MAX DE PREE, FORMER CEO AND AUTHOR of Leadership Jazz, once said, “The number one responsibility of top management is to define reality.”
That’s true whether we’re leading a corporation or a church, and establishing a mandate helps us to define that reality and to lead with integrity. Leaders need to ask, “Why are we operating? What are we about? What are we dedicated to?” Once these questions have been addressed and a consensus around their answers developed, a leader has a mandate, a foundation out of which to determine programs, recruit leadership, establish organizational culture, and figure out what and what not to do.
One critical function of a mandate is that it separates loyalty to the leader from loyalty to the cause. The leader has to say, “I am subservient to this mandate. You don’t serve me. You don’t make me happy. And don’t keep me in charge unless I fulfill the mandate.”
I was talking to ten pastors who all have Ph.D. degrees. One asked, “How can I get my church to do my program?”
I responded by asking him two questions. The first was, “Did you found the church?” No, he didn’t. The second was, “Would you leave if you got a better offer?” Yes, he would leave.
“Then what right do you have to call it ‘my’ church?” I replied. “You’d be better off saying ‘our’ church.”
While the leader is responsible for the initiation of the mandate, he has to build a consensus for it among people—first, that they buy into the mandate, and second, that they are willing to dedicate themselves to carrying it out.
Often leaders will put their friends, their associates, their politically loyal people into key positions, whether or not they belong there. It’s easy to fall into this double agenda, this popularity contest. But we’re not in leadership to become popular; we’re there to advance the mandate.
The other danger with an organization centered on a leader rather than a mission is that when the leader leaves, his people may follow and leave no effective group vested in the cause and dedicated to carrying on the mission.
Narrowing the focus
You have to be careful, however, not to set out what I call a “Mother Hubbard mandate”—there needs to be specificity in the mandate. Too many churches and organizations get trapped in a mission statement that sounds good but is too general to be effective. The mission statement is empty of meaning. For example, a church might have as its mission statement, “For the glory of God and the good of man.” Ultimately, any church is called to work toward that end, but that can be interpreted in many different ways. Such a statement does not set out a workable basis for ministry.
Some churches try to put their mandate in their name—”Bible Church,” “Fellowship Church,” “Church of Christ.” Yet these names and ideas are not specific enough for leaders to lead effectively. The focus of the mandate must be specific and clear so that everyone knows exactly what is meant by it. In fact, it should not be possible to interpret a mandate except in a narrow sense. That discipline enables the leader to set boundaries. A leader defines the organizational culture and develops programs within the established boundaries set by the mandate.
No church can accomplish everything. I once heard a pastor say, “I can’t make a mark on infinity. My mark has to be on finiteness.” Maybe huge organizations can accomplish a great array of things, but the average church has to identify its strengths and choose where it will put its efforts.
The big three
Within the life of any church, there are three broad umbrella areas—what the church is about—out of which a mandate must be drawn.
First, the church is about the salvation of the lost. Second, it’s about the maturing of the saved. And third, it’s about the spiritual fellowship of the saints—the believers. All evaluations of a church’s mission and activities need to proceed from these three fundamentals.
Let’s say, for example, that a church decides its mandate is evangelism. Then going out and reaching the unsaved is what they are about. They have to ask themselves, “What are we going to do to win the lost? What is our specific program? How best can we appeal to the nonbeliever?”
According to church consultant Lyle Schaller, as much as 85 percent of “church growth” is actually transfer growth. If the church whose mandate is to reach the lost is in reality only attracting other Christians, then that church is merely poaching other churches. It isn’t evangelizing. Such churches have to come back to their mandate.
It’s the same with maturing the saved. First, a church has to define a “mature Christian.” Then it has to determine what activities will accomplish this end. A leader must to be able to give honest answers to these questions: Are people more mature today than they were last year? How have they grown? What sermon series were done? What Sunday school programs? What are the evidences of maturity?
Regarding spiritual fellowship, the same kind of honesty and objectivity applies. I see a lot of activities in the church, but many are not always for spiritual fellowship; they’re for social fellowship. Even Bible studies and small groups may not bring about that kind of spiritual growth and connecting. Are people learning accountability? Is there a sense of strength, of belonging? Are Christians striving for Christlikeness?
It’s important to distinguish a program from a mandate. Programs come and go, and they should. Leaders should always be looking at programs in light of whether they serve the mandate. If they don’t, they should be cut.
Evaluation tool
I remember the words of a German bandmaster at our children’s school. He had a championship band, and whenever he disciplined anybody, he always said, “You can’t play like that and play in this band.” He never said, “You can’t play like that and play for me.” He didn’t equate personal loyalty with a person’s contribution to the cause. He believed that unless you were willing to contribute everything you had, you didn’t belong.
When a leader is sure of the mandate, he or she can create a more effective leadership team. One can discipline and evaluate people in light of the mandate. I’ve been reading an excellent book about leadership as exemplified by four-star generals and admirals. It’s clear these leaders knew exactly what the military was trying to do, and their selection of people was based entirely on their ability to contribute to what they were charged with doing. Selection is largely determined by the mandate.
So is the development of people. When a leader finds someone who has potential to fulfill the mandate but needs developing, then that leader should know exactly how to bring him or her along. Likewise, if someone is not moving the mandate forward by his or her activity, then that activity should be stopped.
I used to say I was certain my friend Maxey Jarman, chairman of Genesco and also my superior at work, would have asked me to leave any time he felt I was hurting the organization. Then he would have taken me to lunch. It was his responsibility to see that everybody in the organization, friend and foe, was contributing to the organization’s welfare.
Even if he’d taken my job, I still would have gone to lunch with him as a dear friend. I would have respected his judgment that I was not advancing the mandate.
A mandate gives a leader the ability to define the leadership he needs. Once I asked a pastor of a fast-growing church, “What is your emphasis?”
Upward mobility, he responded. “You show me another church with eight thousand members, where the chairman of the board is thirty-two years old,” he said. “Young people are not willing to wait for promotions in business, and I don’t think they ought to have to wait in church.”
Part of his mandate, then, was the utilization of up-and-coming young leaders. His mandate was helping him define his leadership.
Call or mandate?
There’s a difference between a mandate and a call. A call is personal; it comes to the individual. A mandate is collective, corporate. The mandate is the organization’s reason for being; the call is the individual’s reason for service.
A leader needs to have a sense of call, of dedication, to serve effectively. Prison evangelist Bill Glass emphasizes this in training his prison counselors. He says, “You have volunteered to be a counselor, but you have dedicated your life to personify Christ in this prison.” He goes through a litany of experiences that a volunteer might not be able to take (e.g., getting cussed out, having urine thrown on him). But the dedicated counselor will hang in.
A call may change. A person might sense a call to a different organization or a different form of service. Sometimes I think the call may lead someone out of the ministry.
Recently I talked with a pastor in Iowa whose primary ministry was teaching the Bible. I asked him how he was doing, and he admitted he was unhappy. So were the people. I asked him, “What is your real love?”
“My real love is winning people to Christ,” he said.
“In your saint-saturated organization,” I said, “there is nobody to win. And whenever you get up to teach, you don’t see a single soul who needs salvation, and yet you are by nature an evangelist. Have you considered leaving the ministry and going back into automobile sales, where you’re constantly in contact with lost people?”
“That’s when I was happiest,” he said.
But he had let his ego get involved, and he became a pastor. Now he has moved back into sales and is extremely happy and effective. His call—to win people—did not match the organization he was serving. I know several people who would be much happier if they would recognize they haven’t been called to what they’re doing.
The simplest form
As leaders think about the mandate for their particular organization, they should remember that the simplest way it can be accomplished is the most effective. Organizations tend to let what they do become too complicated.
The head of an international ministry came to me with several sheets of paper, laying out an organizational chart. After I had reviewed it, I said, “Evidently somebody in your organization is studying management material. I’m all for that, except there are only two questions you need to answer starting out: Number one, what are you really trying to do? Number two, what is the simplest way you can do it?”
As we talked, he said, “It’s very simple for me to know what we’re trying to do.”
“Then forget the drawing,” I said. “It’s not the simplest way you can do it. It is a complicated system that involves a lot of people’s ambitions, ego, and comfort. The ambitions and ego need to be weeded out.”
He went back to his board with a new statement, and they were grateful somebody had come up with a simpler way to carry out the work of the organization.
If I were drawing up a new mandate for an organization in trouble, I would figure out the simplest way of accomplishing what it set out to do. Not that this is always simple to do; I’m trying to find the simplest way a task can be done. Albert Einstein once said that whatever God does, he does in its simplest form. And how can we improve upon that?
Copyright © 1998 Fred Smith, Sr.
