Leadership of the Church

In his newsletter, blogger Aaron Renn reflects on the crucial role of mentors:

One of the core functions of mentors is to [tell you the things] people are already thinking and saying about you behind your back - and helping you overcome them. A Financial Times profile of American Express CEO Steve Squeri shows how a mentor did this for him.

Squeri is the grandson of Italian and Irish immigrants and the son of an accountant who worked nights and weekends at Bloomingdale’s department store to make ends meet. During his studies at Manhattan College, Squeri lived at home. He had never been on an aircraft until he joined a training program at what is now the consulting group Accenture.

Four years later he moved to Amex. There, his Queens accent and cheap suits stuck out so badly that an executive took him aside. He said, “You have a really sharp mind, but the rest of you needs a lot of work. [Senior managers] tend to use all the letters of the alphabet when they talk.”

The mentor took Squeri shopping, arranged for [speaking] lessons and even organized sessions with a cultural anthropologist so the younger manager would feel comfortable when he was sent to the group’s overseas offices. Squeri says, “I’m an example of how anybody can get to the top with a lot of hard work and having people that run the company that … are looking at individuals broadly and not judging books by their cover.”

Renn comments: “This mentor saw a diamond in the rough guy and made it his business to polish him up. This sort of thing is worth its weight in gold. [But notice how] good mentorship gets uncomfortable.”

Police officer Chris Ford tries to be courteous in all of the interactions he has with citizens during his shifts on traffic patrol. All of Ford’s interactions are captured by the mandatory body cams on his person. But there is also an additional measure that helps motivate him to be pleasant and professional, even when members of the public are standoffish, irritated, or just flat-out rude.

Ford is required to hand out his business card to everyone he interacts with, and on the back is a QR-code that encourages citizens to rate their interactions with him. Using a star-based system called Guardian Score, officers are rated on criteria such as communication, listening skills, and fairness. According to founder Burke Brownfeld, the program is designed to correct the traditional power imbalance between law enforcement officers and the citizens to whom they are supposed to be accountable.

Ellsworth Weave, president of the local NAACP branch said, “It’s a way of letting the community know that the police are not here to attack you. They are there to help you and protect you.”

Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum says programs like Guardian Score are a great way to measure the quality of officer engagement. “At a time when many people are questioning police accountability and how police deal with citizens, police departments are looking for ways to measure how they are doing. And this is one of them.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christlike leadership demands that reputations be backed up by truthful accounts of actions. If/when leaders make mistakes, they should own up to them and do their best to do better.

According to many industry analysts and insiders, the rising dominance of streaming platforms over the traditional broadcast networks is causing an unintended consequence: a lack of leadership development. As NBC’s Sierra Ornelas puts it: “Structurally, we'll have to figure out a better way to do this, because the structure we have now is not working.”

The pipeline from writer to showrunner has become strained by the explosive growth of the streaming series. The pace at which new streaming series are being greenlit and produced, combined with the shorter runs of episodes, are creating a situation where inexperienced writers don’t have enough opportunities to gain valuable mentorship experience.

When there were only a few networks and a few cable channels, there was a path to becoming a showrunner that made up for the lack of training a writer would have in logistics. Basically, the training came through mentoring and experience. When television consisted of 20-22 episodes a year, even junior writers could watch their script go from their hands to the screen. Writers moved up the writer ranks, and by the time they were pitching their own shows, they would have seen at least 50 episodes of television being made.

Something systemic needs to be done to ensure that new writers are trained as much as some were in the old system. Because as sink-or-swim as television has always been, the lack of experience and support in the new one will simply leave many to fail.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Successful ministry never happens in a vacuum. Rather, mentorship is an essential element of Christian community, and without it our people tend to drift aimlessly.

Skye Jethani writes, in Immeasurable, about good versus bad complexity in ministry. He illustrates it this way:

Bad complexity is like a Rube Goldberg machine. Those are the massive, jerry-rigged contraptions that fill an entire room with moving ropes, ramps, bowling balls, and buckets. One small motion, like a marble rolling or a domino tipping, begins a long and complicated chain reaction. A Rube Goldberg machine is a huge, inflexible apparatus that accomplishes one simple task. It’s not very useful, but it can be immensely entertaining.

Good complexity, in contrast, is like a Swiss Army knife—an elegant, nimble instrument that can accomplish an impressive number of tasks. No one would say Swiss Army knives are simple. They are intricate, with many precisely engineered parts, but this complexity of design paradoxically makes them adaptable and easy to use.

Many churches are marked by bad complexity. They are like Rube Goldberg machines—not very effective, but very entertaining to watch. They construct massive systems of control that are far larger than what is required for the task, and they are dangerously fragile. If one element of the system or environment changes, the weakness of the whole church or organization is exposed.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This could be used as illustration of the difference between strong and weak, healthy and unhealthy, complex yet meaningful church organizations and ministries.

When the subject of locker room leaders is raised among the Tennessee Titans, a few names immediately come up. Names like quarterback Ryan Tannehill, safety Kevin Byard, running back Derrick Henry. One that almost never is mentioned, but should be, is inside linebacker Jayon Brown.

Inside linebackers coach Jim Haslett said, “Jayon kind of takes over. He’s a natural leader.” Even though Brown leads, he doesn't "lord" it over his teammates. In a recent interview, he said he's not much of a "yeller" and tries not to embarrass people. Then Brown (now in his fifth year in the NFL) gave some wise advice for leaders:

I just lead by example. I just try to be a guy that can be counted on, hold my teammates [accountable], and they hold me accountable as well . . . It’s just nothing personal. We all want the best for each other. We’ve all got the same goals that we want to hit. It’s just keeping everybody accountable at a high level so we get to be the best we can be.

When Paul McCartney was a boy he auditioned for a place in the Liverpool cathedral choir. He was turned down because the choirmaster reckoned he didn’t have much of a voice. John Lennon was raised by his aunt Mimi. He spent most of his spare time in his bedroom playing guitar. Mimi looked at him one day and said, “John, it’s all very well playing your guitar, but you’ll never make a living out of it.” When Lennon made his first million, he gave her a silver plaque with her words inscribed on it. Two boys that changed our culture but no one saw their potential.

When Samuel anointed David as king of Israel, Jesse paraded his seven strong sons before him, but God rejected them. Then Jesse said, “There is still the youngest, He is tending the sheep.” When Samuel saw him, God said “he is the one.”

How many young people in your family, church, or community are the leaders of tomorrow? Are they future pastors, artists, politicians, teachers, or social workers who, with God’s help might be used to shape your community for the kingdom of God? How can you help them? How will you invest in their lives?

The city of Detroit was in a campaign to reforest its streets after decades of neglecting its depleted tree canopy. However, the tree-planters met stiff resistance: Roughly a quarter of the 7,500 residents declined offers to have new trees planted in front of their homes.

Researcher Christine Carmichael found that the rejections had more to do with how the tree-planters presented themselves than it did with how residents felt about trees. The residents understood the benefits of having trees in urban environments—they provide shade, absorb air pollution, increase property values, and improve health. But the reasons Detroit folks refused was not that they didn’t trust the trees; they didn’t trust the city.

A couple of African-American women Carmichael talked to linked the tree-planting program to a painful racist moment in Detroit’s history, when the city suddenly began cutting down elm trees in bulk in their neighborhoods. As the women understood it, the city did this so that law enforcement could have better surveilance on their neighborhoods from helicopters after an urban uprising.

However, the government’s reason was that the trees were dying off from the Dutch elm disease. But it was the women’s version that led to their decision to reject the trees. It’s not that they didn’t trust the trees; they didn’t trust the city.

The women felt that the city just came in and cut down their trees, and now they want to just come in planting trees. But they felt they should have a choice in this since they’ll be the ones raking up the leaves when the planters leave. They felt that the decisions were being made by someone else, and they were going to have to deal with the consequences.

Failing to meaningfully involve the residents in the decision-making is a classic mistake. After all, who would turn down a free tree? Perhaps these people just don’t get it.

One Detroit resident whom Carmichael interviewed told her: “You know, I really appreciate you today because that shows that someone is listening. Someone is trying to find out what’s really going on in our thoughts. And maybe next time they can do a survey and ask us, if they would like to have us have the trees.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Churches and small groups can learn from Detroit’s mistake. It is best to ask for members’ participation in planning and decision-making rather than making authoritative decisions without explanation or discussion.

John McArthur shares the following important lesson he learned:

I learned a vital spiritual lesson while participating in a track meet during my college years. I was running in the 4x400-meter relay at the Orange County Invitational. Our strategy was simple. The first runner, a speedy sprinter, would get as big a lead as possible right out of the starting blocks. My job was merely to run a clean lap without dropping the baton. Our third man and fourth man could make up whatever ground I might lose.

Our first man ran a great leg and made a perfect baton pass. I managed to finish my lap in a tight battle for first place. The third man went around the curve, came halfway down the back stretch, stopped, walked off, and sat down in the grass. The race kept going.

We thought he had pulled a hamstring or twisted an ankle. We all ran across the infield, expecting to find him writhing on the grass or at least wincing in pain. He wasn’t. He was sitting passively. We anxiously asked, “What happened? Are you hurt?” He said, “No, I’m OK. I just didn’t feel like running.”

My teammates and I responded with the same thing: “You can’t do that! Do you realize the effort we have all put into training for this? You’re not in this by yourself!”

I’ve thought often about that moment in relation to our duty as believers. We are supposed to take the truth that was handed to us by our ancestors in the Christian faith and run with it—not aimlessly (1 Cor. 9:26), but always pressing on toward the goal (Phil. 3:14)—so we can hand off the faith, intact and uncorrupted, to the next generation.

In his book Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek explains the secret to team success. Sinek found himself amazed, even a bit humbled, by the character of the men and women in our armed forces. But where does this character come from? Initially, Sinek kept arriving at the same assumption: “These are just a special class of people. They’re better than us.” But while working in Afghanistan, Sinek had an experience that revised this premise. He explains:

Everything on our trip went wrong. We actually got stuck there because the base came under rocket attack when I was there. And it was (through) this experience where I learned what service really means.

Service means giving to others with no expectation of anything in return. Fulfillment, calm, security, peace of mind, confidence, all come from a willingness to serve others. Because … only when I decided that I would look after others … did I find calm, security, peace of mind.

Sinek discovered that our service men and women have a special role in defending our country, but they are not just in a class by themselves. He concludes that all of us can become a good leader by serving others:

The rank of office is not what makes someone a leader. Leadership is the choice to serve others with or without any formal rank … Leaders are the ones who run headfirst into the unknown. They rush toward the danger. They put their own interests aside to protect us or to pull us into the future. Leaders would sooner sacrifice what is theirs to save what is ours. And they would never sacrifice what is ours to save what is theirs. This is what it means to be a leader.

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers is one of the best pro football players of all-time, but he still listens to his coaches. "I love being coached," Rodgers said. "I love talking football with smart coaches. I love the input, the dialogue, the conversation." His team's head coach, Mike McCarthy, added, "Aaron is a really good student. He wants to be coached, and he likes to be coached hard."

Steph Curry, one of the best basketball players in the NBA, has the same attitude. One of his coaches said, "He's the most educable player I've ever known—both in terms of his willingness to listen and in his ability to absorb and execute."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Wisdom; Teachability—The essence of wisdom is the ability to listen and learn from others; (2) Father's Day—These two men provide a good example for all people, especially men, about the need to listen and learn from others.

Leadership coach Karen Miller tells the following story about how she and her husband needed to identify and develop new leaders for a new church plant:

One Sunday morning Irene, a church plant leader in her seventies, set up the Communion table. I noticed that she then went around to make sure everything else was in order—and people did whatever she asked them to do. Afterward I asked her, "Irene, have you ever considered that you have leadership gifts?"

"Absolutely not!" she said. "I am just an ordinary woman, housewife, and mother. I'm not leading; I'm just serving."

Some months later, our young church received a visit from a Rwandan church leader. He told the church how he dreamed of starting an orphanage and school for children whose parents had been slaughtered in the genocide. We decided we had to help. Could we hold a banquet to raise funds? Irene agreed to help put on the banquet.

When she visited a possible caterer, she somehow convinced the caterer to donate most of the food. Irene talked with a banquet hall, and they gave her a deep discount. So did the tech people. No one could tell Irene no. On the banquet night, over 200 people came, and enough money was raised to build the school and its first dormitory.

I teased her afterward: "Irene, that was amazing! Maybe you are a leader?" She laughed, for she finally had to acknowledge the truth. Each May, Irene led the banquet again. Now we could see photos of kids who had lived on the streets and never brushed their teeth flashing broad, white smiles. Boys who had been malnourished, their arms and legs painfully thin, now ran and jumped across the courtyard on strong legs. Girls who'd come dressed in rags showed off their neat school uniforms and barrettes.

After Irene went to be with the Lord, Sonrise Orphanage named a dorm after her did I find out that the banquet she'd led had singlehandedly covered one third of the school's operating costs.

Possible Preaching Angles: Leaders; Leadership; Leadership development—Why does leader training matter so much—especially when we're busy with a thousand other things? Because for any change to happen, there needs to be a leader. And for any God-honoring change to happen, there needs to be a God-honoring leader like Irene.

At the turn of the century, Blockbuster reigned supreme in the video rental industry. If your family craved a movie night, someone likely had to drive to one of Blockbuster's 9,000 stores, stroll through rows of DVD-lined shelves, and hand a membership card to a blue-clad employee. When Reed Hastings, founder of a fledgling startup called Netflix, met with Blockbuster CEO John Antioco in 2000 to propose a partnership, he was laughed out of the office.

Despite changing consumer preferences, Blockbuster doubled down on its store-first model by offering popcorn, books, and toys, while Netflix experimented with a subscription model and no late fees. Only 10 years later, Netflix became the largest source of streaming Internet traffic in North America during peak hours, with over 20 million subscribers. Blockbuster declared bankruptcy.

Possible Preaching Angles: We in ministry have a similar choice before us. Our calling and message should never change. But, like a doctor refusing to attend medical conferences, if we don't regularly step back to look at innovations in our vocation, we will miss opportunities to influence people.

Claude Alexander, bishop of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, urges Christians from all walks of life to step up into bold leadership. Here's his take on bold leadership:

There are questions that beg to be answered. There are dilemmas to be overcome. There are gaps to be filled, and the challenge is for you to fill them. That is the essence of the high call of spiritual leadership. There is a purpose for your being here. You are meant to answer something, solve something, provide something, lead something, discover something, compose something, write something, say something, translate something, interpret something, sing something, create something, teach something, preach something, bear something, overcome something, and in doing so, you improve the lives of others under the power of God, for the glory of God.

For four decades, Amos Alonzo Stagg coached football at the University of Chicago. They were the original Monsters of the Midway, long before the Bears borrowed that moniker. For decades during and long after Coach Stagg's heyday, you couldn't go too far on campus without bumping into his influence. Not only did he lead the Maroons to two national titles in 1905 and 1913, but his football legacy includes the huddle, the Statue of Liberty play, onside kick, the T formation, the end-around, and the forward pass. In other words, he practically invented football as we know it.

But that isn't his true legacy. When he accepted the invitation to coach the Maroons, he gave the university president an acceptance speech of sorts, saying, "After much thought and prayer, I decided that my life can best be used for my Master's service in the position you have offered." Amos Alonzo Stagg coached until the age of ninety-eight, but he didn't just coach his teams. He discipled them.

Mike Krzyewski, the men's basketball coach for Duke University since 1980, is basketball's all-time winningest coach. Most people know him as just "Coach K." But he's not just a coach; he's also a genius at creating teamwork. Here's one of his keys to success:

In our program, the truth is the basis of all that we do. There is nothing more important than the truth because there's nothing more powerful than the truth. Consequently, on our team, we always tell one another the truth. We must be honest with one another. There is no other way.

To illustrate the paralysis of indecision, international speaker Michael Ramsden tells the story of three turtles who went off to a picnic. One turtle packed sandwiches, another provided the drinks, and the third one simply came along for company. As the turtles headed off into the woods, about halfway to their destination it started to rain so they took shelter under a large rock and began talking amongst themselves.

The first two turtles turned to the third and said, "Look, we made the sandwiches, we made the drinks, you brought nothing, so you should be the one to go home and get the umbrella's. Get some umbrella's, come back here, we'll go on into the woods and we'll have our picnic."

The third turtle said, "You must be joking. As soon as I'm around the corner you're going to eat the food, you're going to drink the drinks, and when I come back with the umbrella's there will be nothing left."

The first two turtles said, "We will do no such thing."

The third turtle said, "You absolutely will. There's no way I'm doing that." Eventually the first two turtles swear on their shells that they will not eat the sandwiches or drink the drinks until the third turtle comes back with the umbrellas.

So the third turtle leaves. Minutes go by. Minutes become hours, hours become days. On the tenth day the first turtle says to the second turtle, "Okay how about it, why don't we just eat the sandwiches and drink the drink?" As soon as the first turtle says this a voice from behind a rock says, "If you do I won't get the umbrellas!"

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Leaders; Leadership; Decisions—Leaders who are people who need to make decisions. (2) Procrastination; Salvation—Perhaps you are putting off making an important decision, like accepting Christ, turning from sin, joining the church, and so forth.

In the early 1970s, a psychologist at named David Kipnis wanted to know if power really does corrupt people. So in a series of experiments, Kipnis had subjects assume the role of "manager" over a group of "employees" in a fictitious work situation. In some cases, Kipnis gave the managers very little power. In other cases, the managers had considerable power: they decided whether employees were fired, transferred, or promoted. The bosses with more power were more likely to use coercive or "strong tactics," such as criticizing employees, making demands, and displaying anger. They were more dismissive of an employees' performance, and tended to credit themselves for their employees' success. Powerful bosses were also more likely to keep a psychological distance between themselves and their employees. Kipnis concluded that having power inflates our sense of self and makes us less able to empathize with those lacking power.

In a another 2012 study, another researcher named Paul Piff had subjects play a two-person game of Monopoly in which power was intentionally skewed: one player was given a wad of cash and the use of both dice, while the other player received only half the cash and one die. Within minutes, the subjects with more cash and dice (the "high-status players") began acting noticeably different. They hogged the space at the table, made less eye contact, and took more liberties, such as moving the low-status players' game pieces for them. They also made more noise when they moved their own pieces. Everyone knew the game was rigged, and yet within a few minutes the roles crystallized and the high-status players started pushing people around and acting like they had real power and status.

The conclusion of both experiments? A little bit of power really does corrupt ordinary people, even when it's just a game.

In May 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and Erebus, embarked from London on a voyage with ambitious aims. The mission would forge a passage through the partially mapped channels of northern Canada and pioneer the Northwest Passage. In the process, the mission would also open new trading routes and allow vessels to forgo the dangerous and lengthy passage around Cape Horn. Led by Arctic veteran Sir John Franklin, the ship was equipped with new technology pioneered in Britain—coal-fired engines powering propeller screws for locomotion, and tinned food.

It was a risky trip. Hostile conditions, the use of new technology, and operating beyond the reach of immediate rescue parties meant the expedition was the equivalent of a Victorian-era moon landing. If men, supplies, technology, knowhow, or leadership failed, then deaths could be expected. But if the ship had been properly equipped with the right resources and decisive leadership it would succeed.

In July 1845, the ships sailed out of Baffin Bay and were never heard from again. After two years of silence, the alarm was raised in Britain and rescue ships dispatched. The rescue mission brought back the tragic news—129 men had died in the greatest single disaster in Arctic exploration.

A rough outline became clear. All had started well but the ships had been poorly equipped from the start. The engines were underpowered and much of the tinned food—produced by a contractor who was the lowest bidder—turned out to be rotten. Franklin's ill-equipped ships became prey to tidal movements in ice, leaving men dangerously short of supplies. Someone on the ship had left a terse note stating that Franklin was dead and survivors were abandoning the ships to head south with rowing boats. Eventually one of those rowing boats was discovered—with the skeletons still on it.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) The importance of building the right foundation in our spiritual lives with Christ; (2) Planning; Equipping the saints.