Faith Venture

In Andy Stanley’s latest leadership podcast, he discussed leading through change. Many of you are involved in leadership roles at work. His thoughts are just as valuable there as in your leadership roles within your faith community.

He always goes back to lessons learned from Nehemiah. Leadership can be studied in three phases. Mission/vision, model, product/program. The leader must be on a mission with a vision of the objective. The leader will communicate that vision. Then the product or program must be worked on to achieve the vision.

The key question as you are working down from vision to doing is “What is the best way to …?”

Stanley is very bright, but he may be perhaps a bit optimistic about the business world. He said that in business it’s pretty simple. If it doesn’t sell, they quit selling it. They move on to something that will sell. Sadly, I’ve experienced businesses that stubbornly cling on, trying to sell something that the market doesn’t want. Just like the church leaders he discusses who, when a program doesn’t seem to be working, seek to blame it on external forces rather than changing the program to something that works better.

That’s where Stanley says you’ll run into the most resistance to change. At the “doing” level. When you ask people to change what they do every day, they get resistant and can fall back into old habits. We don’t have people signing up for the mission to women in Tijuana? Some say let’s keep trying. Others say, we need to do it differently. The ministry to youth doesn’t seem to be clicking? Instead of saying, “It’s just kids today,” say, “What would be a better way?” But then people have to change what they do during the preparation and “class” times.

People really won’t change how they do things until they are shown that there is a better way. Getting some small successes along the way reinforces the new “habit” and progress happens.

Communicate your vision. Lead people into changing the way they do things. Move your organization forward.

I’ve just returned from a business trip, and I’ve been thinking about leadership. Had a chance to see the foremost leader in the industry segment that I cover in my “other life,” and also saw the results of that leadership in the people of a multi-billion dollar company.

So I began to think about leadership within the faith community as a spiritual practice or discipline. Are you a leader? Small group or major church, there are many leaders. In my years of involvement, I’ve seen leaders succeed and fail. I’ve seen some start fast and then lose momentum and falter.

What if we all sometimes stepped back from our busy lives and reflected upon our own experiences and attitudes? What are our motivations? Have we even considered that? Are we just in a leadership role because someone asked us to take on a job?

Leadership as a spiritual practice involves consciously aligning our vision of where to lead with our spiritual calling. Leadership as a spiritual practice involves valuing the people on the team (or even building a team) and valuing those whom you are serving.

I recorded this podcast about leadership. It was targeted to my readership on manufacturing and automation, but I suddenly realized its relevance for this readership, too. I am on iTunes, although these podcasts are all about manufacturing. Perhaps I’ll start another series for this audience.

How do you treat people? How do the organizations to which you belong treat people? Your church? Are you expected to sit, listen and then do what you’re told?

Perhaps the most important book I’ll read this year is Gary Hamel’s “What Matters Now.” The noted management thinker proposes a new way of  management and leadership in organizations in his latest work.

He tells two stories of organizations–an Anglican parish (England) and a bank (in New Zealand)–whose leaders decided to do things differently. They decided to empower “front line” people to make decisions, get passionate about what they are doing and let them do their work. “If you treat people like adults, they’ll behave as adults,” said one of the leaders.

As a result of reading those stories last night, my mediations this morning massaged that idea. I know “managers” who treat people like children–and they are the kindly father who guides them out of his wisdom. Of course, that doesn’t work today. I am in organizations and I am acquainted with other organizations that are so structured with rules and where the leaders see their main job as retaining their positions that they treat people as children to be led or numbers to stroke their egos about the size of their organizations. Those organizations are doomed. It may be a lingering death or a quick demise, but they are doomed.

My habit to continue to develop? Treat people with whom I interact with respect due to an adult. It may not be easy, but I think that’s what Jesus did. And I’d like to be like that.

I wrote Friday about trust. To go deeper into the word, Gary Hamel, writing in his latest book “What Matters Now,” says, “Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, it is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.”

That has been a problem with leadership in the Christian church for centuries. Especially so maybe today. In the United States it has become possible for preachers using the reach of TV to build empires accumulating much wealth. But it’s hard to emphasize that and have followers think you have their best interests at heart. The empire eventually crashes.

We are supposedly living with the “Me Generation” in charge. There are many people who think “me first.” This attitude is often reflected in our political leadership. When I was studying sales (to become one of them), I was taught to tune into my customer’s radio station WII-FM — what’s in it for me. Too often that is what the salesman is thinking–but about himself, not the customer.

At this time of year especially, think about Jesus–not to mention Peter, Paul, John, Stephen and the others. They certainly didn’t exhibit the WII-FM attitude. Thank God.

It is a challenge to us to try to live counter to the prevailing culture of self-centeredness. When we lead, do we exhibit truthfulness, amity and good will? That’s a good thing to stop and think about.

Luke records in the book of Acts that Paul, Silas and Timothy (and evidently Luke himself) decided to go from Asia Minor to Macedonia. When they were in Thessaloniki, “the Jews” stirred up a lot of problems for them, so they went on to Berea. Well, the Jews from Thessaloniki heard about it and went to Berea to stir up more trouble.

The people there decided to ship Paul off to Athens while Silas and Timothy stayed behind.

I got to thinking–there must be two types of people. And that may be what helped Paul have so much success. Paul evidently was the argumentative one. I bet some would even say obnoxious (especially if you didn’t agree with him). This made him a divisive figure. So when trouble visited Berea, they must have said, “Let’s ship Paul out of here.”

But Silas and Timothy stayed behind for some time. They must have been the teacher/pastor/counselor types of people. When they left, there was a strong church in place.

Bet we still need two kinds of people. Oh, there is also a third type–the ones who do nothing. Which are you?