Faith Venture

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?

One reason I like to read Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz and other books) is that he takes the time to think and has the courage to write ideas that I’ve played with for years. Or at least ask the questions.

In a blog post this week, he asks if the church should be led by teachers and scholars. As he puts it, the early leaders were fishermen, tax collectors, at least one political activist (Simon the Zealot–that being a radical political party).

I do not subscribe to the popular theory perpetuated by scholars that these were uneducated, illiterate peasants. But I think they were students, not scholars The teachers and scholars of the day were the Pharisees and scribes (as identified in the New Testament).

Think about today. You pretty much have to have a Master’s degree to be a church leader. That is a symbol of scholarly achievement. But Miller points out that much of the division of the church is a result of scholarly disagreement or “academic divisions.” He says, “The reason I don’t understand my Lutheran neighbor is because a couple of academics got into a fight hundreds of years ago. And the rest of the church followed them because, well, they were our leaders. So now we are divided under divisions caused by arguments a laboring leadership might never have noticed or cared about.”

Miller says that we think Christian growth comes from studying more. But Jesus pushed his disciples out and said something like, “you know enough, you have a guide, go out and teach the world to obey my commands.” It’s actually the doing that leads to the growing.

I teach. But I’d rather be a guide than a scholar. I gave up that life path many years ago.

You can’t witness to theory. You can witness to what you’ve experienced and then reflected upon. This Lent, perhaps you should become less reliant on Scholars and Teachers for your growth and go out and do what Jesus wanted. After all, that’s one reason he died.