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a leader must demonstrate the ability to serve the needs of his or her charges right where they are. Before going into uncharted territory, the leader must ably navigate the map while fulfilling the expectations he or she has been authorized to accomplish.
stewardship is about faithfully protecting and preserving what is most important, about growing and developing the potential of everything and everyone under one’s care. It is about faithfully discharging the duties and carrying out the responsibilities that we have been authorized to do. It is the first and most basic act of being human, the first charge given in the garden to “cultivate and keep” (Genesis 2:15).
Before Lewis and Clark asked their men to follow them beyond the Missouri River headwaters into uncharted territory, they led them upriver with both expertise and efficiency.
Usually, before a community of faith will even consider undergoing costly change, there must be a sense that leadership is doing everything within their power and their job description to be as effective as possible.
If a pastor is not a good enough preacher, if a manager is not good enough at meeting budgets and deadlines, if the leader of a sales team doesn’t perform to some level of expectation, they will have no credibility for raising the issues of transformational leadership.
“That means a lot to me. I can use the prayers. You know all of these changes we are making are hard on people. We have a number of folks who are uncomfortable. So please pray that God will bless what we are doing.” “Oh, I don’t pray for all that. I pray for you to keep preaching the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. Just keep preaching the Bible and don’t get off-track. That’s what I pray for every day for you.” We were
she really wasn’t praying for my leadership at all, she was praying for my faithful stewardship of what she held most dear, the Scriptures and our theological traditions. She was praying that amid all of the things that were changing, I would keep very clear on what wouldn’t or shouldn’t change.
If shared values are not “protected and passed down” then the organization ceases to be. Indeed, as Brafman and Beckstrom write: “Values are the organization.”
Most real change is not about change. It’s about identifying what cultural DNA is worth conserving, is precious and essential, and that indeed makes it worth suffering the losses so that you can find a way to bring the best of your tradition and history and values into the future.
To be truly credible we also have to be shepherds. We have to tend the flock and protect them, keeping watch over everyone God has entrusted to us (Acts 20:28).
We are called to offer both love for people just where they are and to call and equip them to be part of the kingdom mission of Jesus in the world around them. But to be sure, people need to experience the love of God as they are led into the mission of God. If they don’t feel loved, they will likely not let anyone lead them anywhere.
Being a leader is the difference between Johnny Appleseed and an apple farmer. The farmer has to attend to both seeds and soil, and indeed even more than the soil. The farmer must be personally connected to the land, yes, but also to the fences, the barns, the silos and the livestock. The farmer must pay personal attention to the environment, the weather, the terrain and the seasons. The farmer must attend to the whole organic system that is the farm. In the same way, a leader can be the very best, most personally attentive, loving, caring, engaged and involved shepherd attending to the sheep,
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The answer is to repersonalize the organizational
way. When I was beginning my work establishing the division of vocation and formation at Fuller Seminary, one of my new mentors said to me, “Tod, I believe that our plan A is never God’s plan A, and we only get to God’s plan A when our plans A, B and C fail. So, you need to fail as soon as you can, so we can learn as quickly as possible.”
We need to make sure that when our attempts at innovation go awry it’s because we have something to learn, and not because we mishandled an otherwise good idea.
“We can fail, but we can’t suck.”
In the same way, leaders must demonstrate competence in fidelity to Scriptures and traditions, the nurture of souls and communities, and fruitfulness in tasks and teams of people running the work of the church in order to develop the credibility that will be necessary later when the harder work of adaptation and dealing with loss begins.
Even more, while critical, the credibility of technical competence is not enough to lead genuine change, there must also be present a deep personal trust, which can only come through the relational congruence of a leader. - 5 -
It is possible to prepare for the future without knowing what it will be. The primary way to prepare for the unknown is to attend to the quality of our relationships, to how well we know and trust one another.
Margaret Wheatley, “When Change Is Out of Control”
Perhaps the most unexpected, challenging and delightful work of transformational leadership is when it becomes the shared work of friends.
“Refashioning narratives means refashioning loyalties.”
In a study of those who were faced with exactly that choice—stop drinking or you will die, stop smoking or you will die, change your diet now or you will die, the vast majority choose to risk death.
“We have the technology to fix the heart, but not change it.”
“Adaptive processes don’t require leadership with answers. It requires leadership that create structures that hold people together through the very conflictive, passionate, and sometimes awful process of addressing questions for which there aren’t easy answers.”10
In uncharted territory, trust is as essential as the air we breathe. If trust is lost, the journey is over.
One of my clients was thrust into a leadership role when her senior pastor abruptly resigned—right in the middle of a huge organizational transition process. Not only was the church in the midst of change, but now they were without their designated leader. My client, who had been one of the associate pastors, was being asked to shepherd the church through a very uncertain season. Frankly, most of the people in the pew assumed that she would be a placeholder for a few days until a “real” interim pastor could be found. To her, it didn’t matter whether she was the associate pastor, the interim
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or the senior pastor. She just did the thing she does best: she gathered her colleagues together and they started collaborating, literally “colaboring.” Together they talked, prayed, planned, prayed some more and talked even more. Soon, a few days turned into a few weeks, a few weeks into a few months, and without fanfare, huge disruption or significant financial cost the church slowly moved into its future preparing for a new pastor. The anxious church calmed down and continued their organizational transition. What was this bold leadership move? Convening the team.12 Creating a holding
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How is congregational trust increased in a world where pastors are now considered less inherently trustworthy than engineers or dentists?15 Through actions.
“There is only one thing that builds trust: the way people behave,”
Corporate trust is anchored in a leader’s own self-definition,
and that self-definition requires repeated, consistent actions. Trust comes from the congruence of leaders repeatedly doing what we say.
We have to be fully present to people.”
“Trust is gained like a thermostat and lost like a light switch.”
Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst every crisis. It is the internal capacity to keep promises to God, to self and to one’s relationships that consistently express one’s identity and values in spiritually and emotionally healthy ways.
It is about both character and affection, and self-knowledge and authentic self-expression.
People must be engaged in meaningful work together if they are to transcend individual concerns and develop new capacities.”
only “meaningful work together” develops the kinds of relationships that will endure into uncharted territory.
Some existing friendships may translate well (like Lewis and Clark, for sure), but for the sake of the ministry that we have been given, we must be committed to building purpose-filled “working friendships” with those who can make change happen with us.
For Christian leaders this means that ministry is not only the means to bring the gospel to the world, ministry together is how God makes a congregation into a corps that is ready to continually bring the gospel in new ways to a changing world.
most overlooked is their incredibly effective model of a leadership partnership.
“Lewisandclark”:
What Lewis and Clark and the men of the Corps of Discovery had demonstrated is that there is nothing that people cannot do if they get themselves together and act as a team.
But it is crucial to remember again that the goal of the expedition was not to build a family—it was to find a route to the Pacific Ocean. Similarly, the goal of the Christian faith is not simply to become more loving community but to be a community of people who participate in God’s mission to heal the world by reestablishing his loving reign “on earth as it is in heaven.” A
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
The most critical attribute a congregation must have to thrive in uncharted territory is a healthy organizational culture.
Culture is the set of default behaviors and usually unexamined or unreflective practices that make up the organizational life and ethos of a company, organization, family or church. In short, organizational culture is “the way we do things around here.”
Culture is not the aspired values printed on a poster or put up on a website. Culture is the combination of actual values and concrete actions that shape the warp and woof of organizational life.
Kotter explains that organizational culture is usually set by the founders of the group and reinforced through success.
The key words in Kotter’s definition are behaviors and values. Actions form the organizational culture, and that culture—like the DNA of a body—keeps reproducing the same values and behaviors. Note again, it’s not the aspired values that shape the church culture but the actual values that produce and are expressed in actual behaviors.
