Surviving Leadership in Fast Forward: CT Interviews Inter-Varsity’s Gordon Macdonald

ROBERT M. KACHUR AND DAVID NEFFRobert Kachur is assistant editor of HIS, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s magazine for college students.

Gordon MacDonald knows intimately the pressures church and parachurch leaders face. After a dozen years as pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts, he is now president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, serves on the boards of several Christian organizations, and is a prolific author and speaker.

During a layover between connecting flights, we spoke with a very calm MacDonald about how Christian leaders can survive a top-speed world, what followers should (and should not) expect from leaders—and how we can help nurture a much-needed new generation of leaders.

In your speaking and writing you have shared a lot of what the Lord has led you to. What do you think the Lord is teaching you right now?

I’m 46 years of age, and I think the Lord is teaching me to come to grips with my mortality. I think of how many years I have left and how many things I’m not going to get done—about what I can afford to leave undone and what I want to leave behind 20 years from now.

I no longer need to be a footnote in somebody’s church history book. But I do want to close out the next two decades of ministry—if God provides that for me—with a sense of having left a few people behind me who have reached their potential because of me.

I’m out to discover and, hopefully, model a new form of leadership.

My generation has not produced many transforming leaders. Lee Iacocca is a transforming leader; Martin Luther King, Jr., was a transforming leader. But in the evangelical world, where are the new transforming leaders who will leave the times different from when they came?

Why are you so concerned about building leaders?

We have just come through an era of evangelical leadership that came out of World War II. That postwar generation is now retiring, and many organizations do not have able successors within the ranks.

What produced the postwar leaders?

Men who came home from the war were crusade-oriented, and those who became Christians threw themselves into the Lord’s army. The same energy that took a guy into the Philippines now took him back over there to form missionary organizations.

Today we are in a dramatically changing world that requires new kinds of leadership. The next ten years are going to be unlike any in the history of the world—or the church. It is going to be a fight for survival, and only those organizations that are defining leadership, priorities, and visions are going to make it.

What should we be doing to raise up a generation of good leaders?

Organizational programs rarely create leaders. Leaders create leaders. Leaders are mentored. One of the commitments I made when I turned 40 was to give more energy to influencing a few young men and women.

Currently there is a tendency in some Christian circles to create clones rather than leaders. There is very little room in our present evangelical climate for men and women to experiment. They stifle new ideas for fear of being labeled a heretic or having support cut off. Leaders must be molded in situations where they have the freedom to be wrong.

The postwar generation’s leadership model was military: a commander, his troops, and a mission. Is there a relevant leadership model for today?

I suspect it is a business model. I constantly resort to business terminology, while my father used battlefield terminology. We have learned a lot from marketing, sales, and administrative techniques. As long as we don’t reduce the gospel and the kingdom to that, we won’t be in trouble.

When you read Tom Peters’s In Search of Excellence or A Passion for Excellence, you realize that the new business model is servant leadership. Peters is saying things that the Bible said 2,000 years ago: Find the specialness in people, set them free to reach their potential, believe in them, affirm them, rebuke them when necessary, care for them. I’m afraid that sometimes I see Christian ethics practiced in top secular business organizations more than in the church.

What is servant leadership?

Servant leaders recognize that God has given them a stewardship of people. The men and women of Inter-Varsity do not work for me; they work for the Lord. But I’m going to be accountable some day for how they have been treated.

My wife, Gail, and I try to treat the people around us in terms of potential rather than performance. Our affirmations and rebukes are given with a sense of where a person is headed, not where he or she is today.

Servant leadership does not mean, however, that I am a doormat to the people I lead. To bring them to their full potential sometimes means that I must be hard on them—or even reassign or fire them to put them into a position where they are better off.

Right now, you are on the road more than you are home. How do you keep from burning out?

To keep sane, I create little spaces of privacy on the road. When I am on the road my schedule is at the mercy of other people, and inevitably someone crams my calendar 30 to 40 percent more than I anticipated—see this person, speak to this group, go out for supper, stay over at our house.

So I stay in motels and make my room an oasis of privacy, a home away from home where no one else can go. Then I demand time, what I call Sabbath time, every day, to be alone with my wife if she is with me, to worship and pray, to read and catch up with personal matters. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I simply say I am not available in the early hours. Otherwise, each new group of people I meet may make demands without taking into account what went on yesterday or the day before. I have learned to say no to some good things in order to be free for the best.

Have you been able to balance your ministry and your personal life as well as you would like?

Not at all. I have had to make a lot of compromises. But I don’t think they have been bad compromises. When people develop disciplines that are supposed to maintain health, they don’t have to become legalists who fear that if such-and-such doesn’t happen 47 minutes a day, the whole thing is going to fall apart.

During the last year I have drawn upon a reservoir of strength that has been building up for several years.

How were you able to fill that reservoir?

There are periods when you can read more, think more, and develop spiritual disciplines at a greater pace than you are expending spiritual capital. At Grace Chapel, I had the opportunity to amass intellectual and spiritual material.

The first year at Inter-Varsity was done at tremendous psychological and spiritual expense because no day was like any other. I didn’t have the time for Sabbath that I had in the more routine schedule as a pastor. In Massachusetts, Gail and I knew that every Thursday we were going to sabbath. We can’t do that now; so we have to write Sabbaths into the calendar. Frankly, there are some times we have to go ten days without a Sabbath. I have had to accept the reality of the broken routine and coast on a lot of what I built up in the past.

Gail and I have compromised mostly recreation. But I don’t think we have compromised the spiritual disciplines. We try to maintain the Sabbath discipline, and we have made time for each other whether we were on the road or at home. I have tried to keep up with my study of the Scriptures, and I actually do more reading than ever in airplanes and motels. But there is no such thing as a routine day. Each morning I have to figure out the day’s discretionaries and the nonnegotiables.

Some Christian leaders seem to live at breakneck speed all the time? Is that lifestyle okay for them?

More than a year or two of living like this could affect you one of three ways: You could burn out emotionally, start to suffer physically, or—and this is just as dangerous—you could get used to living with a constant adrenalin kick.

Every time you get up to speak, face a crisis, or run for a plane, there is a surge of adrenalin. Seeing how much you can pack into a day becomes exciting, and you can get addicted to that. The adrenalin habit becomes a way of saying, “I am truly important in the kingdom of God.” None of us is that important.

The rest of us make heroes out of those who live this way. We begin to equate top-speed living with godliness and the Spirit’s blessing. We think, Why can’t I be like that? Christian leaders living top-speed lives year after year are very dangerous models. Sooner or later someone is going to pay the price.

What kind of price?

Failure, bad judgment.

Some leaders use people up, constantly taxing the emotional energies of their team. People leave those organizations, having had an exciting phase and then becoming embittered and disillusioned by the constant stress and pressure.

Other leaders just get exhausted and drift into an ineffective numbness. They don’t have any new ideas or new words. They become wed to old ways and can’t change with new realities.

Do the struggles and temptations of living hard and fast weigh more heavily on church or parachurch workers?

The issues are almost always the same. Only the scale changes. Whether the scope of your ministry is 10 or 3,000 miles wide, your lifestyle probably lacks routine and has minimal built-in accountability. As a leader, you are probably the target of lots of praise or lots of criticism. Put all that together and you have the stage set for a life that is saturated with anxiety, stress, adrenalin, excitement, and power—all very seductive things.

How can you keep from falling into that trap?

By building accountability into your life.

The first step is developing personal spiritual disciplines. For many years I have kept a daily journal of what I am doing, why I am doing it, and what the results are. Just forcing it onto paper makes me ask what is going on in my life. Other exercises in personal accounttability include intercession, reading Scripture, and studying biographies of Christians who really did achieve.

Humanly speaking, the greatest accountability is a good marriage with a spouse to whom one listens. When Gail spots fatigue or shallowness in me, I listen carefully. In addition, there have been men and a few women in my life who were not afraid to rebuke me.

As a public figure, you are subject to criticism. What advice would you give other leaders about handling it?

Criticism hurts most when you are young and still trying to establish your identity. When I was in seminary, a lay leader told me, “The main problem in your life that is going to diminish your effectiveness as a leader is hypersensitivity. In every critique, there is a kernel of truth. Find the truth, discard the rest, and get on with it.” I decided to live like that. Every time somebody criticizes me, my first thought is, What is the kernel of truth?

A. W. Tozer wrote: “Whenever you are criticized or opposed, never fight back.” I determined I would never fight back. Rather, I would try to thank people for their criticisms and be smart and courageous enough to ask for more.

A lot of Christian leaders have missed one of God’s greatest gifts by shutting out criticism. Some pastors are so defensive that their wives learn early not to criticize them. My wife is my greatest critic, even though there are moments when I don’t want to hear what she has to say. If I were single, or if my wife weren’t supportive, I would deliberately cultivate a select group of friends to provide the affirmation and rebuke other people got from their spouses. Leaders who aren’t intimate with others tend to turn ideological, become sharp-edged, and split hairs.

The most recent thing I learned about criticism was best put in a book by Gene Edward, A Tale of Three Kings. When Saul threw spears, David ducked. He didn’t throw the spears back, and he pretended that they were never thrown in the first place. If we would stop throwing spears back at people, we would save ourselves a lot of energy that could be put to better use.

Gordon MacDonald’s Private World

In his research, Gordon MacDonald found more than enough books to help him organize his calendar and career. But hardly anyone had addressed the organization of the inner world—the sphere of motives, values, commitments, and divine dialogue. In Ordering Your Private World (Nelson), available as a book or six-part docudrama on film or videocassette, he explains how organizing the private world will result in a manageable exterior.

As president of IVCF, do you feel pressure to live up to your own advice in Ordering Your Private World?

Interestingly enough, I feel almost no pressure. People kid me: “Is the top of your dresser orderly today?” Or they want to see what my car trunk looks like, because I’ve said that cluttered trunks and dressers can be symptoms of a disorderly private life. If someone comes into my office and my desk is momentarily cluttered, that doesn’t bother me. I never wrote Ordering Your Private World to describe a perfect state. The book offers a way of living. Life is not perfect. The Christian experience is a struggle.

When I was a student, I was involved in some ministries where everything was black and white. I have never felt comfortable with the kind of Christianity that pretends everything can be put into a box, that every question can be easily answered, that following formulas will make everything work out. That kind of Christianity is unredemptive and guilt producing. I try to be honest and vulnerable as a writer. I don’t mind telling people I have botched up.

What eventually inspired you to get Ordering Your Private World down on paper?

I was in a large office-supply store one day, and I looked around at all the adults who were browsing. I thought, Why are we here? We didn’t come because we had to buy something. And then it hit me—we were all looking for the latest gadget to organize our lives. Many people feel disorderly and unproductive. As I’ve listened to colleagues talk, I’ve realized that they were full of unrealized wishes and dreams because they didn’t know how to put everything into perspective. I began a study in time budgeting, and the book was born.

Writing Ordering Your Private World helped me understand what things I need to bring into order to be a healthy human being. I’m working on a sequel to it about fatigue—how we get tired, how we perform when we get tired, and how to combat the sense of emptiness and despair that exhausted people often experience.

How are busy clergy and lay people responding to Ordering Your Private World?

None of my other books has gotten response like this one. I average three to five letters a day from people telling me that this is the area where they are hurting the most.

I guess Ordering Your Private World just admits that we all botch things up. People desperately want to know what kind of Christians they are supposed to be and how they can bring order to the top-speed world we live in. I’m burdened about that. I almost chucked the faith years ago because no one told me it was all right to be human. Then I read Keith Miller’s A Taste of New Wine. It was so freeing to read about a man who admitted to struggles, doubts, fears, and hurts.

Could you do for us what Keith Miller did for you? What are your struggles, doubts, and fears?

I have tried very hard to be honest with myself—and my wife has been helpful in never inhaling the kind things that people say about me.

I don’t have to look very far into my heart to see my propensity for evil and to recognize that anything that’s going right in my life today is because of the kindness of God and because of some very kind people who have surrounded me since childhood and committed themselves to making me look good and be effective.

I have decided that I cannot help people if I put a cosmetic on my professional and ministry life that isn’t fair and honest.

I blanch a bit when people compliment me by saying I’m busy. I don’t see myself as busy. I see myself having a propensity for laziness. And I see myself as almost constantly on the edge of disorganizaton. I certainly do not have an instinctive hunger for God. Prayer, study, meditation—all come viciously hard for me; so I’ve surrounded myself with personal support mechanisms and props.

Believe it or not, I’m often pushed to work hard by a fear of laziness. As a child I was a daydreamer who didn’t do well in school. I recognize that I work hard and enjoy the fruit of completing things. But in my most honest moment I will tell you that I do not feel I’ve paid my debt to the kingdom of God.

My greatest fear is fear of meaninglessness. I have to discover meaning in everything I do, and until I find the meaning, what I’m doing brings no joy. But if I know that it has an ultimate purpose, that it somehow converges with kingdom interests, then I can live with large amounts of ambiguity.

Besides offering constructive criticism, then, how can Christians help care for their leaders?

First, followers need to protect their leaders. That means asking on every occasion: Are we demanding too much from this person, or are we asking only for things which he or she is really best suited to give? Sometimes Christians focus so much on the egalitarian concept—that leaders are no better than anybody else—that they forget the leader needs to be free to lead. Leaders have physical, mental, and emotional limits, and need to be kept relatively free from anxieties that sap strength.

Second, Christians must affirm their leaders. Whenever you walk into a new situation, ask two questions: “Who is in charge here?” and “How can I support that person?” Give them your full attention. Ask relevant questions, and let them know if their answers are on target. Hearing third-and fourthhand what people say about your leadership is demoralizing.

What else can followers do?

Billy Graham has enjoyed 40 years or more of incredible leadership. And one of the main human ingredients of his leadership has been the five or ten people, including his wife, Ruth, who have poured themselves into helping him. They have been committed to his leadership.

In contrast, there were men and women who had great leadership opportunities, but the team didn’t support them. Instead, they got jealous of their privileges or fame, sapped them of their strength, and pulled the bricks up from underneath them. Almost always when you see a great enduring leader, you also see great key people—good followers—around him.

Good leadership is an equation of leadership and followership, and if you don’t have one, then the other one doesn’t make it.

Every parachurch ministry has financial crises. How do you keep finances from taking priority over other ministry objectives?

First, there have to be careful controls that don’t allow you to get the organization into deep waters where crisis becomes a way of life. That happens to many entrepreneurial or charismatic leaders. They keep pressing and expanding—sometimes just for the sake of expansion—and they coat it in nice God words so it looks like “faith” and “vision.”

Second, the spiritual disciplines help us constantly re-examine priorities and make sure we know why we are spending time the way we are. If you don’t stop and sabbath enough to reappraise the priorities and schedule, money will always grab your attention. If you stop and look, you can put money in its proper place and delegate the responsibilities.

What have you learned about the relation of the church to parachurch agencies now that you have moved from the parish to a national ministry?

In the 1960s, there was a lot of antipathy between the church and parachurch organizations. But as the 1970s went along, it became clear that both entities really needed each other. The thinking parachurch leader realized that he was in existence to do one basic thing with one kind of people for a limited period of time. The thinking church leader realized that many ministries could be wisely subcontracted to specialists in the parachurch.

I moved over to the parachurch because I wanted to do one basic thing—to give myself to the younger generation in search for new leadership—and to help that leadership develop into a new model that I believe is necessary for the 1990s.

Organizations can stagnate. They become embedded in administrative policies, legalities, and organizational hierarchies. People’s careers become important. More and more time is spent maintaining the organization.

John Gardner writes in his book Self-Renewal about the importance of organizations constantly re-evaluating their vision, sense of purpose, and structure; making sure that nothing except their basic call to exist is nonnegotiable. The church is in business to draw men and women to Jesus Christ and to help them live as mature Christians in this world. Given right ethics, I don’t care how that happens. The only thing that’s sacred is our ultimate objective, to win people to Jesus Christ.

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