Part 6 (1/2)
Crossing paths with a wide variety of people is a good spiritualpractice. Considering their stories and circ.u.mstances, their hards.h.i.+ps and joys, can do much to center us strongly in G.o.d. When we move beyond the traditional quiet-time approach, we realize that all of life is spiritual formation.
The experiences, observations, and responses we have in life are the crucible for transformation. Interacting with G.o.d when we see a need, have a thought or a feeling, become aware of an opportunity-all become grounds for connecting with Him. The wrestling, the frustration, the submission, the cry for help-all these things shape our hearts, minds, and souls. They are all moments of invitation for G.o.d to enter our lives and change us.
Our brokenness becomes a place of spiritual formation. It's easy to avoid this brokenness by pleading for grace-or rather, ”pseudo grace.” We rename it and compare it with others, all in the hope that we'll be graded on a curve and found to be not as bad as someone else. But ironically, the very thing we shy away from has the capacity to bless us in amazing ways if we will just face it.
Two of the most powerful things that G.o.d offers us are His grace and His forgiveness. So rather than avoid our sin and brokenness, we need to name them. And then, those places can become the very places where Jesus appears, bringing with Him the cross and the empty tomb.
Sometimes, quiet time is nothing more than a rule bywhich we measure whether or not we are ”good enough.” But the point of the Cross is that there is no ”good enough.” There is nothing that you and I can bring that can restore our relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d.
Leaders who are appropriately connected to the reality of their brokenness and the gift of G.o.d's forgiveness are able to easily utter the words that build community: ”I'm sorry.” Great leaders say it authentically and often. It is impossible for people who sin to build relations.h.i.+ps and not have to apologize on a regular basis. Too often, our pride has us choking on those two little words.
But deeply forgiven people are deeply grateful people. Jesus made this clear in His parable of the one who was forgiven much. Deeply forgiven people are capable of genuinely forgiving others.
Here is one final thought on leading yourself. There is a profound pa.s.sage in John 16. In this Scripture, Jesus has made it clear to His disciples that His death is imminent. In addition, He has told them that in the face of that, they will soon abandon Him. ”You will leave me all alone,” He tells them. But in the next breath He says, ”Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me” (verse 32).
That description of a soul connected to G.o.d, even when everyone else is gone, is the bedrock of a life of faith. Are you living a rhythm of life that is weaving that in you?
Leaders often say that leaders.h.i.+p is lonely. Jesus said that kind of aloneness makes you realize that G.o.d is always there. There is a difference between being left alone and being without a Presence.
There will come a day that isn't about your leaders.h.i.+p at all, the day when you find that your final breath is near. That is the main point of self-leaders.h.i.+p-a life spent fighting and connecting with G.o.d so that, in those last moments, you are not alone.
T-s.h.i.+rts, Redux.
AT ITS HEART, VISION is about a journey we are taking together. The destination is motivating; we can hardly believe we might actually arrive someday. But in addition to that, we find that along the way we are changed. Vision is always about the ”we” and the ”I.” is about a journey we are taking together. The destination is motivating; we can hardly believe we might actually arrive someday. But in addition to that, we find that along the way we are changed. Vision is always about the ”we” and the ”I.”
A powerful combination.
By myself, I cannot implement a systemic solution to extreme poverty, but with a group of like-minded and committed people, I can. By myself, I cannot change my character or spiritually form myself, but in community, I can.
A vision compels us to look at a brighter future, and it insists that we be changed in the process. A vision isn't big enough if it leaves someone unscathed. Vision is challenging, both to the work we do and the people we are.
The job of a leader is to devise creative, compelling, and repet.i.tive ways to communicate the vision to the people. Vision is simply the motivation, and motivation implies doing something. What we are going to do and how-now that that gets everyone in the game. gets everyone in the game.
Recently we did some follow-up work with a church that had just shut down for the weekend to engage everyone in serving opportunities throughout the community. They had been planning this weekend for months. They had researched and interviewed potential partner organizations they could join with for those two days in reaching out to the needy in their area.
They had communicated both the vision and the plan with the congregation for a few months prior to the actual weekend. People got excited to serve with their families or their home groups in the areas of elderly people, education, food banks, and shelters.
Various opportunities were available and people signed up for s.h.i.+fts to read to patients in nursing homes or to do manual labor at some of the area schools that were in desperate need of refurbis.h.i.+ng. Slots were available for people to bring, stock, and distribute food items in three local food banks, and meal preparation and cleaning were needed at two nearby homeless shelters.
It was a bold step for the leaders to shut down the church on a Sunday. In fact, there was a bit of initial resistance to that. But when the vision was communicated, and pictures were shown and stories told about the need, eventually those complaints were replaced with sign-ups.
As the weekend got closer, the decision was made to have one Sunday evening service for anyone who wanted to share and reflect on the experience. I showed up to partic.i.p.ate in that service and to do work with the staff team the next day, and I was overwhelmed by what I saw. On Sunday night, hundreds of church people, most of them still wearing work clothes, poured into the sanctuary. They should have been exhausted. They were dirty, and they didn't smell so great. They should have gone home, but I got the distinct impression that wild horses couldn't have kept them away.
The event had clearly tapped into something, something you rarely see even in a wors.h.i.+p service.
As a leader, when you are able to drive down deep and get to the ”I want” motivation, the organization becomes a perpetual-motion machine. It no longer requires as much of your own energy, because those around you have a zeal for the job. And that energy is enough to carry all of you collectively well into the future.
Vision needs to be nurtured, and the conversations that your team is having about the issue of vision are critical. I have a friend who is currently researching and writing a book on parenting. One of the most fascinating findings he has uncovered is this: As parents, if you and yourspouse spend ten minutes a week talking about your children-what their current issues are, what you want to work with them on-you are in the top 0.2 percent of the population.
When you are able to drive down deep and get to the ”I.want” motivation, the organization becomes a perpetual-motion machine I don't think it is much of a stretch to extrapolate that idea to leaders.h.i.+p. If you are talking with the people on your team even once a month about the vision and their role in it, I think you are way ahead of most teams I encounter.
If you set aside one hour a month for a robust conversation with your leaders.h.i.+p team about the vision and its current implications for each of you personally and for the organization as a whole, you're probably far beyond most others.
You want to grow your leaders.h.i.+p team into a leaders.h.i.+p community that stimulates growth in each member. If they are done well, the conversations you initiate, the debates you partic.i.p.ate in, and the decisions you make all foster and fuel the vision. The vision continues to be a shared vision when everyone is invited to partic.i.p.ate in talking about it and shaping it into the future.
In Axis, our vision was made up of three strategic com-ponents: creating vibrant, authentic community; helping our friends to discover Jesus; and serving those in need. As a team, we regularly got together to talk about these components.
Creating vibrant, authentic community sounds great, but it is really hard work, and we didn't want to lose sight of that or let it become an obstacle to our purpose. During these meetings, we invited each other into open and honest dialogue about the ways in which we were experiencing or not experiencing community. Sometimes our conversations were about ways in which we were failing to create biblical community, or ways in which it was breaking down within our organization. Other times, we talked about the rich and meaningful ways in which we saw our community growing.
Always, we asked ourselves this question: Are we as a team creating and experiencing the kind of community that we are hoping others in Axis will?
During one conversation where we were talking about helping our friends to discover Jesus, one of our staff members realized that working in ministry had isolated him from people who didn't know G.o.d. He knew that our vision included him, so he decided to do something about it.
In addition to his job with us, he took on a small part-time job at a local Starbucks. There he worked alongside people his age from different walks of life. He built friends.h.i.+ps with them and found ways to serve them and know them.
If the vision doesn't cost us something, we aren't partic.i.p.ating. Because of this guy's decision, the rest of us began to take our non-Christian friends.h.i.+ps more seriously; rarely did a meeting go by when we weren't asking him how things were going at Starbucks.
Our leaders.h.i.+p team didn't simply have the task of helping Axis serve the marginalized, however. We knew that we we were called to be active partic.i.p.ants in that lifestyle as well, so from time to time we talked about the ways in which we were actively serving the underresourced. were called to be active partic.i.p.ants in that lifestyle as well, so from time to time we talked about the ways in which we were actively serving the underresourced.
Much of the work of vision is planting seeds, ideas for doing things differently. Like seeds, much of the transformation happens slowly at first, beneath the surface. There is a dormancy period, where from every view it appears as though nothing is happening.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Here is where the persistence and patience of a leader is needed more than ever. Patience Patience and and persistence persistence are not words that leaders normally gravitate toward. But they are critical, as are constant soil prepping, planting, watering, and feeding. are not words that leaders normally gravitate toward. But they are critical, as are constant soil prepping, planting, watering, and feeding.
Ask any schoolteacher how often students have returned with the words ”What you taught me really made such a difference in my life.” Many teachers are taken by surprise when this first happens, because when the student was in the cla.s.sroom, the teacher saw no indication that he or she was even listening.
The interesting thing about seeds is that they contain much of the energy and direction necessary for growth within themselves. Then they are buried underground, where much of the rest of what they need exists. And they lie there.
Sometimes there is absolutely no sign of growth for months. In fact, the ground looks exactly as it did the day you buried those little suckers.
And then one day, you see it. At first you have to blink, not sure if it is what you think it is, it is so small. But sure enough, there it is: a tiny little green shoot. And once it gets its head above ground, it makes up for lost time, growing so quickly you could swear you can see it getting taller almost daily.
It is there that we see that convergence of the seed, the soil, the depth of planting, the water, the sun, and time. Perfect conditions for growth.
Creating a leaders.h.i.+p culture does much the same thing. The vision, the values, the shared goals, the meetings, the conversations, the relations.h.i.+ps . . . all these things work together to create a climate that supports and encourages growth.
And that climate also creates vibrancy and allows people to flourish in such a way that those things become characteristic of both the individuals and the organization.
The vision, the values, the shared goals, the meetings, the conversations, the relations.h.i.+ps . . . all these things work together to create a climate that supports and encourages growth.
Scot McKnight writes about the conditions underwhich people change. His conclusions are applicable here, in the context of vision and creating a leaders.h.i.+p climate and culture.
Scot says that people are most open to new information and to change when they are either on a quest or in a crisis. This is importantinformation for leaders to use in shaping their teams.
I want people on my leaders.h.i.+p team who are on a quest, people who are naturally curious and are drawn to the journey of transformation. People who aren't satisfied with the status quo or life as usual.
People who are on a quest ask questions. (I am sure there is an etymological connection here.) They humbly consider their sins and weaknesses as possible contributing factors to disagreements or relational breakdowns. They read and learn and apply. They are drawn to growth.
People who are on a quest are courageous. It is much easier to live ”questless,” taking the path of least resistance, but people who are on a quest are willing to live with discomfort and ambiguity, knowing that eventually those things will cause the seed to grow. People who are on a quest are transformed.