Tag: Servant Leadership

What Can You Do When They Believe In You?

Belief is powerful. When you believe in someone, when you have faith in them, what is it that you are doing? You are affirming their credibility and integrity. You are empowering their capacity for doing more good. You are infusing their identity with joy.

When you entrust someone with your belief, loyalty and allegiance, you are opening up new possibilities for flourishing in the world you inhabit.

I served on the Student Senate my sophomore year at Huntington University. Since I was a Bible & Religion major, I volunteered for the Spirituality Committee, which was tasked with helping improve our mandatory chapel experience for students. (At our small Christian college you had to go X amount each semester). We wanted to make it more engaging and student-led. Our subcommittee helped draft an idea that with modifications was approved.

When it came time to appoint a leader for the new student-led chapel on Wednesday nights, I was asked to lead it. To which I emphatically said, “No!”

This seemed like too big of a leadership challenge for me, and I really was afraid of all the work that it would require to make it successful. I liked the idea, and I really liked the idea of somebody else making it happen.

I’ll be forever indebted to the campus chaplain Bill Fisher for encouraging me to apply for this leadership role. He  believed in me when I didn’t. It changed the course of my life. Bill had faith in me, which empowered me to see and do things that I hadn’t thought possible.

When you believe in people, you unleash new possibilities for the flourishing of souls and places and organizations. And when you don’t believe in people, when you don’t pour faithfulness and trust into them (because you don’t pay attention or don’t want to get involved) – well that’s when hope dies and possibilities wither.

This happened to Jesus. In a pivotal story of the gospel, Mark tells of Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth with all of his disciples. This should have been a homecoming of great honor for Jesus and the village. It started off well, with Jesus as a revered Teacher and famously powerful Prophet in the synagogue on the Sabbath reading from the Torah and giving brilliant commentary on it. “…many who heard him were amazed.”

But then something happened, maybe they got a little jealous, whatever it was, “they took offense at him.” They didn’t believe in Jesus anymore, they resented him; and this prevented him from doing any miracles there, he was only able to “lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith [in him].”

If Jesus is vulnerable to the power of belief, we obviously are too.

Think about what this means for your close family and friends? Sometimes they can be the hardest ones to believe in, because you know so much about them, maybe been hurt too much, it’s become too complicated. Something similar happened to Jesus when he went home after accomplishing great things for his nation. “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”

But you know what? Jesus didn’t give up on his people, his family and friends, or his enemies. He didn’t quit believing in them, didn’t quit being faithful to them, even though they had quit believing in him. So what eventually happened?

We know that anxious Mary the mother of Jesus stayed at the foot of the cross during his execution, risking her own life to be there with her condemned son until the very end.

Unbelieving James the brother of Jesus would become the leading bishop of Jerusalem in the new church and became known as “old camel knees” because of all the time he spent in prayer, like his big brother Jesus used to do.

You want to heal and change the life of those you live or work with? Tell them you believe in them.

Imagine how your life would be empowered if more people looked you in the eye and said, “I believe in you.” Now go and do likewise.

Leadership = Relationships + Credibility

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state! Especially with all of those hills! I spent the last two days in the Harrisburg area to teach a Leadership & Management class with Evangelical Seminary as an adjunct professor.

It’s an innovative 14 week online class with a week-long residency in the middle, crafted and implemented by a team of two lead professors and four contributing professors. It brings together practical experience, professional reflection, and focused academic instruction. I’m glad to be part of the team!

I just wish I would have more time to hike those hills after class on Tuesday!

My portion with the students was to take the last four hours of the class and help them synthesize what they’ve been learning to integrate into their current leadership and management situations. We reviewed some great literature, which I will list below. Each student is in an interesting leadership opportunity, as are most people working with a team to get things done!

Here are a few takeaways I have from the time with students and this class, leadership reflections that will help me grow as a leader, and hopefully you as well.

  • Leadership and management at its best matures relationships while increasing credibility. Credibility is tied to – will you do what you say you will do, and will you do it well and in such a way that we are better off as a people for having done it?
  • Leadership is required because of the constant changes we experience in our culture, communities, and workplaces.
  • Leadership is more than just problem-solving in reaction to big and small changes, it’s helping people manage the transitions required to adapt and thrive amidst the change.
  • Change implies loss, and loss must be acknowledged, empathized with, and honored. Grief of some form accompanies most change and transitions we face in life -whether in our business or homes. Leaders care for their people amidst change by helping them through their loss and transitions.
  • People don’t like endings. We like the status quo. And we are nervous about new beginnings. Remember that if you are a leader.
  • Many people don’t want to be a leader. Reluctant leaders are often the best kind, though! Connect them to a passion, empower them to act on a desire they have that will bring about a positive change, and support them as they grow as a leader!
  • Leading is first about action, eventually it is about position. The credibility of the position is fundamentally tied to the quality of the action. And it is ultimately connected to the use of power to help people grow  – so don’t advantage of them! Never use your position to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
  • Beware leaders who are always seeking to be relevant, famous, and powerful. Instead support leaders who listen well, care for people, and help you get important stuff done for others.
  • The strength of a leader is their weakness. Most of our limps as a leader come from our success. What works well in one moment, may not be the wisest course in the next. As circumstances change, what is needed from us changes – sometimes our strength is exactly what this crisis needs, and other times our strength is the worst thing. That should keep leaders humble!
  • Christian leaders ground their identity and mission in Christ Jesus. Through the powerful love of God they wisely work to mature relationships and increase credibility to further God’s mission in the world – which is for the restoration of all creation and the arrival of the kingdom of peace.
  • We ought to lead others in the way Christ leads us: humbly, mercifully, and justly – for the means produce the ends we desire.

What you have learned along the way about leadership and management? What would your advice be to students?

 

Here are some of the resources we used that I highly recommend for you:

Henri Nouwen: In the Name of Jesus – Reflections on Christian Leadership by a brilliant Harvard educator and Catholic priest who retired to serve at L’Arche Community.

William Bridges: Managing Transitions – Making the Most of Change is a fascinating read on helping people deal with the loss that comes from change and transition. A very personal, applicable guide for business, non-profit, government, church and community leaders.

Action Trumps Everything helps over-analyzers like me get to work in smart experiments to create new opportunities and keep learning and moving forward when change is constant.

Dan Allender in Leading with a Limp – Turning Your Struggles into Strengths provides a unique and provocative insight into the souls of leaders, our complexity, the chaos we lead in, and the darkness that can emerge if we don’t learn to lead with our limp.

The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk gives intense practical ways forward for congregations seeking to thrive amidst discontinuous change. It brings together the latest in philosophy, theology, business, and other disciplines to help leaders deal with reality and join God in his mission.

One of the best overviews on leadership in the United States, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner is easy to read, easy to integrate, grounded in practical research, and loaded with great examples. It shaped me twenty years ago, and I want it to affect the next forty.

Come, Follow Me

What do you see when you see people?

What we look like often says something about us. How we dress, how we walk or stand, how we smile or frown, they say that body language is 80% of your personal communication. You can learn a lot about someone from how they look. But not everything, oftentimes we are usually lacking contextual knowledge and we can’t see inside their soul. The upside of this: people can surprise us – there is more to people than meets the eye.

We see this in an early story of the gospel in Mark,the-gospel-of-mark when Jesus first meets Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and their fellow fisherman down the Sea of Galilee coast, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Jesus, the intriguing and powerful prophet approaches four gritty fisherman to become his disciples. This is outrageous and unheard of!!! What did Jesus see in them?

Maybe Jesus saw in them betrayal and pettiness, bravado and posturing, pride and prejudice, vengefulness and racism, envy and sloth. He probably saw that in most everybody he met. Probably still does. But maybe Jesus also saw in Peter and Andrew, James and John, you and I, a spirit, mind and body open to God’s renewing work in the world. Maybe Jesus saw the real them and decided it was worth the invitation: “Come, follow me.”

Jesus sees you, and when he sees you, he invites you to “Come, follow me.” Not because you are without sin, not because you are better than other people, nor because you’re special. He calls you because he knows you’re open to the life he has for you – a life of blessing the world in Christ’s name through your flaws and talents.

The messy you is the one he is calling, like those Galilee guys, and if he can put up with their shenanigans, by the power of the Holy Spirit he can bring good out of yours too.

So what’s keeping you from seeing yourself with the eyes of Jesus? What’s keeping you from seeing others with that Christ-vision? What if, instead of looking down or away from others, we looked into them, by the Spirit of Christ, past their appearances, with a prayerful spirit: “Lord, help me to see what you see”

rd_acpp_FishersOfMen_28x20_750When Jesus called the fishermen, he said, “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people.” The story says that “at once they left their nets and followed him.” Wow! What was it about Jesus that compelled them to go with him? It must have been an amazing moment.

Jesus wants to have that amazing moment with you. And he wants to create those amazing moments in others through you. He wants to use you, in your “fishy” life to send you out to others to really see them, speak hope into them, to help them join in with Jesus. Just as Jesus opened your eyes to him and to others in a new and beautiful way, Jesus wants to take that new vision of yours and help open up the eyes of others to new possibilities, new faith, a new community with God’s people.

FollowMeWhat if we all could see each other with the eyes of Christ? That would be a great start for some amazing changes in our community, wouldn’t it?

“Lord, help us to see others with your eyes. Send us with your vision and your invitation, with your words of love and hope.”