Leading through the Church – Page 13 – Chris Marshall Resources

Leaders Communicate

The title of today’s post may seem obvious: Leaders communicate. After all, it’s impossible to lead anyone unless we communicate expectations, goals, and an understanding of what it would look like to “win” or succeed. The truth is communicating effectively isn’t easy. That’s why it’s an essential part of leadership. I once heard John Maxwell say that the difference between educators and communicators is that educators make simple things complex, while communicators make complicated things simple. With apologies to educators I have experienced the truth of Maxwell’s statement all too often in my many years of formal education. While not all communicators are leaders, unless we communicate effectively we will never be great leaders. That means we must make complicated matters as simple as possible.

I’m not saying we must “dumb things down,” making matters simplistic. I’m saying we must make matters as clear and simple as possible. Let me give you an example of what I mean through the use of a single word: utilize. Back in 1984 when I bought my first “portable” computer (It weighed 27 pounds!), a Kaypro IV+88, the word processing program had a feature, which would automatically make a document more “scholarly.” When you applied the feature it always changed the word “use” into “utilize.” There were dozens of other words this feature changed (transformed?), but have always remembered the use/utilize pair. To this day any time I hear someone say “utilize” I automatically think, “You mean ‘use.'” (There’s nothing wrong with the word utilize, but in my mind I always think of it as attempting to make something more complicated than it needs to be, so why utilize it?) What’s my point? My point is why say, “Unless we utilize our cognitive skills in order to overcome the plethora of provocations from our antagonists our endeavor will experience its demise,” when you could say, “Unless we use our minds, our competitors are going to destroy us.”? Or even, “Unless we think we’re going to lose!”

During my last year of seminary in one of my final theology classes, the professor told us that during our three years at Princeton we had learned a whole new vocabulary, one that we could use (utilize?) to ensure that no one in the churches we served would ever understand a thing we said. After all, we had paid for and studied to attain a Master of Divinity degree from one of the most prestigious seminaries in the world. Then he said, “I have always believed that if one is always speaking over everyone’s head when he or she communicates, it isn’t necessarily a sign of intelligence. You may just be a poor marksman.”

I have always remembered that statement. Our goal as leaders is to make sure that our listeners, learners, or followers are clear about what we have said. We ought not to care about how intelligent they think we are, because if they can’t understand what we’re saying it shows we’re not as smart as we think we are. When we communicate to others, the best way for them to follow us is for us to make it clear where we’re going! Our effectiveness as leaders rests in large part on our effectiveness as communicators. In order for everyone to head in the same direction, everyone needs to know that direction. As Michael Lukaszewski points out in his new book Streamline in order for everyone to be on the same page, there needs to be an actual page that communicates clearly what is expected.

Another important thing I’ve learned about communicating over the years is the less time I have to say something, the longer it takes me to prepare to say it. Anyone can be fairly clear given half an hour to say something. But if you have to say the same thing in fifteen minutes or five, it becomes much more difficult. Clarity is vital in communication and leadership, and yet we have often been led to believe that people will listen to us simply because we are leaders. Leaders can never take it for granted that others are following us. We must never assume that just because we hold a particular position that makes us leaders. We can’t assume that just because we are speaking our listeners are understanding. Particularly in American culture leadership must be earned. If we can make complicated matters as simple as possible when we communicate people will be more inclined to follow our leadership. That is as it ought to be. After all, if our business or church or organization has a mission to carry out and a vision worth pursuing, we must communicate both as clearly and effectively as possible. Otherwise, people will have to figure it out for themselves, which leads to division as they come up with their own interpretation of the mission and vision, or they will go somewhere else where the mission and vision are clear.

Here’s to leading better by communicating effectively–today!

Expecting the Unexpected

One of the daily challenges leaders face is the unexpected. Great leaders expect the unexpected. What does that mean? It means that great leaders never assume any day will go the way it was planned. While having a plan and working that plan is crucial to great leadership, we must include margin in those plans for the unexpected, and we must be able to discern which of the unexpected interruptions in our lives is both important and urgent, and which ones are not. I received a call yesterday afternoon at 4:35, which was not only totally unexpected, but required changing my entire evening, because it was both important and urgent.

When I first started in the ministry more than three decades ago, I made the mistake of assuming that every unexpected phone call or interruption was cause for immediate action, that is they were both urgent and important. That was a mistake. After fielding a few phone calls from folks who “had to see [me] as soon as possible,” then rushing to their homes only to find out that they wanted to discuss an idea they had for an upcoming social event at the church, or a better way to order worship, or other “urgent” matters that were neither urgent nor important, I realized that I did NOT need to respond to every unexpected call or interruption in order to be a good pastor or leader. In fact, when I responded to every unexpected call or interruption I became less effective overall as a pastor and leader.

The first step in overcoming the trap of the unexpected was learning to screen the calls or interruptions, before I decided to invest a lot of time in them. When someone called and said, “Pastor, I need to see you right away,” or stopped by my study and asked, “Do you have a minute?” I learned to ask the caller, “Why is it you need to see me right now?” Quite often the answer would be, “Oh, I was just thinking about something that I think would help out the church, and I’m free right now, so I thought I would call.” I generally followed up a response like that with, “What was your idea?” The idea would usually take about ten minutes to discuss over the phone, and there would be no need for a visit. Occasionally, the need was urgent and important, but rarely. In those cases I would adjust my schedule and go if at all possible, or find someone else on the leadership team to do so.

I learned to respond to the people who stopped by and asked, “Do you have a minute?” By saying, “Yes, I have two. How may I help you.” This usually elicited laughter, but often meant a brief chat, rather than an extended interruption to my day.

Yesterday’s unexpected call was both important and urgent, so I rearranged my schedule. It meant missing some time with Nancy, but since I no longer put her on the back burner often, and generally only when the unexpected is both important and urgent, she was fine with changing our plans for the evening.

Over time as you become responsible for more in your leadership role, it is helpful to train those around you to screen interruptions for you. This is particularly true if you have a receptionist or administrative assistant. You need to help them learn that they serve you best when they determine whether an unexpected call or interruption is both urgent and important or not. Many times they can handle the situation, and keep you free to pursue your plan. Since I work from home most of the time, it is extremely important to me that the receptionists at the church screen “urgent” calls for “the pastor.” Since we have five pastors on staff, the receptionists need to determine the nature of the caller’s “urgent” matter, and if it truly is both important and urgent, which pastor or other staff member or volunteer is best suited to respond to it.

If you’re thinking, “I don’t have a receptionist or other staff members on whom to rely,” neither did I at first. If you’re the point person, all the more reason to make sure when the unexpected comes that you find out whether it’s important and urgent and if it isn’t it’s okay to be brief, or to say you aren’t available to address the matter. While it is the nature of every Christian leader to be a servant leader, we must always remember that our first service is to Jesus, and if we are being subservient to people with time on their hands, who think they have to see us, because we’re afraid to disappoint or upset them, then we aren’t going to be serving Jesus first in most cases. For example, If I’m writing my message for the weekend, and my phone rings unexpectedly and I answer it, even if it’s only a five minute call, I will lose fifteen to twenty minutes of message prep time, by the time I get refocused and back to the important matter of writing it. If I’m actually called away by that unexpected phone call, I may lose a whole morning or afternoon. Before I do that I want to make sure that it’s a matter of urgency and importance. I have a rule of thumb when it comes to phone calls and I’m working on something important: If the call is important, they’ll call back, or they’ll leave me a message and I can call them back.

My only exceptions to that is if I know I’m going to receive a call, and have planned to take it when it comes, or It’s Nancy, Abby or Emmy. I always take calls from them, because I know they wouldn’t call me during my work day unless it was a matter of importance.

One final challenge in closing: Don’t let your fear of missing out on something important keep you responding to EVERY unexpected call or interruption in your life. No one can do everything, and since Jesus already died on the cross to save us from sin and death, the role of “Savior” has been taken! That leaves us in the role of faithful servants who steward our time well, in order to serve Him best and advance His Kingdom.

Here’s to leading better by responding to the unexpected immediately only when it’s both important and urgent–today!

Lifelong Learning and Leadership

Lifelong learning is to leadership what food is to our bodies. Unless we continue to learn every day, eventually our leadership becomes stale. Over time we lose our ability to lead effectively, and we certainly won’t be able to lead into the future. That’s because with the passage of time everything changes, and if we aren’t learning we won’t be changing, which means we won’t be able to lead.

I’m a Christian and the pastor of a local church that has been growing fairly rapidly for our area of the country for the past several years. We have grown from a church of less than 400 worshipers per weekend a few years ago, to one with nearly 800 today. Last fall I gathered our staff together and told them something I had heard John Maxwell say about leadership many years before: The people who got you where you are, aren’t likely going to get you where you’re going. I told everyone that if we were going to be able to continue to lead effectively into the foreseeable future in a church family that continues to grow we would need to be different leaders tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year than we were that day. In other words, we needed to keep learning so we would become different leaders ourselves.

Having served as a pastor for more than three decades now, I have learned a great deal about leadership in the church. One of the things I have learned is the best possible scenario when it comes to building a staff is to find the right people, invest your life into them, and encourage them to keep learning and growing all their lives. As they do that they will add value to your local church, and one of two things will happen for them: they will continue to grow as leaders and find fulfillment in your church, or they will continue to grow as leaders and be called to serve God’s Kingdom somewhere else. Either way it’s a win, because God’s Kingdom is served. My goal is for folks to stay at New Life for as long as they continue to be challenged in their ministries, to learn and grow, and to contribute to the equipping of God’s people for the work of ministry. Personally, I always hope that is a very long time. That’s because ministry is a more relational task than some occupations or callings. If staff come and go at a rapid rate they don’t have the opportunity to build relationships with other leaders, or with the folks of the church, and that negatively impacts the church’s health and growth.

If you’re a follower of Jesus and you’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound very spiritual,” I understand. I also believe that kind of thinking is what has often caused church leaders to rely on prayer–which we must–without expending the time necessary to learn and grow in leadership, and to do everything possible to cultivate effective leadership in our churches. While prayer is a spiritual activity that is crucial to our personal growth and development as well as to our growth and development as local churches, it is no less spiritual to develop our personal abilities and our spiritual gifts and to use them passionately in serving God’s Kingdom.

If you’re a business leader and you’re thinking this doesn’t having application to your business, I would challenge you to consider that your social awareness ability to build teams, both components of EI (emotional intelligence) are vital to the long-term health and growth of your business. It is always in a business owner’s or manager’s best interest to encourage and challenge lifelong learning in your workers. If they get so well equipped that they’re promoted or go elsewhere to pursue employment that will still be to your long-term benefit, because while they’re with you they will raise the effectiveness of your business, and the overall positivity of your business culture.

There is no down side to lifelong learning in leadership, particularly if everyone in the company, the church, or the organization is committed to it, because as President John F. Kennedy reminded us long ago: a rising tide raises all the ships. I challenge and encourage you, whatever your role in life right now, but particularly if you are the lead or senior pastor of a church, or the owner or manager of a company to make a commitment to learning every day. Incorporate it into your calendar and do it. Everyone will benefit from that commitment–everyone!

Here’s to leading better by learning something new–today!

Leading When You Don’t Feel Like It!

One of the biggest challenges to leading others is that sometimes you just don’t feel like leading. Whether it’s a moment when those you’re leading are being difficult, or you’d rather be having fun, or you have to make a tough decision, or any of a hundred other matters that you just don’t feel like going through, leading often doesn’t feel good.

Here’s the key: if we only lead when we feel like leading, we aren’t leaders! Leadership requires that we do the right thing regardless of how it feels at the moment. Mark Lutz, our Discipleship Pastor at New Life, talks about fifteen minute decisions versus fifteen year decisions. A fifteen minute decision is made based on how you’re feeling at the moment. You have a deadline coming up, but the phone rings and a friend asks, “Would you like to go to the movie tonight?” (Or the ball game, or for a bike ride, or anything that sounds like fun to you.) How do you respond? If you respond by how you feel, or how it would feel to spend the evening with your friend, which is a fifteen minute response, you may well have a fun evening, while pushing off the deadline. Maybe you can still make the deadline, or maybe you miss it. Either way your leadership takes a back seat to your feelings, and you take a step backward in your leadership, especially the effectiveness of your leadership fifteen years from now.

On the other hand, if your friend calls and you’re caught up on your leadership tasks, meaning you have some margin in your schedule, investing an evening with the friend will feel good AND it will add value to your life. Investing time and energy in developing meaningful friendships is a fifteen year decision, because fifteen years down the road you’re going to need some good friends. So, it isn’t always a black and white matter when it comes to what you do with your time at any given moment. The point is when the opportunity comes to avoid leadership by doing something that’s more fun, or that will make you feel better in the moment, how you determine what to do needs to be based on the fifteen year view, rather than the fifteen minute view.

I’ll be following up on this topic tomorrow as we talk about how important it is to schedule our time as leaders, so we know whether an “opportunity’ is actually an opportunity or a time waster that’s really a fifteen minute decision. For today let’s consider one specific time when it will always feel better in the next fifteen minutes not to do what we know we need to do as leaders: when we have to make a tough decision or face a task that we absolutely know we are going to dislike in the short-term. Some have referred to this as “eating the frog.” In other words, if you have to make a difficult decision, or you have to do something that you don’t want to do in the short-term, because it won’t feel good in the moment, that is your “frog.” So, when is the best time to eat a frog? NOW. The reason it’s now, is because it’s never going to feel good to eat the frog, and the longer we put it off, the more time we waste in thinking about having to do it. Great leaders learn to eat the frog first thing in the morning, that way the rest of the day is free to pursue the easier matters on the agenda. Once again, the morning is the best time to eat the frog if we must eat it in order to be an effective leader. Sometimes we end up eating frogs that weren’t ours to eat in the first place. Maybe we ought to have delegated the task to someone else, for whom it would have been enjoyable. Maybe it was a frog no one needed to eat in the first place.

Leadership always involves making choices, and the choices we must make when we don’t feel like eating the frog center around knowing whether it’s our frog to eat in the first place, and if it is eating it as soon as possible. That way we’ll feel better the rest of the day. I have found time and time again that the things I dread doing, are the things that make me feel the best AFTER I’ve done them. That’s why it’s so important not to lead based on our feelings, but based on prioritizing our calendars and doing the next most important thing on the agenda, whether it tastes like frog or not!

Here’s to leading better by eating your biggest frog–today! (Trust me, you’ll feel a lot better AFTER you’ve eaten it!)

Timing…

Many years ago I heard John Maxwell talk about timing as a key in whether our leadership succeeds or fails. He spoke about how the timing of a particular idea or action makes all the difference. He said that the wrong idea at the wrong time brings disaster. The wrong idea at the right time is a mistake. The right idea at the wrong time leads to non-acceptances, but the right idea at the right time leads to success. I have always remembered those four possibilities: wrong idea-wrong time; wrong idea-right time; right idea-wrong time; and right idea-wrong time, and have lived through their reality again and again.

Thankfully, I have avoided making a ton of wrong idea-wrong time decisions over the years, but a couple come to mind, and Maxwell was 100% correct. One time I introduced contemporary worship at both of the worship services in a church that had been worshipping in a traditional style for nearly 200 years. One week we had two traditional services. The next week we had two contemporary services. It was the wrong idea at the wrong time. Talk about a disaster. I lived to regroup and move forward, but not without losing a tremendous amount of leadership credibility for a period of time. Had that been one of my first leadership decisions in that church it could have been my last. Wrong decision +Wrong time = Disaster!

I have made many wrong decisions at the right time over the years at home, at church, and in other organizations with whom I have volunteered or worked. By that I mean I had been in the leadership situation for long enough and had made enough right decisions at the right time to have developed leadership capital, which John Maxwell refers to as having “change in your pocket.” That meant the wrong decision was at the right time, because I used up some of the “change,” and still had plenty left.so did not end my leadership tenure. An example of a wrong idea at the right time in my home, was the time I decided we ought to buy a time-share vacation plan a few years after we got married. It was the wrong decision for Nancy and me, but it was at the right time, because we hadn’t yet started our family, and Nancy and I were both working. That meant we had the disposable income to pay for the time share. After a few years we realized that we were not going to be able to afford to use the time share, so we sold it for less than we paid for it. Wrong decision + Right time = Mistake.

I have made so many right decisions at the wrong time over the years, that I could write a book about it. Since I am extremely extroverted, intuitive and spontaneous, I tend to adopt and implement new ideas quickly. I am often right about the need to adopt the new ideas. The problem is I don’t always think through the process necessary to implement the idea, or the consequences of adopting the new idea on the overall system involved, whether our family, the church I serve, or a volunteer organization of which I’m a part. For example, I have often heard about a new program for children, youth, evangelism or you name it, and I can see right away that it is going to be helpful and impact people for God’s glory. But sometimes I haven’t thought about the financial impact, or the number of volunteers needed to implement it, or its long-term sustainability. If I had a dollar for every time I have rolled out a new idea, which was a GOOD, new idea to a leadership team, or a church board, or my family and heard, “Are you crazy?” Or at least, “There’s no way! I would be a much wealthier man. Right idea + Wrong time = Non-Acceptance.

Finally, I have experienced the joy of coming up with the right idea at the right time and experienced success often enough to have been given the opportunity to continue to lead when I have made the other three types of decisions! The thing I would say that has happened over the years, as I have matured is that I have come to realize the importance of not only having the right idea, but also the right timing to implement it more and more. I have also learned that it is so much easier to come up with the right idea and the right timing collaboratively than it is on my own. One of the greatest joys of my life at work right now is working with the “Lead Team” at New Life. The Lead Team consists of four of us who are on staff at New Life. We meet every two weeks to consider what God is leading us to do in the big picture of New Life. We evaluate what we’re already doing, and consider what we need to do that we’re not doing effectively or at all right now. The biggest blessing of being part of the team is that together we come up with much better ideas AND better timing for implementation that I was ever able to do on my own. For example, New Life has been growing at a rather rapid rate for the past several years, so last year the Lead Team talked and prayed about adding a fourth worship service at some point. Various ideas were set forward, but we eventually decided to add the service on the first weekend in 2016. This gave us time to let the church family know, to promote it through our Christmas Eve worship services which are always heavily attended. We even had the time to order better chairs for the worship center. The result? Within a few weeks we were seeing an additional 150 people per week in overall worship attendance. Right idea + Right time = Success!

I hope as you consider your “great” ideas, that even when they truly are GREAT ideas, whether at home, work, in the church or in a community group of which you are a part, that you will also consider the timing. Consider when is the best time to present the idea. Consider the response folks are likely to have to it. Anticipate the objections and be ready to respond to them. Consider the timing. Is it too soon or too late to implement your idea. Sometimes we miss windows of opportunity and they don’t reopen. At other times, the window hasn’t opened yet, and it’s a bit messy to break the window in order to get it open!

Remember, that just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean that your ideas are automatically right, or that that timing is. If you have the opportunity to run the idea past a group of trusted folks whether family members, co-workers, or others whom you trust, the end result will often be better. I’m not saying never to champion an idea that no one else sees being right, but you. I’m just saying be really sure that you’re right and then do everything you can to help others see not only that the idea is right, but that now is also the time. Because Right Idea + Right Time = SUCCESS!

Here’s to leading better by implementing the right ideas at the right time – today! (or tomorrow if the timing will be better!)

Truth and Love

For all of my adult life I have pursued a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That has meant reading the Bible and considering its message as the basis for truth. Many in our day don’t believe truth exists, at least not absolute truth. The idea that absolute truth doesn’t exist is foolish, considering that the statement: There is no absolute truth is a claim of absolute truth! Of course absolute truth exists. The Law of Gravity, for example, always works. All truth claims are absolute. If I say my name is Chris Marshall either I am or I am not Chris Marshall. The statement is absolutely true or absolutely false. While we may debate about who I am, the absolute truth is I am someone, and I either am or I am not Chris Marshall.

Folks who claim no absolute truth exists say more about their desires than about truth. Jesus Christ made many claims that I wish were not true, because my life would be easier if He hadn’t made them or if they weren’t true. For example, He claimed to be “…the way, the truth and the life..” and that “…no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (See John 14:6 in the Bible.) While it would be far easier for me and for all of us, if “all paths lead to the top of the mountain,” that is it would be easier if whatever anyone believes when it comes to philosophy and religion were true. But either what Jesus said is true or false. We can’t simply say, because I don’t want something to be true no absolute truth exists. That’s not a statement of truth. It’s wishful thinking. What we must say is, “I don’t think ‘X’ is true, but I must investigate to determine whether it is or not.”

The age of reason, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, convinced us that truth would lead us to a better world, perhaps a perfect one. In the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries we’ve realized that such a truth claim was not true. Reason has not won the victory over violence, disease, poverty and the like. Many have abandoned the quest for truth, because it didn’t lead where we were promised it would. The truth is we abandoned the quest for truth when we limited truth to the things that can be seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled. Science is a wonderful endeavor when used within the limits of science, but as a religion science has failed miserably. Since science can’t investigate an uncaused cause for the creation of the universe, “science” tells us one does not exist. Since science cannot investigate the occurrence of miracles, which by definition are beyond the natural, “science” tells us miracles don’t exist. The truth is “science” doesn’t tell us anything. SCIENTISTS DO! Science is invaluable when used to investigate natural phenomena, but when we use it to investigate the origin of the universe, for example, or the causes of poverty or violence, science always falls short, because these are matters beyond the scope of science.

But not beyond the scope of truth. All truth is not relative. Absolute truth exists. As we investigate the cause of the universe, or the reasons for poverty and violence we go beyond the scope of science, but a cause exists for the creation of the universe, and causes exist for poverty and violence. These are absolute realities that have absolute causes. We must step into the realms of philosophy and faith when we seek to discover them, but discover them we can. I find it quite interesting that many of the modern atheists are so passionate about their faith. (Yes, atheism is a faith, because it’s basic premise: there is no God cannot be proven scientifically.) To claim there is no God, or no truth, because one doesn’t want there to be is quite a non-scientific approach. As one Christian apologist debating an ardent atheist has put it in summing up the atheist’s claims: There is no God and you hate Him. How does one “hate” a being who doesn’t exist? Reason tells us we cannot hate that which doesn’t exist.

My point is that as leaders, who are also Christians in the twenty-first century, you and I must hold the truth together with love as the Apostle Paul reminded us in Ephesians 4. When we speak the truth, we must speak it in love. People don’t want to hear us, because we believe in Jesus. They won’t hear us for sure when we yell or act belligerently as we offer the truth to people. In my experience as one who knows the truth, and who has been set free by it as Jesus promised I would be, when I speak the truth in love people listen. They may still scoff at my conclusions. They may discount my claims, but most will walk away with a different attitude about me than they do of many with whom they have argued, because they will have experienced the love of Jesus.

I don’t claim to speak the truth in love perfectly. None of us do. But we have the great opportunity as leaders who follow Jesus to show people that we are not “fools” simply because we believe the truth, or because we believe truth exists. The debate between Christians and those of other religions and no religion is going to increase in our culture, because of the commonly held belief that absolute truth doesn’t exist. We won’t win the debate through reason alone, but we must not abandon reason. We must not abandon good science. We must not rely on anger or derision to put down those with whom we disagree. That is the way of the world. I’m amazed at how often people who have weak points YELL. When we speak the truth, we don’t need to yell. In fact, speaking the truth in love, requires that we remain calm in our passion. That doesn’t mean we speak in monotones or in barely audible voices. It means that our passion exudes love, not anger. It means as we speak the truth, we let the assurance of the truth compel rather than the decibel level of our words.

While I wrote this post for all of you, I have written it as a reminder most of all to myself. It’s always easier to yell, especially for me. I was brought up that way. It’s always easier to speak the truth without love, or to love without considering the truth. We have neither of those luxuries in a world that’s moving farther and farther away from both truth and love in the name of “tolerance” and “acceptance”. (I put those words in quotes, because of the way our culture has refined them both over the past decade or so. Tolerance means acceptance in our culture, but tolerance is NOT acceptance, it is a willingness to put up with another’s viewpoint. It is speaking the truth in love, rather than dumbing down the truth, or reacting out of hate. Acceptance is not agreement, but rather demonstrating love and good will to those around us, even when we disagree.)

Leadership is sorely tested in this day in which everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes. When we cannot appeal to truth alone as a virtue on which to base our lives, because many around us disagree on whether truth exists, we must continue to learn and live the truth in love, because that marriage of truth and love is compelling. It will be even more so as people become more and more disagreeable and intolerant of those who contend that truth exists and exists absolutely. We will be challenged as we live the truth in love. Remember, the only one who ever did that perfectly–Jesus–was executed by those He came to save. Jesus reminded us that if the world rejected Him, it will reject us. Don’t surprised when you’re rejected, but be sure when it happens it is for speaking the truth in love. The Good News of Jesus has always been offensive to those living in darkness, living outside of the truth, but it’s the only hope of the world. We must continue to speak it and live it in love as He commanded. While it will become increasingly difficult to do so, it is the only solution to a world disconnected from God’s truth and love. As we live the truth in love we shine light, God’s light, on the darkness, and that IS our calling from Him.

Here’s to leading better by speaking the truth in love-today!

I’m In Charge Here!

[Note: When I write posts about leading at work, I’ll also be categorizing them as leading through the church, since I work primarily as a leader in a church.]

One of the most helpful truths I ever learned about leading at work came from John Maxwell, one of America’s gurus of leadership. Maxwell pointed out that the true leader of any organization never has to say, “I’m in charge here.” The statement tells us something important about the person making it: he or she wants to be in charge, may even have the title of being in charge–president, pastor, director, etc… but when it comes to actual leadership the person is probably only a “positional” leader. Positional leadership, as the name suggests, has a position or title, but gains respect and a followership only because of the position. For example, when a new pastor comes to a church or a new director comes to head a department of a company she is NOT in charge the first day. She may have the title or position of leadership, but gains only the respect that comes with the title.

Maxwell contends that over time, and it needs to be over a relatively short period of time, the leader needs to move from the positional level, to the relational leadership level, and on to the productive level of leadership, or the position will be short-lived. Relational leadership comes from being liked, because of time taken to establish a relationship beyond that required to fulfill the position. Take a new pastor in a church, for example. If he makes a point of getting to know people by name, uses personal illustrations that give his hearers an opportunity to get to know who he is, and interacts with them in the community, he will soon move to the relational level of leadership. People will know that the leader’s desire is not just to wear a position or title, but to relate with them at a personal level.

The productive level of leadership comes when the leader shows her followers that she has come to add value to them. She “produces” something that is needed. If she is the director of the department at work, she finds ways to help those with whom she works accomplish more. She finds ways to add to the bottom line, whether it’s the financial bottom line, or the attitudinal bottom line among the workers. Both those who work for her and those for whom she works gain value because of her leadership. At this level, the leader may start to be in charge, but she won’t need to tell you she is.

The next level of leadership is the reproductive level. At this level, the leader hasn’t only taken the effort to relate with others, and to produce results that matter in the church or company, he has led others to the point that they are also producing results in the lives of others. At this level of leadership the leader is leading from one person away. For example, when I started in the ministry more than thirty years ago, I served primarily as a youth pastor. After serving for a couple of years, I had equipped adults to lead the young people in our youth ministry. These adults experienced the joy of leading the young people, and I experienced the joy of watching them experience that joy. While it can be hard at first not to be the one on the “front line” any longer, the benefits of reproductive leadership are obvious. The most important benefit is we can lead so many more people through others than we can lead ourselves. At this point, a leader is “in charge,” but doesn’t need to tell anyone.

Maxwell offers one additional level of leadership, which he calls the “personhood” level. This is the level where a person has been faithful in his or her work or ministry for so long that just hearing the name causes folks to say, “Yes, THAT is a leader.” For example, Mother Teresa attained the personhood level of leadership, as has Billy Graham. Anyone who reaches this level of leadership is definitely in charge. Everyone knows it, but he or she would never need to say it.

As with every aspect of leadership, we must start where we are and take one step at a time toward the next level. There’s nothing wrong with being a positional leader, but as I’ve heard Maxwell say, if that’s the only level you attain, you won’t be a leader for long. Always be honest in your evaluation of where you are, and take the next step to becoming the leader you can be. Remember, the goal is not to “be in charge,” but to add value to those around us so that everyone benefits. As we do that we’ll move along the five levels of leadership and as we add more and more value to others, they will be more than glad to call us their leader and to recognize that we are truly a leader in their lives.

Here’s to leading better–today!