Leadership Reflections

As a ministry leader, your spiritual life is inextricably linked to the health of the ministry you lead.  We see this demonstrated over and over again in both Testaments, often in terms of the shepherd-leader metaphor.  For example, the negative consequences are outlined in Jeremiah:

• 10:21 “the shepherds have become stupid, …therefore…”,
• 12:10 “many shepherds have ruined My vineyard”; and
• 50:6 “their shepherds have led them astray.”

There really are public consequences for what a leader may regard as their private, personal spirituality! 

The Bible sets a very high standard for the spiritual disciplines of a ministry leader.  Now I know that the spiritual lives of leaders and their team members really should be no different because we are all called to spiritual maturity, but there is no getting around the fact that the spiritual life of a leader has the potential for greater good or evil than an individual team member’s because:

• a leader shapes the culture of an entire ministry and has the greatest influence over its direction; and
• a leader is seen as the primary representative of a ministry by the public, and their perception of the leader greatly affects their perception of the ministry.

Just think about the churches that have withered after a pastor’s moral failure, or the good and faithful people who lost their jobs when agency leaders lost their integrity and the ministry lost donor support.

As Joshua stepped into leadership, the Lord made the key to successful leadership very clear to him.  Joshua was to carefully follow all God’s law, turning “not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go” (Jos 1:7).  

In the next verse, the Lord tells Joshua the spiritual practices that will equip him to follow the law:

“This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success” (v.8).

So important and foundational is God’s law (or God’s ways), that Deuteronomy 17:18-20 contains this command for those who would lead his people:

“When he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests.  It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.”

I think it is significant that when the people of Israel affirmed their acceptance of Joshua’s leadership, they replied “Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you; only may the Lord your God be with you, as he was with Moses!” (Jos 1:17).  One commentator says that the last part of this verse is more a condition of their allegiance than a prayer.  It was as if they said, “We will follow your leading so long as there is evidence that you are being led by God!”  What legitimates a person as a Christian leader is that the person is following God’s leadership.  The Israelites made the important point that God is the ultimate leader, not the human being who is his earthly representative. 

The landscape of Christian leadership over the millennia has been littered with people who wanted to lead but who did not follow God.  The result was lasting damage to the credibility of the church and a rejection of Christianity by people who need Christ.  Much has been done in the name of Christ that had nothing to do with Christ.  Lord  Acton said “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Some Christian leaders have claimed to lead by divine right, interpreting that as an unconditional appointment to leadership, and believe they can then do whatever they want without oversight by any human (now that’s absolute power!).  The people of Israel apparently put a check on Joshua’s divine appointment to leadership that I think is quite healthy.  I believe God has placed me in my leadership role,* so yes, there was a divine appointment.  But that divine appointment still leaves me subject to the checks and balances provided by the Christian community, who have the right to test if my ministry leadership is godly (1 Thess 5:21, 1 John 4:1).  Saul was divinely appointed as king of Israel, but he lost his right to lead as he usurped the spiritual authority that properly belonged to the prophet-priest Samuel.  Saul’s personal spirituality eventually negated his call to leadership.

Many leaders start out in a close relationship with God and are Spirit-led, but some will start to think they are more responsible for their leadership success than God is.  God warned the Israelites about this attitude when he said in Deuteronomy 18:17-18, “You may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’  But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth.”   A good start does not guarantee a good end.  Remember what got you started, and stay with it.  I followed God to get into my leadership role and my success as a ministry leader will be no better than my success in continuing to follow God.  My personal spiritual life is incredibly important to the ministry I lead. 

So, to provide good Christian leadership:

• The Bible says you need to know God’s law inside and out.  God’s law is God’s direction as to how to live a godly life.  It is the outward manifestation of God’s character.  If you claim to be God’s representative to lead your ministry, you’d better know how God would think about all the decisions you’ll have to make.  The biblical command is to study Scripture and meditate on it.  I suggest that you get a solid grounding in the meta-narrative of Scripture (the big picture) as these grand scriptural themes provide the best understanding of who God is and how he works.  Word studies, book studies and thematic studies can follow and show you how to apply what you have learned, but first you really need to understand the overarching history of God’s activity in our world, his goals, and his character.
• If you want to be led by God, you must give God room in your life to speak to you.  Prayer is a two-way conversation, so be quiet for extended periods of time and listen.
• Your first consideration should always be the state of your current relationship with God, not the state of your ministry.  Leadership starts with a confession to God of your own sins, an acknowledgement of your own shortcomings, and an admission that you cannot lead God’s people without experiencing God’s leadership yourself.  I’ll write sometime later about how you can structure a personal leadership retreat that walks you through this examination.
• What evidence should you look for that God supports your continued leadership?  That’s tricky.  If it was just a matter of identifiable results, then Jeremiah was a dismal failure.  Yet God approved of his prophetic ministry even though it had no fruit.  Results are important, but more important is how those results were achieved.  I think most importantly the evidence of God’s leadership in your life is agreement by those whom God has put in oversight (your board, congregation or whoever has the right to fire you) that your leadership is authentically Christian and pleasing to the Lord.  In the end, that is the real test of Christian leadership.

* I also believe that every person working for a Christian ministry has been divinely called.  Both leader and staff are called by God, but given different responsibilities.  This assumes there is a good discernment process in place to authenticate a call to ministry.

In a previous post I discussed what sabbaticals are about, and wondered what I should do for mine.  Now I can tell you my plans.

In that post, I wrote:

A sabbatical is a time to get away from regular work for a period of personal and professional development in order to improve my value to my employer.  It should refresh my vision for my personal mission and my employer’s organizational mission and equip me in some way to be a better leader.

I found my board very helpful in designing the sabbatical.  A really practical suggestion was to take time at the beginning and end to transition into and out of my time away from work.  So I’ve decided to start with a short time at home followed by a spiritual retreat at The Sabbath House.  At the end, I will do the same thing in reverse order.  This is the personal development time. 

For the professional development part I was in a bit of a quandry.  I’ve already taken courses and earned my doctorate, so what to do?  Larry Nelson, a CCCC board member and a font of endless creative ideas, came to the rescue with some excellent questions that surfaced five possible research topics.  I recall the questions were something like, regarding Christian ministries:

• What are you really passionate about?
• What are you curious about?
• What are you concerned about?
• What upsets you?

He suggested that my professional development should involve applying my research skills to some big topics that are beyond what my work schedule would normally allow me to do.  He also asked when I was last off the continent.  Aside from a few business meetings where you don’t see much more than the hotel, I was last overseas in 1974.  CCCC members have missions around the world, so I need to be there with them and get a firsthand glimpse of the complexities of overseas work.  Putting this all together, two research projects emerged:

1. To research the effects that different tax systems have on Christian charities, their donors and support organizations such as CCCC.  A whole list of research questions will provide benefits to CCCC and our members.  Stay tuned for some interesting CCCC Bulletin articles and blog posts!
2. To explore the complexities of operating international projects from the perspective of administrators in the receiving countries.  There will be lots of new CCCC material to help our members and their overseas project administrators.  I’ll be visiting ministries in Thailand, India, Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda.

Finally, it was suggested that there should be some down time that is purely personal.  I finish the research part in London, so I will take two weeks in Great Britain and France to do some things I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  I will attend a service at the Luton parish church in England where my paternal grandfather sang as a choir boy more than 100 years ago.  I also will attend the Abbey church in Paisley, Scotland where my maternal great-great-great-great-grandfather was baptized in 1786.  He emigrated to Canada almost 200 years ago.  It will be fun to look around the areas that my ancestors came from.  Last, I will go to Vimy Ridge and visit the Canadian monument.  Every time I give my Vimy Ridge speech, someone asks if I’ve been there.  I want to be able to say “Yes!”

So those are my plans.  I’m keenly excited!  The sabbatical will be next spring, but there is lots of prep work before then to be ready to use my overseas time as productively as possible.  A collateral benefit of this sabbatical will be the chance to build connections with charity experts in other countries.  I have been richly blessed by a wonderful, visionary board that encourages me to live in the future so that I can better lead CCCC in the present.  And I am grateful for a capable staff that gives me the freedom to have a sabbatical knowing the great work of CCCC does not depend solely on me!

I’m still very interested in what others do for a sabbatical, so please contribute a comment about what you have already done or are planning to do.

I think a lot about how a policy board really adds value to an organization.  For all the work it takes to maintain a board, you sure want some value from it.  I want my board members to treasure their time on our board and to feel they have truly made a significant contribution to the success of our ministry.

One of the greatest services that a board can provide to its organization is to ask the right questions.  I am going to list some really great questions I want to ask my board at its next meeting.  I think you’ll want to ask them too.  But first, here’s why these are important questions.

A year ago, I blogged about the question, “Do you know what you don’t know?”  I gave some suggestions about how to protect yourself from your own blind spots.  What I didn’t suggest was to ask your board what your blind spots are, and I think you should.  If you have a good board, then you have a group of skilled and experienced people who probably have a range of perspectives through which to assess a situation.  Your staff may or may not be willing to challenge your perspective (I hope they would so that we end up with the best ideas!), but your board has no such reluctance.  You report to them.

In fact, in a recent post I quoted Richard Chait, who said that “The board leads largely by questions and not by answers….The board can constructively challenge the executive and senior staff to articulate the plan clearly, explain their reasoning persuasively, and confront squarely the plan’s feasibility, including its downside and its blind spots.”

Blind spots can develop if a team shares too much in common (experience, temperament, worldview, assumptions, etc.). They can also develop when one party places too much trust in another party, and so accepts their views without critical reflection. Too much emphasis on staying true to a way of operating, to a vision or to a strategy that arose during the founding of a team can also easily create blindspots. The lack of awareness that results can be quite dangerous for the team’s ministry.

So, here are my questions for my board:

• Reflecting on what you have observed of CCCC’s management during your term on the board, can you think of anything that we might be ‘blind’ to?
• Do you hold any views or assumptions that are contrary to what we are acting upon?
• Is there any evidence of ‘groupthink’ between the board and staff?
• Reflecting on your time as a CCCC director, do you believe the board has maintained its independence from management and been able to make its own fully-informed decisions?
• Are there topics that our board has not addressed that you would have expected it to?
  • What would you like the board to discuss that it hasn’t already addressed?
• Have we had enough contrarian views and credible alternatives provided to the board that you feel you have truly had the full range of perspectives as input to board discussions?

Perhaps you have some favourite questions you like to ask your board.  Could you share them?

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel…The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel…Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.      Proverbs 1:5, 12:15, 22

While serving as president of the University of Cincinnati, leadership guru Warren Bennis was teaching a course at Harvard’s School of Education when someone asked him, “Do you love being President of the University of Cincinnati?”  After an uncomfortable silence, Warren replied, “I don’t know.”  He wrote about this incident in Managing The Dream: 

The truth is that I didn’t love it and didn’t have the passion for it and that what I was doing wasn’t my own voice.  I wanted to be a university president.  I didn’t want to do university president.  Now that was a huge lesson for me, because if there is one single thing I have found out about leaders is that, by and large if not every day, they seem to love what they’re doing…[The] question made me aware that administration wasn’t for me.  I found my calling as an advisor and a coach to leaders.  

Managing and leading are very different from doing.  Of course, all leaders do a mixture of leading, managing and doing, just as any doer can also do some managing or leading (even if informally).  It is just a matter of the percentage of time allocated to each activity.

You may be very skilled at doing, and you may be the best person on the team doing your work, but that doesn’t mean that you should manage or lead it.  Our culture promotes the idea of career progression up a hierarchy, so most people aspire to rise as high as they can in their organization rather than staying at a level they are better suited for. 

The problem with always seeking promotions is that you may be promoted right out of your areas of strength and into your areas of weakness.  This is the Peter Principle:  People are promoted to the level of their incompetence.  How many people who are team members say to themselves, “I could lead this team better than that!”?  They make the mistake of thinking that the ability to do is the qualification for the role of leader.  Far from it.  The skills for leadership are different from the skills needed for doing.  Team members can get promoted and have no idea what leadership is really about, and then they fail as a leader or have a miserable time of it because it is not the sort of doing that they love and are good at.

The sad thing is, when people are promoted beyond their competence, not only do you remove your best worker from the team and lose the related productivity, you also usually end up losing the person to your organization entirely because it seems the only way out of a leadership role is right out the organization’s door.  I’ve always thought this is too bad.  Surely there should be honour in recognizing your gifts and their limits and stepping down to pick up once again at the job where you were performing at your best.  But our culture doesn’t cope with such ‘failure’ very well.  I acknowledge that it would take a very self-aware person to be willing to step down to a different position (if a position should still be available).  The unfortunate reality is that usually all  you can do is go to a new organization.

So, should you continue in your leadership role?  If you are having difficulty, two key questions are:

1. Am I called to be a leader?  See my post on discerning your call.  If both you and your organization affirm your call to leadership, then persevere!
2. Can I become the leader this ministry needs?  It may be that you are called to lead, but for various reasons this ministry is not the place for you.  But if you are called to lead this ministry and yet are experiencing difficulty, then professional development is what you need.  I’ve written a number of posts about professional development, but The most daring case study of all is by far the best starting point.

If you are not yet a leader but aspire to be one, the questions you should ask are:

1. Am I really called to leadership?  Again, see this post for a good discernment process.
2. Have I already led, or could I arrange to lead, a project to test out my leadership skills before taking the risks of team or organizational leadership?
3. What am I really attracted to: the leadership role, the perceived perks and privileges, or fullfilling societal expectations about career advancement?  Do I have the right motivation?

The upshot is that every position in an organization is important, valuable and respectable.  One role is not better than another, it is just different.  There are different risks and commensurate rewards with various levels of positions.  Some are more demanding on your personal life than others, and some take their toll with heavier responsibility.  But all positions can be satisfying and intrinsically rewarding.  Which position that is simply depends on who you were made to be, what you have been called to do and your willingness to invest yourself in becoming excellent at what that role requires.  For some, the answer is a leadership role and for others, it is a doing role.  If you are not where you should be, the tragedy would be to not make a correction.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.  And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.  There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.  But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.
1 Cor 12:4-7, 18

Here’s a list of things I’m thinking about that I’d like you to jump in on before I do.  But first, I have a celebration to share.

Today’s my anniversary!  One year ago today I wrote my first post.  I started blogging because Heather Hanson, VP Administration at CCCC, came back from a social media conference and said CEO’s should be blogging.  At first I didn’t know what I would write about or what I in particular had to contribute, but this is post #55 and I have another 27 posts started.  As always, once you start down a road, the creative juices start flowing!  Ideas for what to write about come from four sources:

1. hearing leaders talk about what’s on their minds,
2. things I’m thinking about regarding my own leadership,
3. connecting CCCC’s mission and values to leadership, and
4. neat thoughts that come to me as I read.

I’ve got lots on my mind, but here are some really big topics that I’m thinking about, and I welcome anything you’d like to contribute on any of them.  Please share your thoughts.

• Church boards:  Over the last year I have broadened my thinking considerably about how church boards relate to the pastoral staff.  I served on a church board once that was divided for about fifteen years on the issue of whether the pastor was a hireling of the board or the board was a support for the pastor.  It was an awful time of extended paralysis that originated with a pastoral moral failure that broke the board’s trust in pastors and their denominational oversight.  In sympathy with the pastors who followed the one who failed, I have generally championed the pastor as leader in much the same vein as the executive director of an agency is leader.  However, I am coming to realize two things: 1) my church board experience is limited to one particular model and there are other models that have much to commend them; and 2) that by expecting pastors to fill the organizational leader role, I may be setting pastors up to fail because the skills and personality traits that make for great pastors may not equip them as organizational leaders.  I really like policy governance as a means of liberating the staff to do what they were hired to do, but while policy governance may work for large churches that have executive level administrators, I am thinking that a more collegial, shared leadership model between pastors and boards may work better in small- to mid-sized churches.  I’ve already shared a bit about this issue, but want to explore the issue a lot more.
• The Humanity of Ministry Leaders: Leaders are people just like everyone else, walking through life learning how to be better people, trying to become more Christ-like and doing a lot of on-the-job learning.  I’ve studied leadership for years, but until you are personally in the position rather than advising, supporting, or second-guessing from the sidelines, you really don’t know what a leader’s life is like.  There is a tremendous feeling of personal responsibility and accountability for the welfare of the staff, the organization and its mission.  Others may share these feelings, but they don’t have the ‘buck stops here’ aspect that the senior leader has.  There is also the added responsibility in Christian leadership not just to do the best you can, but to fulfill the call of God for you and your ministry.  What does God expect of me and of CCCC?  That’s huge!  Leaders are also stewards of the human and financial resources and the opportunities that God has provided.  I am acutely aware that I will be held to account for my term of leadership at CCCC in all these areas.  There is also the need to maintain your own personal spirituality and identity, a vitality of inner life independent of the ministry, while at the same time your call to this particular ministry combined with your public figurehead role are like gravitational forces pulling your personal identity closer and closer to merging with your ministry’s identity.  Senior leadership is frought with such challenges, and fallible people do their best to fulfill the responsibilities.  Yet most people expect leaders to be perfect and often they are not shy about highlighting a leader’s deficiencies.  When I think back to my banking and consulting careers, I’ve come across arm-chair CEOs everywhere.  So I’m thinking about how ministry leaders survive the potshots and stay confident, maintain humility in the face of God’s blessings and the accolades that come with the role, and acknowledge the need for continuous personal development without at the same time sabatoging their ability to lead or losing the confidence of their boards and team members.
• Responsibilities of Team Membership:  There is such a large number of leadership books and conferences that I think we are liable to put too much focus on the leader.  I wish there was a much greater emphasis on the responsibilities of team members being great team members.  I see the organizational leader as just another team member with a particular set of responsibilities.  Organizational success takes team work, and everyone must give equal commitment to personal performance and development.  Roger Patterson, co-author of Leading from the Second Chair,will be presenting six workshops at our conference this year (and doing a special presentation at the church administrators’ conference that immediately follows our conference).  I’m looking forward to hearing his thoughts on followership.

Okay, now over to you.  If you were framing these three topics for discussion, what issues would you put on the table?  What opening comments would you make?