King George VI

In July 1972, I stood in a small side chapel within St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. After seeing elaborate burial sites all over London with wonderfully carved statues, long inscriptions about the person’s importance and so forth, here was a simple marble slab in the floor bearing (at that time) just a name: George VI.

Burial place of George VI

I was so impressed as I looked at the grave that here was a man who needed no explanation.  It didn’t say King George VI. Nothing about him as a man who was thrust into a leadership role he never expected nor even aspired to, who overcame his speech impediment and went on to provide leadership by inspiration to a nation fighting for its life. His commitment to stay in London to be with his people, even after his own residence was bombed, inspired a nation to persevere. Nothing needed to be said because his name says it all. I was only a young teenager in 1972, but even I knew what a great man he was. Although I expected something much more elaborate, I was more impressed by this simple tombstone than any other grave that I saw.  His legacy is summarized just by his name alone. What a fabulous way for a leader to be remembered!

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth is another remarkable inspirational leader whose name, I’m sure, will bring a legacy to mind for a long time.  She is to be congratulated for a remarkable reign of sixty years and counting.

Queen Elizabeth is an amazing woman who provides leadership as Head of State not only to the U.K., but also as Head of State to fifteen other nations (including Canada). Furthermore, another 38 member nations of the Commonwealth also follow her leadership. Her dedication to her role, her ability to stay steady through turmoil, her simple style and her graciousness have inspired me. I believe her greatest legacy is simply the way she’s lived her life in service to others.

Today, one columnist wrote about Queen Elizabeth saying,

“In this present time of glaring, intrusive, nasty media, it is hard to imagine the proportions of the Queen’s achievement in serving 60 years, every one of them as one of the most prominent and publicized people in the world, without one gaffe, one embarrassing photograph, one injudicious utterance or slip on a banana peel, literal or metaphoric. Queen Elizabeth II has personified the British middle-class virtues: moderation, unflamboyant consistency and unflappable reliability.”

Queen Elizabeth, as her father did, represents the best of the figurehead leader. Figureheads in practice have very little real power.  What power they have is pretty much ceremonial and their ability to get anything done depends more on leading by example than by authority. But in spite of that, some figureheads have so much personal power they can accomplish a lot.  The Queen fulfills the figurehead role admirably and embodies the aspirations of people everywhere to live lives of civility, graciousness and a whole lot more.

What’s Your Legacy?

As a senior leader, you fulfill a figurehead role for sure, but you also have the authority to direct an organization and get results. How will you be remembered twenty or thirty years after you retire? What attributes will people talk about? What will be your lasting imprint on your ministry? It would be really nice if in 2060 or so someone mentioned my name with regards to CCCC and a listener said, “Ah yes, John Pellowe.  He…” and then some nice thing or other is said. What would you want said?

Is life about individual accomplishment? About doing? Is it really “all about me”? Or is it about us and how we lived together and what we did for each other?

I hope to accomplish a lot, through my own work and that of the CCCC team, during my time in leadership here. However, given that Christianity is fundamentally about relationships, between us and God and us and other people, I think our legacies that endure will be about how we cared for each other, inspired one another, and helped our neighbours.  Here are some things I think would be worthy to be on a leader’s wish list for a legacy:

• Your leadership produced an outstanding crop of gifted people who filled mid and senior leadership roles from within for a generation
• During your term the organization learned how to live out its values and this culture of authenticity endures “to this day”
• People still tell stories of how you gave them their big break that opened doors for them to flourish in their ministry careers
• The fun and pride people had working together as a team during your tenure is still the stuff of organizational lore decades later

Take a moment and write down your list of words or phrases you’d like to have associated with your name.

Then ask the question: Is the way I am currently leading going to leave a legacy anything like what I have just thought about? If not, now is the time to do something about it.  Now is the time to create the history you want to be told to new generations later on.

• I believe a rich enduring legacy will not simply be a list of accomplishments, although there will certainly be accomplishments in a leader’s legacy.
• It will not actually be about you or me as if the goal in life is to say “Look at me!” It will be about us as conduits, about how we obediently followed God, received the gifts and roles he gave us and acted as one of his means to bless others and help them to be the great person God intends them to be.
• It will be how we made other people feel about themselves, how they believed more about their abilities and future, and about how we helped them to have more significance, more meaning in their lives.
• In the end, what matters for leaders is the influence our leadership had on others and what they were able to accomplish because of our influence.

I realize that my accomplishments today are the result of many people who believed in me and who got me to where I am today and those who work with me day-by-day. While I need to accomplish things to fulfill my job responsibilities, my true leadership will be measured by how well I helped other people to do the same.

A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.
Proverbs 22:1

As you and I both know, there is no one single way to lead.  There is no single formulaic five step process to successful leadership.  There are all sorts of ways one can lead, and which way you choose may be highly dependent on circumstances, your nature, and a whole bunch of other factors.

My caveat

This blog is a series of reflections on how to provide Christian leadership.  I’ve made some strong statements and I know I say ‘should’ quite a lot.  That sounds pretty directive!  Since I write based on my experience, my circumstances, my personality and so on, I think my suggestions will work well for me, but will they for you?  You must decide that for yourself.  My goal is to get you thinking and provide you with some help along the way by sharing the very best information I can find or think of about Christian leadership.  I am sure my thoughts have widespread application (or I wouldn’t bother writing), but in the end they are just observations.  They are my contribution to Christian ministry written in response to the question I assume readers are asking: ”I wonder what a Christian leader who has time to think and write about leadership issues thinks about leading in a Christian way?”

Your caveat

You as a leader are in a similar position.  You have your opinions about issues facing your ministry’s leadership and as a leader you should be sharing them.  We lead from our convictions knowing that people want to have confidence in their leaders, but that means that we tend to lead with a high degree of certainty.  Let’s not be more certain about things than we have a right to be.  In many cases, there is more than one way to “skin the cat.”  (What an awful expression, but it expresses the thought perfectly.)  This is why it is best to lead with consensus decisions, or decisions that you make but which have been shaped by group discussion.

In closing

• Knowing that I could be wrong, or that there is more than one way to lead, is why I allow comments on this blog.  I want you to participate with me and my readers in a group discussion so we can all learn together.
• Knowing that you could be wrong or that there is more than one way to address whatever issues face you, is why you have a team to consult with and to help you lead.  Two heads are better than one and all that!

Leaders are not required to have all the answers, but to know how to develop a good answer and to make a decision.

Plans fail for lack of counsel,
   but with many advisers they succeed.
Proverbs 15:22

A Christian leader isn’t really a leader but a person who follows Christ (the real leader) closely and organizes others to do the same.  Developing intimacy with God and knowing his heart is the essence of Christian leadership.  The Bible is very explicit about how important intimacy with God is for his leaders.

With his army fleeing, King Saul felt as leader that he needed to do something.  He needed to make a sacrifice to God.  The prophet Samuel scheduled a sacrifice, but when it appeared Samuel wasn’t coming, Saul offered the sacrifice himself.  Just as he was finishing, Samuel arrived.  “You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command” (1 Samuel 13:13-14).

This is the danger of letting your personal spiritual life with God coast along, of not giving it top priority over everything else.  Saul wanted to do a good thing (seek the LORD’s favour), but he was doing it the wrong way - the king was no priest and had no right to offer the sacrifice.  Had he been intimate with the LORD he would have known what to do and what not do.  The fact is, I have no right to lead anything that is done in the name of Christ if I am not being directed by Christ!

I serve CCCC in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Christ to accomplish the portion of God’s mission that our ministry works on.  I’m sure you do the same for your ministry.  And while I expect all the staff at CCCC to do exactly the same too, I am quite aware of the higher standard of accountability that leaders have for their obedience to God.  The prophets have a lot to say about this!

I do my best to practice what I preach, and I have left a ministry leadership role when it became clear I would be doing it in my own strength and power.  During my first two years at CCCC, I was also pastor of a small church that had suffered a lot of discouragement and the District wanted me to do four things there as its (part-time) pastor.  I loved providing pastoral care for people and I had no lack of vision for what I as their pastor was to do for them.  But near the end of my second year, I was praying about which of several priorities should be the focus of my preaching for the next year when the Lord told me my time there was up.  I was shocked to say the least!  I wanted to stay and I told the Lord so.  His response was sobering.  “John, you have done everything I wanted you to do there.  Well done!  I am pleased.  You can stay if you want, but from now on you will be on your own.”  Oh my goodness!  Pastor a church without the Holy Spirit?  I couldn’t even begin to imagine that.  God obviously had someone else in mind for whatever would come next for this church, and I dared not get in the way.  I resigned and helped them link up with a nearby church that provided a pastor.

The positive consequences of being intimate with the Triune God include:

• Leaders will be working on things the Lord obviously wants to bless, so they will see more fruit from their ministries
• By putting God’s agenda ahead of their own, there will be much less temptation to run the ministry for their own benefit (reminder – it’s all about God, not the leader)
• Leaders will have a healthier self-image as they acknowledge their reliance on God and don’t take all the credit themselves
• There will be less of a burden for the ministry because it is Christ’s ministry, not theirs, and Christ will look after his own ministries.  Only own what is yours to own!  Here I must share from my own experience the crushing burden of bearing too much concern for a ministry.
  • Back in the 90s I was a deacon and there were things that were causing significant problems in the church.  I felt as a deacon it was my responsibility to fix them.  Finally, during a prayer meeting I was overwhelmed with the situation and in despair when I suddenly found myself crying out over and over again a prophetic word from Jesus.  He said through me, “This is MY church, and I will look after MY church.  This is not your church, and it is not your problem.”  I realized that Jesus is quite competent to do what he wants to do.  While I needed to fulfill the responsibility of being a deacon, I had to let Jesus fulfill his responsibility as the owner.  Jesus will take care of his own and he only asks me to play the part he has assigned to me.

The first act of leadership is to be intimate with God all the time.  I’ve written a few suggestions in another post about how to maintain intimacy with God, and in yet another post I wrote about how to hold a personal spiritual retreat.

May you truly be able to say with Paul, “But we have the mind of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:16)  Blessings!

The Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends
by William Butler Yeats

Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but those eyes.

While in leadership, many will be friends with you not for who you are but for the position, power, or wealth you control and what that means to them.  Your longtime friends have seen you in different circumstances, know you for who you really are, and still want to be friends with you.  Don’t cast them off!!  What attracts people to you in your prime will not last and then you are left with nothing if you have no old friends.

When my mother died at 68 years of age, she was still best friends with a woman she met when she was 3 years old.  That makes me want to rekindle some old friendships!

I wonder sometimes about ministry leaders who get a lot of attention and then retire.  How does their world change?  Or does it?  Let me know what you think.

I can’t believe I’m going to quote him, because, well, because I’m not a teeny-bopper girl, but he said a very wise thing, so I’ll quote him anyway.  And besides, just using his name will bring millions of tomorrow’s leaders to my blog!  Justin Bieber said “I have so many people to help me stay grounded and humble – people that aren’t gonna just say I’m amazing 24/7, people that actually want me to be a good person.”

Amen!

The ideal believer lives a Christlike life manifesting the fruit of the Spirit.  Unfortunately, everyone is on a journey toward that ideal.  We all fall short and we always will until God finishes perfecting us.  Until then, we have to deal with imperfect people.  That’s the really hard part of life for those of us who are already perfect!  (Just kidding!!!)

But should we expect more from ministry leaders than from the average person?  Yes, but they still won’t be perfect.

Why leaders deserve a higher standard

Most people have a very localized sphere of influence and we never hear of their shortfalls unless we know them personally.  But leaders represent a community, and the ripple effect of their shortfalls is much wider.  In Satan And The Problem Of Evil: Constructing A Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy, Greg Boyd writes that:

Moral responsibility is proportionate to the potential to influence others…the greater the potential a [person] has for love, the greater the potential this [person] must have for the opposite of love [because of free will]… When people who have the capacity and moral responsibility to bless many fail to do so, their extraordinary potential to bless becomes an extraordinary capacity to harm.  Hence those people require greater accountability and deserve more severe judgment if they fall…every increase in the capacity for good means a similar increase in the capacity for evil… If God wants a world where a Mother Teresa is possible, he must also be willing to contend with a world in which an Adolf Hitler is possible… We have no idea of how glorious Satan might have appeared had he chosen to actualize his potential for loving service to God rather than his potential for rebellion.  Neither can we acquire any clear idea of what Mother Teresa or Adolf Hitler might have looked like had they chosen each other’s paths rather than the ones they in fact chose.

Hitler’s powerful oratory skills could have been used for good, but he chose to use them for evil.  Just as he did great evil with his skill, he could have done great good with the same skill.

Ministry leaders have great gifts, skills and talents that got them into their leadership roles, but being a leader they now have the potential to do greater good or greater harm for the cause of Christ than they could before.  Somebody with no communication skills, no organizational skills, and no charisma could have the exact same failing as a leader, and never cause a ripple.  The leader, however, with the identical failing could devastate a whole community and bring great disrepute to Christ’s name.  This means that those who have the ability to influence many should be held to a higher standard.  The concept applies to everyone who works in vocational ministry, but my focus is the leader.

Furthermore, when ministry leaders fall short, most people (especially the secular public) see it as not just an imperfection or development need, but as outright hypocrisy.  That puts a different spin on the perceived problem.  It is not a personality quirk, lapse or error of judgment, but an intentional choice.  The shortcoming does nothing to help the proclamation of the Good News of the kingdom when it is interpreted this way.  Thus ministry leaders get judged harshly when they fail to live up to the Christian ideal.

In my post, “Early warning signs for loss of integrity,” I referred to an excellent book, Integrity: Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason, that softened my view of people who fall short of the ideal.  While we often like things neat and simple, black and white, this is rarely the case.  A person could indeed be truly evil in intent, but in many cases the person has succumbed to the very traits that made them a leader in the first place.  For example, the same confidence that enables a young person to start a new ministry can later develop into cockiness, arrogance and progressively worse.  Then they start to justify their attitudes and behaviours and they are on their way to a fall.

Leaders are like kings

If we believe that the people placed in ministry leadership are God’s choice, then they are similar in function to the kings of Israel who ruled over Israel as under-lords to the Lord, who was himself the  true king of Israel.  Ministry leaders are under-shepherds to the true Shepherd, Jesus Christ.  The church and its ministries belong to Christ and any human leader is just like a steward who runs a portion of his master’s household.

In Abraham Heschel’s masterful study of the Old Testament prophets (The Prophets) he discusses the role of the king and how the prophets were a check to ensure the king did not begin to rule in his own name, rather than God’s:

The king…is the ruler appointed by God who must reign according to the will and the mishpat of God…What were the safeguards that kept alive that attitude and prevented the king from ever assuming the mysterious nimbus that goes with the power of sovereignty? …  Of paramount importance in the history of Israel was the freedom and independence enjoyed by the prophets, their ability to upbraid the kings and princes for their sins.  From the beginning of the monarchy, the king was at any moment in peril of rebuke, even of rejection, by the prophets, who reminded him that the king’s sovereignty was not unlimited, that over the king’s mishpat stood the mishpat of the Lord – an idea that frequently clashed with the exigencies of government.

The role of the prophet is to speak correction to God’s leader so that God’s justice (mishpat) rules over the king’s justice.  Heschel said that our conscience develops scales: excuses, pretense and self-pity.  The purpose of prophecy therefore includes the intent to “conquer callousness, to change the inner man.”  The prophet’s duty is “to speak to the people, whether or not they hear or refuse to hear.”  Every ministry leader who wants to stay on as a ministry leader should pray that God would send them a Nathan, a prophet, who would stand up to the king and say, “You are the man!”

Critics as prophets

The Bible has lots to say about people who cause division and stir up contention, and it condemns them.  However, there are people who I believe are acting in a prophet-like role who are pure in heart and inspired by God to speak correction to those in leadership.

As a leader, don’t be too quick to label your critics as troublemakers.  Their calling a spade a spade may be the greatest service they can do for you.  Their message is a wake-up call to assess who you have become and what you are doing.  Has being in leadership had a negative affect on you?  Has holding power corrupted you?  Do you believe your own press?  Have you forgotten who you serve?

The best case outcome when a prophet speaks is that their ‘targets’ see the problem in their current way of being or see that they have some explaining to do (if they have been misunderstood).  It would be much better if leaders catch their developing problems while they are relatively insignificant, so that much worse could be avoided.

My take on shortfalls

When I read or hear about yet another leader with a problem, I first sigh and then say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  Their shortcoming is a call to examine myself, my foibles and my attitudes, and check for self-justification, rationalization and so on.  Have I submitted to proper authority and allowed myself to be scrutinized?  Of course, all Christians should do exactly the same because they too have the same potential to fall short.

If I were in a position to work with the leader, I would approach it with compassion and with the goal of rehabilitation rather than punishment.  The goal is always advancement of the Christian mission and in God’s kingdom there is always forgiveness and restoration.  The same Jesus who said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” later said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.”  This is also the approach of the standards program at CCCC.  Its goal is not to punish those who fail to comply with a standard, but to correct the problem and bring them into compliance.

The real issue for me in terms of expectations and failure is, what did they learn from their error (and therefore what will they do differently) and did they submit to correction?  Sometimes the unChristian behaviour is so sinful that it is not possible to continue on in the ministry role.  But even then I have hope that beyond exposure and censure there can be correction and redemption so the person can continue in some useful service of the Master.

In this regard, Jim Bakker really impressed me.  I never watched him, but I was in the service at a church in Phoenix when we were all surprised as he came out and was interviewed.  He had been through a rehabilitation process, clearly admitted he was wrong (he wrote a book by that title although I haven’t read it), and at the time of the interview had been working for some time in Los Angeles at the Dream Center as an ordinary, anonymous volunteer.  I still don’t follow him at all, but the day of his interview I was impressed by his humbleness.  It seemed authentic.  What was even more impressive, perhaps, was that the pastor of this church along with a very few others went to visit him in prison and walked with him through contrition and repentance with the goal of redeeming him for something useful.

Kings and queens, listen to your prophets!

Always borrow from a pessimist – they never expect to get it back!

Optimism and resilience are key leadership characteristics.  I read somewhere that you won’t see any statues erected to honour pessimists because, as Helen Keller said, “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”  Why, according to The Optimist’s Guide to History, optimists even led the way in coining the word optimist to distinguish those who see the sunny side of life from those who always carry an umbrella.  As usual, pessimists waited until an optimist showed that it could be done and it only took 80 years after the word optimist entered our lexicon for pessimists to create the word pessimist.  Or more likely, an optimist did it for them!

People become leaders precisely because they are optimists and think that something can be done.

It is our duty as human beings to proceed as though the limits of our capabilities did not exist.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pessimists can do well enough what has already been done, doing more of it, but to create opportunity and move forward takes an optimist.  Why is this so?  It is because optimists have high levels of self-efficacy, the belief that they have the capability to exercise influence over events that affect their lives.  (Note I did not say control.)  Without this, there is no reason to try anything new.  Winston Churchill was a man of great self-efficacy who explained his success saying, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”  You only keep going like Churchill did because you believe you have the capability to shape the results.  Pessimists, however, have very low levels of self-efficacy and believe that events are beyond their ability to influence.

The reason for writing about this is that every group of people will have both optimists and pessimists in it and the leader is almost guaranteed to be an optimist.  It would be nice to have people of high self-efficacy at every level in the organization because that enables you to empower staff and substantially reduce if not eliminate your supervision of those people.   But the reality is that just as there will always be the poor among us this side of heaven, so there will always be pessimists among us this side of heaven.

That last line sounds like the set-up for a joke!

• Will there be pessimists in heaven?
• What’s the first thing a pessimist says at the Pearly Gates?

Who’s got a punch line for one of these openings?  Use the comment form below!

This reality creates a natural clash of views between optimists and pessimists over what the ministry can accomplish.   You, as the optimistic leader, have to learn how to deal with pessimism and, as we shall see in my upcoming post on truth-telling at work, there is a bright side to having pessimists in your midst because they have much to contribute to the success of your ministry.  Now that is written by a true optimist!

I must admit that I find pessimism very depressing because I believe so much that everyone can become much stronger than they currently are and it really saddens me when people don’t believe in their own abilities or the group’s abilities as much as I believe in their actual and potential abilities.  My outlook on life is one of blessing, gifting and equipping.  That doesn’t make life easy, I have my difficulties, but it does mean that I truly believe we are all capable of shaping the future and the environment around us.

I sincerely believe that every person could have high levels of self-efficacy if they merely started to test what their limits truly are.  Sure, if you try right away to lift 200 pounds you might not have the muscles to do it.  But if you start with 25 pounds, you will likely be successful and you will be building your muscles.  Over time, you can build your muscles up so that you will some day be able to lift the 200 pounds.  What was once impossible became possible.  So when people have a pessimistic outlook, I feel quite badly that they have already given up.  What kept those three boys alive for 50 days on the open ocean?  Why didn’t they just drown themselves to end their suffering?  Why didn’t Job follow his wife’s advice to “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9)?  Because they were optimists and had hope.  Job declared, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives…even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

Pessimists, let me help you out a bit.  If all you can do is believe for a little, then believe for a little and let the result build your faith to believe for more.  ”Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is a pretty good truism.  I also like Mark 9:24 where the father wants a miraculous healing for his son, but has doubts.  He said to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.”  What a great attitude!  We must also remember Jesus’ promise in Matthew 17:20 that, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”  That promise has to be responsibly interpreted of course, but the basic idea is pretty clear.  Start with whatever faith you have and do something, anything, to use it.

As leaders, we can help staff increase their feeling of self-efficacy by:

• setting people up to win frequently by setting short term goals or projects, so they have a series of small, but encouraging, wins.  There is nothing as good as a successful experience to foster self-efficacy.
• celebrating successes by people on your team with the whole team.  Don’t just congratulate the person who did it, but tell everyone else too.  Self-efficacy will build as pessimists say to themselves, “If that person could do it, then I can do it!”
• expressing your confidence in the pessimist’s ability to do the work.  Positive reinforcement from others is helpful (but research shows this is not anywhere nearly as helpful as the first two bullet points – be sure to do those first).
• framing plans as trials to reduce fear.  The goal from a pessimist’s perspective would be to test something out, not be successful at it.  That might be as much as they can handle, and anyone can do that!  Reduce the fear factor so they will try and who knows, they may be pleasantly surprised.
• involving them in testing their assumptions and observations.  The idea is to replace subjective fears with objective facts.  “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened” Michel de Montaigne.
• measuring their performance on activity, not results, coupled with regular coaching.  Results will be the consequence of doing the activity well.

If you are a pessimist, you can help yourself by doing somthing you find a stretch every day.  If you have doubt about how something will work out, give it your best.  And know this, optimists can be just as harmful to an organization as a pessimist.  Taken to extreme, they can ignore all the danger signs.  You see those signs, so make a plan to minimize the danger and go ahead and try.

A pessimistic blogger (his blog is called “Second Impulse” – he made me smile!) made a good point about managing pessimists like himself.  Leaders must understand that a pessimist’s fear that bad things will happen is not the same as the pessimist wanting bad things to happen.  And just to show that pessimists can really surprise us, he has a bucket list!  Because he’s never said it before, I think he would really like to say, just once for the experience, “Life is good.”

What is sustaining my dad at the end of his life

We tend to be consumed with leading our organizations.  But as Dad assesses his life, he is very satisfied.  Not with his professional practice (he was an optometrist) nor with his material possessions.  What counts most to him right now are the times we had together as a family and the contentment he has with how we kids have developed into adults with families of our own.  He says he thanks God many times a day for the blessing of having the love and care of his children in his time of need.  He looks at a picture of himself and Mom in their fifties and says, “She was an amazing woman.  I can’t believe how fortunate I was to have her as my wife.”  He is appreciating the people with whom he travelled through life.

As I clean out his house, I have the sobering realization that all the furniture, all the electronics, all the books and DVDs and all the knick-knacks really mean nothing.  They were enjoyed, but in the end, life is not about them.  I know that and you know that, but actually going through everything while knowing that Dad’s life is now restricted to his immediate surroundings (apart from almost everything that he owned) really drives the point home.  What survives are relationships and the memory of those relationships. 

What is sustaining me as I face Dad’s mortality

While cleaning out the house I’ve found many things that display a side of Dad that he was not too comfortable talking about: the spiritual and emotional side of life.  Notes with thoughts about God.  An envelope marked “Cards from the children: These are treasures.”  Copies of sermons he found helpful.  Even some love letters from Mom written during their engagement.  Dad was of a generation that didn’t talk too much about private thoughts, although he has shared a fair bit with me.  I feel like I have come to know him a lot better while preparing the house for sale and I will enjoy sharing what I have found with my siblings.

I also take great comfort knowing that over the last twenty years of his widowhood, I have done everything I can to be the son that Dad should have.  I have involved him in my family’s life, taking him many places.  Some CCCC members may remember Dad from the 2004 and 2005 conferences.  I have respected him, honoured him and served him, so that now I have no regrets at all.

Take-away points

I got the news from the doctor that Dad’s death is imminent about a week ago.  Over the same time period two CCCC staff members and one retired staff member have lost people in their immediate families: a brother, a mother and a wife.  This has been a sobering week for us all.  You don’t know when life will change, so: 

• As far as it is up to you, do your best to have rich relationships today so you can live (and die later) without regrets.  If there is anybody you need to repair a relationship with, DO IT NOW!
• Create the memories today that will sustain you later.  They don’t have to be huge events.  Dad remembers some trips we took, but he also remembers us singing in the choir together, and doing other normal family activities.  Be involved with people, not just related to them.

What ultimately sustains us as we face death ourselves or the death of someone near and dear to us, is the certainty of the constant love of God in this life, through the experience of death, and then eternally in the life to come.  That is the greatest comfort of all. 

“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.”
John 14:2

Leaders tend to travel a lot and be away from their families.  Leaders tend to think about their organizations pretty much constantly.  People who become leaders may tend to be workaholics.  We must fulfill the responsibilities of our leadership positions, but make sure that your relationships, particularly with family and friends, are not neglected.  You’ll be living eternally with them, not your ministry.  Now, I can’t help it.  I have to recommend two great books on the afterlife in heaven.  Here they are:

• Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by Tom Wright, and
• Heaven by Randy Alcorn. 

Both are quite good, but Wright’s is the more weighty one (if you like that).  Alcorn’s is written for a general audience, and has a bit more speculation in it.

Please pray for a peaceful and painless transition for  Dad from this life to the next.  PS: For the answer to this prayer, click here.

Jesus practiced the habits of solitude and retreat throughout his ministry (Luke 5:16).  As I recall, Jesus had only one extended retreat recorded in the gospels (Luke 4:1 and parallels).  He used it to reflect on his identity and crystalize his purpose, define the appropriate use of his power, and fix in his mind the need for absolute obedience to what Scripture reveals of his Father’s will.  We still benefit today from the work that Jesus did that flowed out of this one powerful retreat!  Throughout his ministry, Jesus regularly used short spiritual retreats to:

• keep himself grounded in his mission
  • Luke 4:42-44.  When the crowds demanded that he stay and continue to minister to them, Jesus went into seclusion and then announced that his purpose was to preach in other cities as well.  
• reflect on what was happening around him
  • John 6:14-15, 26-36. In this account, the crowds misinterpreted what the signs of Jesus’ ministry meant.  After seclusion, he came back to the crowds and corrected them.
• make key leadership decisions
  • Luke 6:12-13.  He chose the twelve apostles after a night of solitary prayer.  
• set the next phase of his leadership
  • We see this, for example, at key points such as the beginning of his ministry when the Spirit took him alone into the wilderness and at the end of his earthly ministry in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• meditate on God’s word
  • Someone I read just recently (sorry, I can’t find it again) suggested that Jesus must have meditated a lot.  How else would he have come up with the metaphors and parables he used to draw spiritual truths from everyday activities?

Based on Jesus’ use of retreat time, there is great value for us doing retreats as well.  I pray, study, listen, meditate and reflect as a regular practice,  but setting aside an extended period of time for a more intensive encounter alone with God provides an incredibly rich grounding for my leadership.  Look again at the list of what Jesus used his retreats for.  That list is just as important for us today.

There are lots of ways to do a retreat, so I am not prescribing how you should do yours.  I am sharing what I do, to spark your own creative ideas about what you might do.  Also, I think a key to a successful retreat is not to have any particular agenda as far as specific output is concerned.  I want God to control the outcome, not me.  My attitude is ”Let’s see how God will use this time.”  I intentionally set aside the time, use a general structure, have a starting place, but then stay open to how the Spirit leads.

I do a five-day spiritual retreat once a year.  I do it in the summer because in my circumstances:

• I get my performance review at the June board meeting. 
• I get the results of the Best Christian Workplace survey in June as well, giving me a window into how the staff evaluates the ministry’s work environment, and indirectly my leadership.  
• Our fiscal year-end is March 31, so by June the staff has evaluated our organizational performance over the last year. 
• At the June board meeting I get the board’s direction or suggestions for the next planning cycle. 
• Finally, management works on the strategic and action plans in the fall for the next fiscal year.  The retreat helps me  frame the discussions that we’ll have in the planning process.

My five days generally look like this:

1. Day 1 is spent reflecting on how well I as an individual am following Christ.  This has nothing to do with work directly, but if my personal walk is not pleasing to God, then my professional walk won’t be any better.  I owe it to the ministry to have a rich, personal, vibrant spiritual life.  The personal day could include these checks from The Making of a Leader by Robert Clinton:
   1. An integrity check – are you living out your stated values?  Are your intentions and motivations honourable?  Are you walking the talk?
   2. An obedience check – are you doing what God has asked you to do?  Following God’s laws and trusting his leadership?  Confessing, repenting and forgiving?
   3. A word check – are you able to perceive God’s truth and work it out in your own life?  Can you discern God’s guidance for you personally?  Being able to discern God’s guidance is a prerequisite to leading God’s people.
2. On Day 2 I reflect on my personal call and how well my leadership at CCCC reflects that call.  I have my personal call to serve the church, which takes precedence over my call to CCCC.  CCCC is simply the way I am currently fulfilling my call to serve Christ’s church.  I’m going to write a separate post on this, but the key point here is that there is a reason why God has placed me and not someone else in leadership at CCCC at this time in its life.  The board and I mutually discerned God’s call for my appointment, so there must be something about me that God wants expressed at CCCC.  I reject the personality cult of leadership, so it’s not about me, but it is about how God has prepared me for this role.  When I was offered the opportunity to come to CCCC I was at the same time in the process of looking for a church to pastor.  I was on a 7 day spiritual retreat and the issue at hand was which option was God’s will?  Was one a test for the other?  The short version is that I received the Lord’s direction that I was free to choose, but that if I chose CCCC my particular contribution would be to use the ministry’s mandate to protect Christ’s reputation by helping Christian leaders lead more authentically as Christians.  So, that’s why we have the Best Christian Workplace survey.  That’s why I write this blog.  That’s why we incorporate theology (hopefully free of denominational distinctives) into our stewardship training.  That’s why the conference workshop tracks were increased from six to eleven, to incorporate theologically-sound soft skills topics into the mix.  So I spend a day thinking long and hard about the unique contribution I can make to CCCC.
3. Day 3 is a reflection of how well CCCC is fulfilling the mandate that God has given it.  At the June 2003 board meeting, when I was appointed as executive director, they directed me to explore the edges of CCCC’s mandate.  We had been consumed for more than ten years with the clergy residence legal cases, and the last one was settled the week I arrived for work.  While that issue doubled our membership and earned us the gratitude of pastors across the country (I still regularly have people in the regional seminars stand up to thank CCCC for this huge thing we did for them), it did focus our attention pretty much exclusively on one particular program (the Legal Defense Fund).  My predecessor, Frank Luellau, did a remarkable job shepherding CCCC through that time.  However, we are now past that time, so I am free to use Day 3 reflecting on what our mission really means.  What else could we do to achieve our mission?  I think of all the people I have met over the past year, and review notes of our conversations, and pray about the issues our members are dealing with and how we might help them.
4. Day 4 is when I draw on traditional strategic planning resources to have a systematic approach to reflect on CCCC and its future health.  I’ll pull out the books and use the models.  This is also the day when I think of CCCC and its business model.  We are in effect an association.  Is this still the appropriate model?  Should we be a fee for service professional organization?  (No, but the question still needs to be asked.)   I use everything I have on association management and trend analysis for the association sector.  This day helps ensure I don’t overlook anything.  By the way, this day does NOT replace any of the planning that is done with staff.  It is only to help me prepare for that planning.
5. Day 5 tends to change each year according to what I feel the major need is.  Over the last year I realized the Lord is calling us at CCCC to be bolder.  To step it up.  To think big and believe that resources follow vision.  [IMPORTANT NOTE: I did not say that money follows expenses!!!  Unless God specifically calls your ministry to live by faith, he calls us to be wise in how much risk we should accept.]  So I spent the day this year praying, meditating on God’s provision and his promises related to courage and boldness, and reflecting on what boldness might look like for CCCC.  In previous years the emphasis has been on other aspects of our ministry, such as what it means for CCCC to be part of a community of ministries as opposed to a thinking of us only as a single organization.  That year I thought through issues of partnership, cooperation and competition.  I worked through how we could be open-handed and generous while at the same time preserving our financial viability.

This five day structure works well for me, and you can adapt it for your type of ministry.  For example, if you are a relief and development ministry, then on Day 4 you’ll be looking at best practices, trends and other aspects of your sector (both secular and Christian).

There is a lot of room for individual preference as to how you commune with God.  For me, I tend to do best by asking questions of God, and then waiting silently for a response (no distractions, no music, etc.). 

When the retreat is over, I don’t “come down from the mountain” with a fully laid-out plan to impose on staff.  I do come back with directional thoughts to discuss and test with staff, and then lay out specific plans.  I also don’t give them out all at once, because that could be overwhelming and sometimes the Lord gives ideas for me to steward over time, taking time to ruminate on them and share them at the appropriate time.

For those who want to read about the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude, which form the core of a spiritual retreat, I’m sure you’ll find excellent courses at your local Bible college or seminary which you might be able to take, or as a quicker alternative, the two main authors to read are Dallas Willard and Richard Foster.  Between them, they’ve written quite a few books on this topic.

Now, I know I’m not the only one doing personal leadership retreats.  Can you share your approach?  I’m open to experimenting next year with something different.

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

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. (If you want to be promoted to management, here are my tips.)

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