Tag: Way of Jesus

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.

Don’t Be Afraid; Just Believe

For all of our advances in health sciences and technology, America is the most obese nation on earth, we are literally eating ourselves to death. We make ourselves sick by mostly preventable diseases.

It’s not just what we eat that is killing us, it’s what we believe about what and why we eat. And too often it’s our fears that drive us to eat what will kill us.

For the ancient people of Israel, much of their fear and anxiety was also food related- except they had opposite problem. Malnutrition, famines, harvest tributes to temple authorities, local rulers and Imperial Rome – all of this prompted grinding poverty, blindness, crippling diseases, and early death.

In our society, when so many of our ailments are self-induced, the real healing isn’t from diabetes, cancer, or heart-attacks. The real healing is for the fear and anxieties that fuel our over-eating, that foments disbelief, that deepens depression, that cut us off from friends, family, neighbors and strangers.

In the gospel story for this week’s devotion, we read about how Jesus heals an anxious woman reduced to poverty by paying doctors to help her find a cure for her chronic bleeding. We read of Jesus going to the wealthy home of a respected but terrified religious leader, to heal his dying daughter. They had much to be afraid of. But they still believed.

Jesus came to Israel not just to heal and save individuals, but to gather disciples that would send to heal and save communities. Jesus came not just to heal women, children and men who were afflicted by the lack of food and medicine, but to subvert the systems that starved and abused communities. The salvation from sin he brought was for this life and the next.

Jesus didn’t do miracles in Israel to prove he was God. He healed his people because he loved them, and as a sign of the compassion of God, affirmation that his way leads to overcoming evil and flourishing for all. This is how his kingdom comes, how his will is done.

When we read this gospel story, we read of a Jesus who loves the world, especially those who are poor in spirit and mourn. We also read of a Jesus who leverages his immense power for healing and restoration, renewing bodies and families. He goes to where he is welcome, he blesses those who want it. “Daughter of Israel, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Sometimes we are the bleeding woman, the dying daughter, the grieving father and mother. Sometimes we are the believing disciples, sent by Jesus with the power to heal anxieties, to stir up trust and courage, to drive out fear with love. In our society, that is the healing we really need, what we are pleading for. “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

Let’s form learning communities around the way and will of Jesus, for the healing of our fears, for empowering our faithfulness to God, and for belief in one another, anchored in trust.

Can you name the fears that drive you to sickness? What are the anxieties that are wrecking your soul? Why are you eating yourself to death? What if your mind could be transformed by the will and ways of Christ? “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

May Jesus become present to you, may he connect you to those who will bring about healing for the sickness in your heart, may he embolden your faith, and may his instructions direct our steps towards flourishing for all: “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”