of my kids. Those moments are rare, but incredibly rejuvenating. Laniak takes it one step further. He says those moments are about worship.
Worship rises freely from the satisfied hearts of those whose needs are tended to.
Restoration might also be a “return” to something you’ve never experienced — to God’s ideal. As eternal beings, we will one day go to a place that finally satisfies that vague hunger that has plagued us our entire lives. That’s where we’ll finally feel at home… the place we were created for. We may not have ever experienced a great marriage, parents, family life or workplace. But one day we will return home.
So, what does this post have to do with leadership? As followers, we need to remember that our Shepherd is very much concerned about our anxiety, restlessness and frenzied activity. Those things may be part of life for a time, but those aren’t his intention for us. He desires to give us rest and satisfaction, tending to our deepest needs — physical, psychological, intellectual, relational and spiritual. Are we seeking to meet those needs in Christ? Dan Allender says that leaders are more prone to addictions than the average person. Before I lead others, I need to recognize my own neediness and find times to get back to that state where I felt rested and fulfilled.
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. (Psalm 62:5)
Second, as leaders and shepherds, we have a responsibility to mirror the Great Shepherd. How do we lead our staff to rest? Here are some questions from Laniak:
- How do we assess needs in our places of ministry?
- Do we really want to know the extent of the needs?
- What kinds of needs do we seek to meet? Do we only limit ourselves to tangible needs? Or only spiritual needs?
Here’s the question he floored me with: “Do you give your people a chance to rest?” If I’m so busy myself, what kind of inference am I making for my staff? Instead, how do I promote a rhythm of restoration and rejuvenation for myself and those I lead?
Good questions as we head towards the weekend. I hope yours includes a few moments of restoration and rejuvenation.
Shepherd and overseer
We know the Bible teaches servant leadership. Right? Ever since Robert Greenleaf gave the idea traction in the business and ministry lexicon — the idea obviously preceded him, though he gave it substance that caught on in our popular culture — it’s come to be synonymous with “biblical leadership.” My problem is that proponents refer to a limited list of scriptures to prove their point. I’m not arguing that it’s not a good leadership practice, I’m not arguing that it’s not a biblical model, and I’m not arguing that Jesus didn’t practice it. What I’m suggesting is that it’s a simplistic view of Jesus’ leadership style. It’s one of many styles that he used throughout his ministry.
This week in Peru, we’re spending time on the idea of a leader as a shepherd. It’s a powerful metaphor, and I had no idea how many scriptures actually make reference to shepherding. Many of them were easy connections for the reader that have been lost on later, more urban cultures. The observations below and in my next few posts come from While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks, by Timothy Laniak.
In contrast to my assumed beliefs, the idea of watching and overseeing comes from the profession of sheepherder. Overseer has come to mean foreman, the person up the chain who assures the success of a broad project. It also has been tied to the connotations of a bishop, a term that suggests to me a position-driven leadership role. But Laniak says the term comes from shepherds, who spend the majority of their time watching their flocks. What looks to the casual observer as lazy inactivity is rather continuous surveillance, active attention and constant concern.
Shepherds spend their time looking for threats, supplies, disease and anxiety. They gaze in order to inspect, count and intuit. Laniak uses words like perception, insight, instinct and vision to describe the full picture of “oversight.” Simply put, shepherds see what’s not always visible.
There are some great scriptures on the qualities of this role, including Psalm 121, 1 Peter 2:25 and the role of elders in 1 Timothy 3:2. Most of them clearly tie the principle of overseeing with shepherding. I don’t know why I never caught that before. I think I assumed the apostle was using contrasting metaphors when he referred to God as both Shepherd and Overseer of our souls.
So, what’s Laniak’s point? He asks a few questions that I find personally challenging.
- Are we carefully watching our flocks or have we made the assumption that they can take care of themselves?
- In whatever leadership role you’re in, how much time do you spend on “in the tent” activities versus looking after and over the people in your care?
- How good is your vision? Are you able to notice trends in morale, signs of stress, anxiety over change, and woundedness from abuse?
As we consider those we have responsibility for, are we doing the job of a shepherd, attentively watching and seeing what’s not visible?
What is our place?
What is the place of the white American leader? That’s one of the questions I’ve been chewing on for the last two years, and I’ve been bringing it forward to chew on more deliberately here in Peru.
One theory comes from my Dad. As the saying goes, he can’t carry a tune in a bucket. But that doesn’t stop him from singing. His guiding principle is to “Make a joyful noise.” So he sings, and he sings loudly. He models what he wishes every Christian in church would do: sing with gusto the praises of our Lord. If they don’t like his singing, they should sing louder and drown him out. In other words, Americans shouldn’t necessarily hold back just because the rest of the world is emerging in leadership.
I heard another viewpoint yesterday from a Latin friend of mine. The place of the American is not to step aside and give ministry over to the minorities or non-western church. That’s not what they want. To turn it over would be like a bad manager who delegates to the point of abandonment. Instead, the place of the American is to welcome the Latins to their rightful places in leadership, then stick around and lead together.
The problem with the first theory is that my poor Mom strains her vocal chords every week at church, trying to outsing my Dad. That theory is too much about competition. The second theory is about collaboration. That’s the goal of the Latin leaders here. They want to know that they’re equals in the task, that they won’t be discarded when Americans’ usefulness for them is past.
One of the best lines I heard an American say yesterday was that if Wycliffe were to pull out of Vision 2025, he had no doubt the vision would continue to begin translation work in every language in this generation. Organizations like those represented in the room would keep working at it with all their hearts. But the goal isn’t to replace ourselves. The goal is that all of us — and many that have not gotten the vision yet but will — work toward this future together.
the back row leader 