Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

Relational congruence is the leader’s ability to cultivate strong, healthy, caring relationships; maintaining healthy boundaries; and communicating clear expectatio...

As one of my clients, a former Army Ranger and West Point graduate said to me, “The missi...

Relational congruence is more than consistent behavior; it is constancy that comes from genuine affection, warmth and indeed...

Relational congruence builds trust because it answers the two fundamental questions that every follower has for a leader: What are this person’s intentions toward me? And is ...

While relational congruence is often the result of significant amounts of crucial internal work through things like one-on-one discipleship, psychotherapy, coaching and spiritual direction, it is most powerfully developed during the early stages of the organizational transformation work itself.

Indeed, Wheatley notes, “There is one core principle for developing these relationships. People must be engaged in meaningful work together if they are to transcend individual concerns and develop new capacities.”

But only “meaningful work together” develops the kinds of relationships that will endure into uncharted territory.

Even more, it’s worth noting that strong social or spiritual friendships shouldn’t be depended on to ignite or sustain organizational change on their own.

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.

In a passage worthy of quoting at length, historian Stephen Ambrose describes the significance of the effectiveness of “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. Here you have thirty-two men who had become so close, so bonded, that when they heard a cough at night, they knew who instantly had a cold. They could see a man’s shape in the dark and know who it was. They knew who liked salt on his meat and who didn’t. They knew who was the best shot, the fastest runner, the one who could get a fire going the quickest on a rainy day. Around the campfire, they got to know about each other’s parents and loved ones, and each other’s hopes and dreams. They had come to love each other to the point where they

The Congruence That Creates a Congregational Corps

For Christians who have answered the call to follow the Master who also calls us friends (John 15:15) and gives us to each other as brothers and sisters (John 19:26-27), this relational congruence is even more critical. For the mission of Jesus entrusted to his followers (John 20:21) is expressed to the world through the love that the disciples have for each other (John 13:34-35). 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.”

Relationally congruent leaders not only demonstrate constancy and care, but do so throughout the whole organization. For the pastor a missional congregation must first be a trusting and caring congregation, a congregation where there is a healthy culture that creates the context for a congregation to become not only a corps, but also a Corps of Discovery.

- 6 - Eating Strategy for Breakfast

If one wishes to distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leaders create and change culture, while management and administration act within culture. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership

Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

What do we mean when we talk about “organizational culture,” and what does it have to do with relational congruence and building the trust necessary to lead a church into uncharted territory?

this chapter is meant to help you take stock of what you have to take with you as you go off the map and into an uncertain future. Here is the key idea: The most critical attribute a congregation must have to thrive in uncharted territory is a healthy organizational culture.

Understanding delicate and often undefined dynamics and engaging the leader’s relational congruence are both necessary to cultivate a healthy culture that will sustain the mission of the organization.

Organizational...

Culture, as Andy Crouch describes it, is “what we ma...

It is the combination of “the language we live in, the artifacts that we make use of, the rituals we engage in, our approach to ethics, the institutions we are a part of and the narratives we inhabit [that] have the power to shape our lives profoundly.”

Organizational culture, as defined by John Kotter, is the “group norms of behavior and the underlying shared values that help keep those norms in place.”

In short, organizational culture is “the way we do things around here.”

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. When a value leads to a behavior that results in a desired outcome, then the values and behaviors become embedded in the group’s DNA.

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. It’s not enough to say that “we value creativity” if every creative idea is immediately criticized.

It’s not enough for a church to “be committed to evangelism” if there are no adult baptisms. In the words of Dallas Willard, “to believe ...

The actual behaviors of those in authority express and shape the actual values of the organizational culture.

This is critical for the leader who feels called to take a church or organization into uncharted territory. No matter how much power and authority you perceive resides in your title or position, no matter how eloquently you articulate the call of God and the needs of the world, no matter how well you strategize, plan and pray, the actual behaviors of the congregation—the default functioning, the organizational DNA—dominate in times of stress and change.

For missional theologian JR Woodward this “unseen culture” is more important than strategy, vision or planning in determining a congregation’s health, openness to change and missional conviction.

And, especially in the missional conversation, very often the church that struggles most with mission to its neighbors has decades of success sending missionaries overseas.

Alignment Toward a Healthy Culture

JR Woodward writes, “While management acts within culture, leadership creates culture.”

As John Kotter writes, “The idea of getting people moving in the same direction appears to be an organizational problem. But what executives need to do is not organize people but align them.”

In contrast, a healthy culture is aligned, cohesive and clear.12 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.”

But organizational health is a tangible reality that is both worth fighting for and necessary. According to Patrick Lencioni, “organizational health” is the “single greatest advantage” any company, organization or congregation can have toward accomplishing its mission, and is perhaps the single biggest differentiating quality between successful and less successful organizations.

So, how do we create a healthy culture or change an unhealthy one? If this is one of the primary responsibilities and results of leadership, then let me suggest three critical elements in the leader’s own functioning for contributing to a healthy organizational culture: clarity, embodiment and love.

Clarity

For Patrick Lencioni, organizational clarity and organizational health ar...

After affirming the discipline of a cohesive team that creates agreements and accountability, Lencioni then advocates three more disciplines for a healthy organization: “create clarity,”...

As soon as an executive team builds the cohesiveness that comes from trust, they immediately start laboring for clarity of shared values, purpose, communication and behavior...

I have already mentioned it: shared values are the organization. If “leadership shapes culture by default or design,” then whether it is a more traditional hierarchical organization or an emerging network, in a world that is now increasingly diverse, decentralized, post-Christendom and flat, this work of instilling and protecting shared values is more important than ever.

the Scriptures we see this concept put forth by Paul in some of the strongest language of the New Testament. “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

What we are calling “shared values,” Paul terms as the “same mind.” And that same mind is more than thinking the same way; it is about common cause, common care and a shared commitment to look out for the others. Paul continues: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:1-4).

But today a genuine culture shift requires voluntary submission to shared values. No longer will church members simply accept the values of their leaders as their own. No longer will people dutifully submit their own ideals for the sake of a group. Before leaders begin any transformational work, cultivating a healthy environment for aligned shared values to guide all decision making must be a priority. Indeed, the values must be truly shared.

While this certainly includes lots of communication (what Brafman and Beckstrom call “maintaining the drumbeat of the ideology”),16 it is also about education (teaching the values), wise collaborative discernment (determining when missional effectiveness requires change)17 and perhaps most importantly mutual accountability for living out those values. Or what I like to call “embodiment.”

Embod...