What I Would Do (6)

Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor. Section Two was about what I don't miss. Section Three was talking about "secular ministry." Section Four looked at what I've learned in these three years in "secular ministry."
Links to earlier sections:
Introduction
1. What I Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
2. What I Don't Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude (1)
3. Secular Ministry: Part 1, Part 2
4. What I've Learned: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude (2)
5. What I Would Do: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We are talking a shift here about the role of leadership in the church. Part of this comes from the shift I talked about many weeks ago- the shift from official Christendom to this post-Christendom world where Christianity is back to where it started in many ways- one of many wrestling for attention and the following of people. In our average church- denomination or local congregation- that has not been absorbed very well.

That means that the pastor of a local church, if he or she is to help bring that church into a new place, will have to be a change leader. Or more to the point, perhaps, truly be a leader, and not a manager. Servant leadership makes sense. Servant management doesn't. Not when we are trying to shift things.

John Kotter in his book Leading Change gives a good breakdown between managers and leaders:

Managers:
Plan and Budget
Organize and Staff
Control and Problem Solve
This leads to predictability and order and the short-term results expected by those who are the stakeholders.

On the other hand we have:

Leaders:
Establish Direction
Align People
Motivate and Inspire
This leads to change.

To manage or to lead, that is the question. Nope, that is not a question at all. Not if one is missional. That is the question only if the status quo is what we want to maintain. That is the question if the pastor and leaders are there to serve the congregation alone or their denomination alone. (Maybe a little bit about denominationalism at a later point, but not here.)

If you want to take it a step further, leaders see a different set of stakeholders, or even for that matter a different Stakeholder. Management sees those who pay your salary; leaders see who called you. Management is institutionalism personified; leadership is mission in action.

One of the problems Kotter talks about is complacency. He says, for example, in essence that when complacency is at work the fights and arguments tend to be inward, aimed at each other. Complacency comes from

Arrogance- we know, they don't.
Insularity- separate classes of people
Bureaucracy- organize, organize, organize.

These do not produce change programs that will be anything but DOA. Complacency is the result, for example, of the attitudes of Christendom- the melding of church and secular culture, where everyone was a Christian and expected to be loyal to the church- even if they weren't Christian. It is the equating of culture and/or state with the Christian faith. You will be complacent at that point since you don't have to do anything. Or you direct your mission efforts beyond the culture- overseas, for example, in order to bring them to faith. We don't need it.\

Leadership in the post-Christian/pre-Christian world cannot be about management. It must be about the mission of God in our midst. It must lead us to see what we can be doing and how the opportunities for mission are beyond counting.

If all we do is manage, we are trying to save the institution. That is never enough. Here is a quote from Seth Godin's book, Survival is Not Enough (p.204 - 205) thanks to an article in Jeff Patton's newsletter:

How can you motivate a group of successful people to give up their point of view before it is too late? In many cases you can’t. They are too fat, too happy, too sure that they know how to do it and that there are no other right answers. These are at an evolutionary dead end, and their DNA has calcified. They want to be serfs so let them.

Create teams of naive novices, people who bring a beginner’s mind to a problem. They haven’t figured out all the ways that are impossible, so they ‘re far more likely to come up with solutions that are bad...and then motivated enough to evolve those solutions into ones that work.

There's a lot of wisdom in that last paragraph. A beginner's mind. Come at it with wide-eyed wonder, not a sight blurred by dullness and the way it has always been. Such leadership needs to keep working through all the things that don't work until the things that do work begin to show through. Such leadership is dangerous- and may even be fatal in some established churches. One must have a vision and be able to share it from the depths of one's heart and soul. Then, as Bill Easum would say, watch for the twinkle in someone else's eyes- and grab them.

It may be easier to do this in new church starts. But unless the people coming into the church plant are new, naive novices, chances are it may end up looking like a variation of what has gone before. Pretty soon the complacency will set in and well, we don't need more complacent churches. We need more missional ones.

If I went back I would want to make this as absolutely clear as possible from the word "Go!" It is not fair to pull a bait and switch by holding back on this and then saying, after the furniture is all moved in, "By the way, I'm not going to do it that way." Share the vision. Live the vision. It is essential to be transparent. In an established church it would probably take more time than I have left in ministry to get it done. Not that it can't be started and the DNA re-engineered. Sure it can.

And of course if I could do it, I wouldn't need God in the process.

But that, like denominationalism is for another week.