Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

Communal Transformation for Mission

At the heart of this book is the conviction that congregational leadership in a post-Christendom context is about communal transformation for mission. Christian community is not merely about connection, care and belonging.

Spiritual transformation is not just about becoming more like Christ as an end in itself. In a post-Christendom world that has become a mission field right outside the sanctuary door, Christian community is about gathering and forming a people, and spiritual transformation is about both individual and corporate growth, so that they—together—par...

In Romans 8:29 we read how even the doctrine of election is not focused on our salvation but transformation: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” But consider this: What is t...

In Genesis 12 Abram is called by God to follow him. He is promised the blessings of becoming the father of a great people, a large family, with descendants more nume...

And the mission of his family would be to “bless all the families of the earth.” This call, this mission and charge would be expressed in Jesus as the kingdom of God that reestablishes God’s love and rul...

as Darrell Guder puts it, God’s calling is not solely for the benefit of the called who are incorporated into the called-out people, the ecclesia. God’s calling of a particular people is for God’s saving purposes for the world, for Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. For God so loved the world, God was, in Christ, reconciling the world. And for the sake of that world, created and fallen, God’s cal...

Leadership therefore is about the transformation of a congregation so that they, collectively, can fulfill the mission t...

Preaching is one tool in the pastor’s toolbox for nurturing and equipping a particular people to face the challenges to their shared mission. Today, preachi...

Leadership requires shared, corporate learning expressed in new shared, corporate functioning. In order to act or function differently in a changing world, all true leadership will require transformation.

To that end, all true leadership will be anchored in the principles of adaptive leadership.

Don’t Just Fix th...

According to Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, adaptive leadership is not about finding the best-known or most-available fix to a problem, but instead adapting to the changing environment or circumstances so that new possibilities arise for accura...

Just as an organism must adapt in order to thrive in a changing environment, so organizations need to adapt to the changing world around them without losing their core identity, thei...

This kind of leadership is complex and fraught with loss, fears and anxiety, causing us to feel off-balance and insecure. But it is the essence of leadership in a changing world. Because this is the capacity that is most unfamiliar to most pastoral leaders, the bulk of this book will focus on developing the resilience and problem-defining and problem-solving capabilities—ami...

Heifetz and Linsky make a distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges. Technical problems are those where the solutions are available to a...

For pastors, typical technical problems include preaching effective and faithful sermons; leading the people of God in worship, prayer and devotion; offering pastoral care; managing the church program, ministry and budget; counseling; and teaching the doctrines of faith.

They require education, experience and expertise. They are critical to the life, health and faith of a community and of individuals. They are as important to a congregation as was river navigation, hunting, military discipline, organization, negotiating with strangers, medicine and scientific methods of research were for Lewis and Clark. Heifetz and Linsky go to great lengths to emphasize that

there is nothing trivial about solving technical problems. Medical personnel save lives every day in the emergency room through their authoritative expertise because they have the right procedures, the right norms, and the right knowledge. Through our managerial know-how, we produce an economy full of products and services, many of them crucial to our daily lives. What makes a problem technical is not that it is trivial; but simply that its solution already lies within the organization’s repertoire.5 Adaptive challenges, by contrast, are those that “cannot be solved with one’s existing knowledge and skills, requiring people to make a shift in their values, expectations, attitudes, or habits of behaviour.”

These are “systemic problems with no ready answers” that arise from a changing environment and uncharted territory.

Uncharted leadership therefore requires transformation of the way problems have been approached in the past since there is no map for uncharted territories. An understanding of this kind of adaptive leadership have three characteristics:

a changing environment where there is no clear answer

the necessity for both leaders and follower to learn, especially the leader’s ow...

the unavoidable reality that a new solution wil...

To that end, I offer this definition of leadership: Leadership is energizing a community of people toward their own transformation in order to accomplish a shared mission in the face of a changing world.

Leadership (as differentiated from management or stewardship) is about transformation and mission, about growing and going, about personal development and corporate effectiveness—simultaneously.

So what does a transformational leader actually do? What is the combination of capacities and character necessary for a Christian leader in this changing world?

Transformational leadership is a skill set that can be learned but not easily mastered. It is not a role or position, but a way of being, a way of leading that is far different than most of us have learned before.

Transformational Leadership Model

Leadership in uncharted territory requires the transformation of the whole organization: both leaders and followers will become vastly different people after they have ventured forth to live out the mission of God in a changing world.

This transformational leadership lies at the overlapping intersection of three leadership components: technical competence, relational congruen...

These three spheres indicate the different ways that leaders function in a system in order to bring transformation. And function is a key word.

Nothing changes until there is a change in behavior. Nothing has changed until people start acting differently.

missional, pastoral leadership is about the transformation of a congregation so they, collectively, can fulfill the mission they, corporately, have been given, the leadership in a post-Christendom context requires different ways of behaving or functioning from the old list of preaching, liturgics, pastoral care and running meetings.

Transformational leadership begins in technical competence.

That is, leadership for transformation starts long before engaging the challenge of un...

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.

Transformational leadership is validated in relational congruence.

The credibility gained in competence must be increased through acts of demonstrated character, care and constancy. Think of it this way: If you were going to climb a difficult and potentially dangerous mountain, you would insist that your guide...

Relational congruence is a leader’s ability to be the same person in every setting, every relationship, every task.

The personal maturity and emotional stability to make calm, wise decisions creates the necessary health and trust in an organization that enable it to “let go, learn as you go and keep going.”

Leadership becomes transformational through the integration of adaptive capacity

Adaptive capacity is a leader’s ability to help his or her community “grow, face their biggest challenges and thrive.” It is the capacity to lead a process of shifting values, habits and behaviors in order to grow and discover solutions to the greatest challenges brought on by a changing world.

Transformation: The True Goal of Uncharted Leadership

For Christians engaged in the post-Christendom context, transformation for mission is at the very center of life.

We are not adapting to merely survive but to thrive! We are called to adapt to a changing world because we are called to reach that changing world.

We participate in Jesus’ mission to reestablish the will of God “on earth as it is in heaven,” while becoming more and more “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29) to the glory of God.

This dual vision of transformation is our churches’ reason for being. We exist to reveal the presence and character of God in the world, being transformed as we partic...

To put it another way: leadership into uncharted territory requires and results in transformation of the whole organization, starting with the leaders.

Your People Need You to Lead Them Even More Than Preach to them