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The leadership we have today is indeed “perfectly designed for the results we are getting.” This leadership is well-schooled in managing divisive politics through zealously guarding the status quo and then wringing hands and blaming the system when nothing changes.
They have instead gone back to the core conviction that mission trumps and looked to the opportunities in their neighborhoods and the needs in their cities. They keep thinking about what churches, seminaries and organizations can do, not necessarily what they were supposed to do. Even if they don’t have the tools they might have had, they are not going to let that stop them. They are too busy in the basement with their butter knives making the future.
Every parable Jesus taught that challenged the status quo (the prodigal son, the woman with the coin, the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to get the one sheep) did not describe his desire to care for and comfort people but, in effect, “I do this because God is like this” (Luke 15) or “I am doing these things because the kingdom of heaven is like this” (Matthew 13).
We want the positive passions and aspirations to overwhelm the negative, fearful voices that keep our families, companies, organizations or churches oppressed in the status quo.
The paradox of transformational leaders is that the very conviction that causes the leader to be willing to “disappoint your own followers at a rate they can absorb” is what ultimately—when handled well—wins “your own followers” to join you in your cause. If we as leaders start with conviction, stay connected, calm and on course in the face of opposition, then others around us have both the time and conditions to take on these very convictions as their own.
Chimamanda Adichie reminds us that unless we are exposed to the diversity of the world, our default mental models will create a “single story” of the world, a narrative to help us make sense by making simplistic assumptions that make us comfortable and keep us from having to change.10 The danger, says Adichie, is that with a single story, we make assumptions about people who are different from us that allows us to keep them marginalized.
Like the Corps of Discovery captains who figured out that all of their on-the-map education was less valuable than the life experience of a Shoshone teenage girl, many Christian leaders are only now beginning to realize that as the Christendom narrative is being rejected, they are in great need to collaborate with and learn from leaders who, because of their gender, social status, ethnicity and less-privileged life, actually are more equipped for the world today.
For those of us who have felt the discouragement of trying to come up with new uncharted mountain strategies while continually defaulting to the thinking that made us good river explorers, finding new, creative ways of thinking and being is critical to organizational survival and thriving.
Wherever innovation begins, it comes as a challenge to the dominant ideas and moral systems defined by the elites who possess the highest levels of symbolic capital.26 The key point here is that for lasting cultural change to occur (even within an institution) those in the center and those outside of the center must be truly engaged and valued in decision-making processes.
[An] attribute of imaginatively gridlocked relationship systems is a continual search for new answers to old questions rather than an effort to reframe the questions themselves. In the search for the solution to any problem, questions are always more important than answers because the way one frames the question, or the problem, already predetermines the range of answers one can conceive in response.
Reframing allows leaders to see possibilities where others see dead ends; it offers us the tools to break the imaginative gridlock of our situation by considering alternative perspectives.
Differentiation enables the leader to stay with the group in the most difficult moments even when the group is blaming the leader for the difficulties. Exploration so challenges our illusions of competence, so triggers strong reactions of others and so often leads to enough conflict that it requires differentiation to psychologically endure as a leader.
To publicly acknowledge that we are now in uncharted territory, where there are no maps and few answers, allows us the freedom to innovate through experimentation, to encourage humility and inquisitiveness, to ask questions, and to invite those with us into an adventure of learning.
Focus on your own transformation together, not on your church dying. Focus on the mountains ahead, not the rivers behind. Focus on continually learning, not what you have already mastered.
Christian work is a “family” and a “business” at the same time. To be a Christian is to find identity and mutual commitment in relationships constituted by God that make us into brothers and sisters; these relationships are inherently and intrinsically important. And at the same time we are a business with a mission to fulfill, services to offer, constituencies to support and regulations, demands, and obligations required of us.
Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart
16James Emery White, “A Metric That Matters,” Leadership Journal, July 29, 2014, www.christianitytoday.com/le/2014/august/metric-that-matters.html?start=3&utm_content=buffer31629&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer. See also Thom S. Rainer, “#1 Reason for the Decline in Church Attendance,” Tom S. Rainer (blog), August 19, 2013, http://thomrainer.com/2013/08/19/the-number-one-reason-for-the-decline-in-church-attendance-and-five-ways-to-address-it.
