When leading means not leading

I remember the day I realized I could be a leader. It was in Junior High. Bunch of kids hanging out and the direction of the group felt somehow wrong. So I spoke up. This is stupid, I said, I am going down another path. Come if you want, stay if you want. And they came. I remember walking away wondering what had just happened. I was small, not the strongest or the loudest or the bravest but suddenly they were following me.

That day began shaping my life and thinking. And I have tried to be a good leader ever since. But now I am asking myself if leadership is always defined as leading?

I have been thinking a bit lately about when it is appropriate as a leader to not lead. When it might be the very best form of leadership to not be the leader or not even help leadership to happen. Seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms and ideas, but I am coming to realize that there are times when the best form of leadership is deciding to just step back and let something that one could lead continue leaderless. The natural inclination of a leader is to see a situation and see the holes in the leadership of that situation and step in to fill those holes. But there are times when the health and future of a group or an organization is such that it is better to not provide leadership and just let it go its merry way, even if that means letting it die.

The problem with that is that the very act of doing noting in the context of a leadership vacuum is like telling yourself to feel free to breath when you know that your face is under water. (A moment I had to deal with a few years ago when I took scuba lessons.) Even though you know it is the right thing to do, it goes against every fiber of your being.

But God is teaching me that sometimes I do have to just sit back and let Him lead, even if it looks like the lack of leadership might lead to the death of a group or an organization. Suddenly I realize that doing nothing, if that is God's will, is in fact leading.

I am quitting now as I think I am developing a leadership headache!

What a leader does

I have been doing some thinking as of late about what a leader really does. I suspect that there is no real and definitive list, but I have been trying to make such a list for myself.
So the next few posts will probably be along this line.
First, Leaders Communicate.
I suspect that we all have unique thoughts, and probably many of us ask ourselves tough questions at times. But what makes a leader different is that a leader is committed to communicating those thoughts and questions to others. A leader somehow believes that there is room in other peoples minds and lives and hearts for the leaders thoughts and questions too.
I am not sure if that is arrogance, or confidence, or just a deep seated desire to get what is going on in their head into other's heads.
Whatever the motive, without communication, leadership simply is not possible.
The real questions we who would like to lead must ask then are, "How do I communicate to others?" and "How well do I communicate?" and "Could I be a better leader if I could communicate more effectively?"
Worth thinking about I suspect.

Change - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I have been working as a Church Effectiveness Coach for 2 years now. It has been a wonderful time overall. I get to work with a great team of people and being able to feel like I can made a difference in a bunch of congregations and in ways that have an impact on a lot of people's lives is a great privilege.

But life has been forcing some changes on me and it has got me to thinking.
- One of our team decided to move on and fulfill a lifelong dream. I am so happy for him, but it causes some changes in the way that our team functions.
- Both of our office's administrative assistants have decided to move on this summer. One to be a wonderful mother, and the other to take on a role that will truly impact a lot of college kids lives. Great for them, but a real change for the way our office functions and the way I will work.
- We are between offices and so will lose a personal office for the next year or two till our new offices are built. Not a big deal, but still some of the ways that things will be different.
- On the personal front our family is beginning to deal with my daughter going off to college this fall, about 350 Km (200 miles) from home. Will change the nature of how the house functions - for sure!
- My dad has had a bad turn physically due to his Parkinsons, and is in the Hospital and will move from there to long term care. That in turn will mean a move for my mother to a smaller and more affordable place. Big change on that front.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a complaining process. But it is a chance for me to experience some of the realities of change. You see, my life has been about bringing about change - in individuals, in teams, in congregations. What I so often forget is that change is not a comfortable kind of thing. It is most uncomfortable, painful even at times. Yet it is a most necessary part of life and growth and health, as individuals, as teams, as families and as groups such as a congregation.
The real pain of change, if we are honest, is not the circumstances of the change as much as the way we are willing to think about, and process the change. The first question in all of our minds is how the change will impact and cause discomfort to me. Makes Paul's words calling us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds make a whole lot of sense.
So, as I am taking some vacation time this month, what I am most hoping for, is that God will work on transforming my mind around all the changes that he is throwing my way. He must have a great plan in His mind, it is just my task to allow Him to work on my mind.
It just may be a GREAT summer!

Church effectiveness part 2

I have been thinking moire about this idea of what make a church effective. The more I think about this, the more I begin to realize that one of the problems that I am having is that I, like all of us, have this view of the world that says that when something is not working, all I need to do is find the flawed or broken part and replace it.

While that works with machines, it doesn't work with a living organism. In a living organism, you have to take into account the whole. The church is a living organism and it is a dangerous process to think that we can 'fix' something that we think is broken or not up to par and assume that the whole will be better. In relationship-based and living organisms, which the church is, health and effectiveness is measured not in how well oiled and smooth running things are, but in how they are doing at accomplishing their purpose.

A plant is desirable and effective as long as it is showing growth, able to or preparing to reproduce, and is contributing to the wider system. What would happen if we thought about churches from that perspective? What would it change in the way we saw them or evaluated them.

More on this later, I think.

Effectiveness and the Church

My job these days is being a Church Effectiveness Coach. What that means is that I spend my life with about 35 churches who are a part of the Western Canadian District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, asking them how they determine effectiveness for their congregation and in their context and how they are then going about being effective.
The question I am asking at this moment is how I go about helping congregations define effectiveness?
Is effectiveness about some illusive "spiritual maturity" or is it about some form of growth (growth in weekend worship attendance, number of people who claim 'salvation', number of people who get baptized) or some other measure.
The CMA in Western Canada has chosen the measure of people who get baptized. The logic is that baptism is a very public measure of a person's inner commitment and one of the only really truly measurable spiritual growth or spiritual commitment indicators.
True it would be nice if we could get indicators from people's bosses or spouses or family members as to how their walk with Christ has impacted their life, but that is not practical. Baptism on the other hand is a way that a private inner commitment between a person and God is made public and a way that a person seeks both affirmation and accountability for their own spiritual walk.
My task is to help congregations and their leadership seek to discover ways to effectively lead people to a point of being willing to and wanting to make a public commitment to their personal spiritual walk and formation. Because baptism is not a part of congregational membership per-say, baptism is truly a way to make a public statement of personal faith.
So, what makes a church effective? And what needs to happen to become effective.
When I can nail those concepts down in a congregation, then great strides can be made towards being a church that is truly living out the great commission.
Hmmm...

Hi there,

This is a test of Google's new online word processor called writely. It is still in Beta, so who knows. However, it is an online word processor that can upload and save to a veriety of file formats. Interesting.

As well, it is supposed to be able to publish to a Blog. So that is what I am trying.

Who knows!!

ken

Life's Changes

It has been a while since I posted here, for a couple of reasons.

My Doctoral work left me with a strong sense of what I wanted to be as a leader and the limitations of my ability to live that out in my present situation. I am told that this is a very common occurance.

So I began to ask God is there was somethign in His mind for me. Stay and keep on doing what I was doing? Stay and make changes that would create turmoil? Go elsewhere? What!!!???

Then last january during a study week I realized that i had no real vision for my preaching or for the church for the fall. That had never happened before and I began to realize that God was prompting me.

For a while I thought that God was leading me to be the state Pastor for Kansas and the Oklahama Panhandle. And while I would have loved that, I began to realize that I was a bit more radical than the leadership there was ready to handle. So that door closed.

At the same time I went ahead and resigned from my senior pastor role.

What followed was a couple months of real faith testing. We ended up selling our house and going for July without a house or a job and just a lot of faith.

Then I got a call from Western Canada. The Western Canadian District of the Christian and Missinory Alliance Church was looking for a Church Effectivness Coach. The 110 congregations of the Alberta Alliance Church are coached by three guys, whose task in to encourage, support, mentor and care for the churches in an effort to help them be effective.

The invited me to talk to them and when I did I felt that this was a job that was written for me. It was a difficult choice to move from the Church of God! Though in a larger sense I guess I really didn't. I get to keep my Church of God (Anderson) credentials as an Ecumenical (sp?) pastor, which is both cool and shows a great deal of spiritual maturity in the Alliance church.

So, Tuesday, August 15th, I start my new job. I am living in Alberta Canada, and will move into a house in Cochrane Alberta, a town of about 12,000 just west of Calgary, Alberta, and work out of an office in downtown Calgary.

The cool thing is that most of my family and my wife's family live near ehre, so it is both a new beginning and a kind of homecoming. And that is cool!

That's life at the moment!

Ken

How different?

I was talking to a staff memeber yesterday who mentioned that in a previous job, people who had completed a doctoral degree often went through a personal life crisis. I wondered why but got no real ideas. So it got me to thinking, how has this experience changed me and will it be the cause for me to have a personal life crisis? One question at at time...
How has this changed me? A lot in some ways and not at all in others. This process has forced me to be more serious about my ministry and my call than I have ever been before. I was forced to take a very hard and personal look at what it means to be a leader and what it means to be both committed to lead something like a church or any group for that matter and at the same time to be led by and have the heart and mind of Christ. I have found that to do that I must have Christ' passion for people, while being highly aware of how to lead this organization in a healthy and godly manner. I am, I admit, much less tollerant of church leaders who seem to be coasting or whose passion seems to be gone. All the while I feel a deeper passion for people, for their spiritual state and for their soul. So, yes this has changed me.
Second question, will this cause me to have a personal life crisis? Probably. Not in the sense of me doing something stupid, but I can find less reason in my own life to not want the best service to God from myself and those around me.
At the same time, I am really no different at all! A title doesn't change us, it is the experience that changes us. It is now my task to make my experience mean something in the course of my life and minsitry. And in that, comes the real challange.
hmmm.....

Feeling different?

Met several people oevr the weekend who I had not seen in a while. They made a pretty big deal of congragulating me on the Doctorate Degree. I was admittedly pleased that they knew, but at the same time a bit taken back.

While I am sure that the process has changed me, the degree hasn't. I started this process becasue I wanted to grow in my faith, my knowledge, and my ability to be the best leader that God wanted me to be. There was never a desire to be somehow seen as now 'more' than I was before becasue I have a title.

I keep telling people that I am still Ken, and not Dr. DeMaere. If first names were good enough for Paul and Jesus, first names are good enough for me. I ahev many times said that the four most important titles I carry are husband, father, friend, and Pastor. I intend to spend the rest of my life living up to those four titles, I don't need too many more. My plate is pretty full with those.

Have a good and safe and close to God week!

The process of writing...

While i didn't really set out to do this, what I ended up doing was that I read through the scriptures and highlighted every instance where the scriptures had praised or highlighted a leadership characteristic or quality. I then catagorized them. Much to my surprise, I discovered that there were basically nine characteristics, which incidentially closely alligned to the fruit of the spirit. That was one very cool ah-ha moment!! And sadly, also a moment when I realized that that discovery was too much for this particular work to deal with in its proper depth.

I read something over 300 books, both secualr and religious on leadership. The four that stand out in my mind are...

Courageous Leadership by Hybels
Visioneering by Andy Stanley
Spiritual leadership by Oswald Sanders and
Spiritual leadership by Blackaby...
and hopefully someday
Restoring Church Leadership (to the principles of the Bible) by DeMaere :-)

ken

Doctorate

Without rewriting my abstract, my theses was on leadership in the context of the church. Basically I believe that Jesus was the greatest leader that ever lived. Yet I fear that the modern day church is opening its doors to leadership principles that have their roots in the business world. And the business world often has its roots in ideas and values that are contrary to the leadership practices of Jesus and principles of the scripture.

I am particulairly hard, I admit, on Maxwell, and particulairly hard on his book "The 21 Irrifutable Laws of Leadership" where I believe that more than half of those laws are absoloutly refuted by the life and ministry and teachings of Jesus. maxwell clearly states that Leadership is Leadership and leadership principles work in every and any situation. Wrong. Nada. Not true.

The result of that is an effort on my part to give a process whereby a church leader can look at a leadership idea, principle or process and determine if it is in line with the values and teaching of the scriptures.

OK, wake up now, I am done. :-)

This is me, I was tempted to send a picture of some handsom skinny guy, but... :-)

Posted by Hello

Back in the routine

As exciting as graduating was, it really doesn't change the process of every day life. The Dean of the seminary told us that as Doctors we might be asked to give prescriptions, and he suggested that the only one we dare give might be "read two Psalms and call me in the morning."

So, what did this strenuous process actually do for me? In wish that I could name a bunch of concrete things, but more than anything else it has given me a greater sense of confidence in my ability to do the tough work if I need to, while at the same time pointing out just how limited my personal knowledge is about a whole host of subjects.

Painful realization. I had a professor once who had two doctorates and who told us that when he graduated from High School, he knew that he knew about 90% of all there was to know. After his BA, he realized that he only knew about 60%. After his masters he realized that he only knew 30% and after his first doctorate he realized that he only knew 10% of what there was to now. So in a quest for greater knowledge he pursued a second doctorate. However upon that achievement he realized that he only know about 1% of all there was to know, and he decided to give up the educational process before he ended up a blithering idiot.

Well, I don’t want to be a blithering idiot, but at the same time I don’t feel like I have achieved any sort of higher plane. People do listen more I think, but I am not sure I have anything more significant to say than I ever did, so I find myself speaking less.

Hmmm.

First Thoughts

Welcome to my Blog!

As I have started a kind of new phase in my life, I decided that this is a good time to start my blog site.

After a 4 year journey, this last weekend I received my Doctorate Degree. It was a great experience. However I am not sure that I know how I am supposed to feel right now. I think that it is supposed to be some kind of utopiam joy. Instead it is a kind of relief. I can see why so many doctorial candidates do not finish their disseratation, as it is such a load of work.

I don't feel any smarter, that is for sure.

I do feel like I am more sure of who and what I am, and what I am not, however.

I also have a new appreciation for writers and what they go through to write well! Whew!

Thanks for being a part of my journey.

Ken