Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

leadership is mostly expressed in actions, relationships and responsibility. Ed Friedman said, “The leader in the system is the one who is not blaming anyone.”10

We are not alone. The Spirit of God goes before us.

In the same way, before a

missional community can take on the challenges of a changing world, the leadership must earn the credibility that comes from competently handling the basic management skills that serve the organization.

Or to put it another way, unless we demonstrate that we are credible on the map, no one is going to follow us off the map.

Christian leaders are not just trusted with the Scriptures; we are also entrusted with souls.

This theme continues in the prophets, with a passionate

admonition that those who lead be good, fair and especially caring leaders—leaders after God’s “own heart” (Ezekiel 34; Jeremiah 3), who put the well-being of the people before their own, who are trustworthy and indeed love the people they serve.

Pastors of congregations need to be both personal and organizational.

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.

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.

A healthy culture is one where there is “minimal politics and confusion, high degrees of morale and productivity, and very low turnover among good employees.”13

organizational culture is shaped by the actions of people,

especially the leaders.

When leaders are perceived as technically competent, they gain credibility in the eyes of their followers.

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.”

“When what you are doing isn’t working, there are two things you cannot do: (1) Do what you have already done, (2) Do nothing.”

We decided to interview a cross-section of people we hadn’t seen in worship in at least three months, asking every elder, deacon and staff person to identify three people they knew well

who they also hadn’t seen in church since the following spring. They asked their friends three questions: When were you most excited or felt the sense of deepest connection to our church? What was happening during that time in your life

and in the life of our church? What has changed in your life or in the church since then that may have affected your sense of connection or excitement about our ...

for the future of our church?9 Note that none of these questions asked why they weren’t in worship, but tried to get bigger o...

We discovered that we didn’t need so much to attend to our worship as to our web of connections.

to focus our attention not on how to increase Sunday morning attendance but on how to strengthen and increase more points of connection for people, which would enable us to better pastor people through life transitions.12 And the truth be told, that actually required much more work

Note that competing values are difficult to navigate because each is valuable.

Leadership is taking people where they need to go and yet resist going.

The first question about leading into uncharted territory is not about change but about what will not change.

It is the humble and clear perspective about the particular value we as a church, organization or ministry have to offer our community or the larger world. It is a statement of uniqueness, not arrogance;

In one respect the clearest sign of a leader is that he or she begins whether anyone is following or not.

Leaders start being leaders by acting on conviction.

You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.

I have learned that the complexity of Christian organizations as family businesses requires more communication, not less, more clarity of agreements

and even more difficult conversations to name and navigate the role conflicts inherit in such a system.