Is it OK for a leader to not be OK?

Imagine a toxic waste barrel. You know, the kind you see in cartoons - yellow with a big nuclear symbol on it. Now imagine that barrel is you as a leader. Many in your congregation believe you are a great place to unload their toxicity - their doubts about God, their marriage problems, their unemployment, their gripes about the church. Gradually leaders’ toxicity levels rise. And, of course, they don’t have anyone to offload the toxicity on to (except spouses). Unlike social services or counselling professions, for example, most Christian leaders do not have professional supervision as a matter of course, one main aim of which is to have someone objective who can detox us without it transferring the toxins to them.

I reckon there is good evidence that many Christian leaders take about 15 years for our toxic buckets to get filled to the brim. At which point any new toxicity is likely to produce an overspill or an explosion. Let another criticism arrive in our inbox, let alone several simultaneous marriage crises, plus crises in our own lives and nobody copes. But we have to keep smiling and not admit it because we have carefully constructed an image of being unflappable and infinitely resourceful to the needs of others. It is said that ministers don’t drop out of Christian work because they have forgotten how to preach but because they have forgotten how to be human.

I have to confess to feeling something akin to shell-shock at the speed my life has changed with the pandemic. Within two weeks everything I was planning has been stripped away, as has my routine, to be replaced with providing Daddy School for a demanding and anxious 5 year old who can’t be left to get on with anything on his own for more than 3 minutes. I have to say that my emotions are absolutely reeling. I am experiencing an incomprehension about how I feel (don’t know from one day to the next) and how it is appropriate for me to feel. And how other people expect me as a leader to feel, or what is appropriate to express.

My guess is that I not at all alone, but I am part of that set of Christian ministers who feel we are probably expected to be strong, resilient and spiritually dynamic when in fact we are feeling as weak, vulnerable, isolated and worried as anyone else. Just that we can’t admit that we are feeling it. So here is my confession - I am feeling it.

I wonder if, in the stripping back, the Lord is providing some unique opportunities at this time for Christians - and especially leaders - to pare right back to just praying and getting into the Word of God, without many distractions that normally pile in on us. I wonder if there are chances to learn to lean into God in wholly fresh ways that simply aren’t possible when I think there are other things to lean on - idols like my own psychological togetherness or ability to control my comings and goings. I wonder if there might be opportunities to become a better and more positive encourager in ways that are not possible while I am feeling completely sorted or presenting as omnicompetent? Maybe allowing myself to be vulnerable and human as opposed to platform-preacher-teacher-guy will actually make me more human and take away long-held veneers of Christian leader professionalism. Maybe.

But lurking at the back of the mind is whether people want Christian leaders who are weak and vulnerable. Or do we only want leaders who are strong and able? Do people really want to follow or employ leaders who have a deep walk with the Lord, are able to teach the scriptures and encourage a community in prayer, or ones who promise answers, perpetually unflappable and invulnerable - more Terminator than human? I really hope it is the first, even though it is only now that I am starting to realise how frequently I present as the second.

(Promising the undeliverable is a very real danger for Christian leaders from the point of being interviewed for positions with impossible job descriptions onwards, claiming that we can deliver in order to be appointed; and then being trapped by having presented a fantasy version of ourselves, into either wearing a mask or disappointing everyone).

Secretly, I suspect many leaders don’t want 2 Corinthians 12 to be true - boasting in our weakness and inadequacy, Paul being given a thorn in the flesh to stop him being conceited, and to learn that God’s grace is sufficient.

That’s the thing - God’s grace is sufficient for us. But we are going to have to learn that in whole new ways in which our self is stripped away. But then, maybe, 2 Corinthians 1 might come with greater reality - that we are able to comfort others with the comfort we have received from the Lord. If I am impervious, I scarcely need to receive comfort from him. How then can I comfort others if they think I float serenely through life and pandemics with perfect emotional equilibrium and answers for all their questions and needs? I might be able to train them in skills, but not model how to be a disciple in bad times as well as good, or when I don’t know the answers. If the current situation is teaching me anything it is that the total tonnage of things I don’t know the answer to can sink a battleship.

What do we do with these existential issues? A wise friend said to me earlier today that trying to look at the abnormal through a normal lens doesn’t work. These are extraordinary times when the normal doesn’t work. But extraordinary times end, a new normal emerges and we evaluate and go forward from there. I agree with the idea. Trying to plan how to feel, or even what to do, according to our normal principles when the world is literally changing by the hour is impossible and doomed to failure. We are, in the over-used phrase, in unprecedented times and by next week everything will have changed again.

But in another sense we are not in unprecedented times. The times are simply revealing to us how precarious life is all of the time, but usually masked or slightly ameliorated by our systems. And they are revealing how we should live with life’s precariousness all of the time: leaning in to God, trusting his grace only, not my cleverness or insulating mechanisms, praying. What do we want to model to people? That by being strong and competent like us that they too can survive these times? Or that by owning our weakness and vulnerability we might better learn to cast ourselves on a mighty, trustworthy God?

Another friend likes to say that leaders have to be the chief repenters. Otherwise how is anyone else going to see it being modelled and know how to do repent? The same is surely true about being weak and vulnerable. If we are, but pretend we are not for the sake of a veneer of security, how is anyone meant to be helped to seek God by that?

If this does one thing for me, I pray it will be to make me impress the gospel into my heart as relentlessly and deeply as I possibly can, and to make me pray. It is possible that we come out of this period as scarred and vulnerable, but also having grown in trust, waiting on the Lord and in depth. No longer apparently unflappable but shallow, but rather self-evidently broken yet full of grace, the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the consolation that only comes from knowing Him.

When I said “my foot is slipping,” your love, O Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul
Psalm 94:18-19

8 Principles to Help You Lead Through Change

In times of change godly leaders are the key factor in leading for the positive and minimising the negative impact on the flock. Therefore the key question is: what do leaders need to bring to the table to build trust and confidence in new direction or a new initiative?

Here are a few principles:

• Leaders help the flock with their core motivations - aligning them to Christ and Christ's purposes through teaching, encouragement and godly role modelling
• Leaders clarify future challenges and needs with gospel vision
• Leaders care for the flock when uncertainty comes. We need to be able to express how change will affect people positively and negatively so they know we will help them when they feel weak and afraid
• Leaders communicate clearly in order to help the flock embrace godly opportunity. People respond to concrete vision not vague vision
• Leaders build team and gather resources for the task ahead, focusing people with our enthusiasm and joy in God
• Leaders smooth transition with wisdom and the affection of Christ
• Leaders expect to absorb angst with prayerfulness, compassion and kindness. In doing so we minimise future distress and disturbance
• Leaders help the flock celebrate successes and mourn failures constructively

Leaders are always sensitive to the people they have and what goals and timescales for future change are realistic. We cannot change what we do not have the level of trust to change. In addition we cannot change things in Christ-centred ways unless the church shares a Christ-centred, disciple-making view of its purpose. We lead change in order that he is better magnified through the church making disciples. If that purpose is not central we will simply default to running everyone's favourite things.

Diaries, Wisdom and Spiritual Healthiness

If you are a pastor or some other kind of Christian leader would you say that you drive your schedule or that your schedule drives you? How much control do you exercise over external demands and expectations?

Furthermore, what does your schedule do for you? Does it function to facilitate organisation and activity or Sabbath, spiritual life and wisdom? If you are anything like me you tend to use it for the former rather than the latter. It is very telling that my diary organises my meetings and appointments rather than my spiritual life. I don’t know many people who use it for both, or indeed for spiritual life.

Our diaries describe our normalised patterns of life. And and normal patterns or habits reveal what’s most important to us. Its worth looking carefully at our diary to see what it reveals about our spiritual walk with God. How can we use them to help us live lives of quality and depth rather than massive running around.

Our diaries might show we are really good at organisation. Many pastors juggle a huge number of difference commitments and people with amazing multitasking skills. But what would a diary look like that schedule enough space for praying, worshipping and seeking God? What would a diary look like that is being used well to produce a spiritual life of quality? As the Bible says, like a tree planted by streams of water whose roots go very deep?

Most pastors I know work up to the limit of their capacity pretty much all the time. They believe - rightly - that it is good to work hard for the Lord in the service of the gospel. But many struggle with the sheer subjectivity that plagues so much of the work. It is very difficult in pastoral ministry to know when you have done enough or to evaluate whether it is good or bad work. The frequent answer is simply to do more hoping that means it is better. This leads to living at the outside limit of capacity, with no margins, all the time. Of course it only takes an unexpected pastoral crisis or two to push us over the edge.

I’ve read a few books recently about Getting Things Done time management principles. They all work with the idea that working efficiently frees up more time, reducing exhaustion and providing space. The trouble of Getting Things Done material for pastors is that it assumes there is a finite workload that can simply be managed better. If we perceive there to be an infinite workload - or at least an impossibly large one - so that no amount of efficient working will ever free up time then there is no incentive to work efficiently. Any time freed up will always immediately get refilled. The demand perpetually exceeds supply and eliminating the truly unnecessary is difficult because there is always a real person on the other end of it.

I think the answer is to use the diary to demarcate the spiritual input part of our lives before we put in other things. To prioritise life with God before meetings and to normalise sabbath, prayerfulness and worship. And space for thinking. Wisdom is a by-product of seeking the Lord with faith and fear. And seeking the Lord is a product of deliberately making space to do so.

We get spiritual input from one of 5 places:

1. Directly from God
2. Care that we do for ourselves or in small groups of friends
3. Within our church or ministry environment
4. From wider networks, for example at conferences
5. From specialist pastoral carers

What is your mechanism or system for ensuring you are getting appropriate spiritual input in each of these areas (or at least 1-4)? What is your lifestyle in each? How do you use your diary for each? Or what is stopping you and what will you do about it? Note that number 4 alone will not sustain you if 1-3 aren’t working for you.

Over the weekend I spent a few hours with a man who builds networks for pastoring pastors in Latin America. For him the key was accountable groups of friends who deliberately, intentionally pastor each other. I wish everyone in pastoral ministry would have a group like that. But whether you choose that method or some other, we all need some accountable system for maintaining spiritual vitality whether it one to one, in a small group or some wider context. Without it eventually running out of steam is practically inevitable and with it goes our discipleship, wisdom, worship and the ability to do the job. When our discipleship dries up we can’t fulfill our pastoral calling either.

Ministry can be so busy that there are potentially an uncontrollably large number of inputs into our lives. And it is so people-oriented that a large number of those inputs lead to situations that remain open loops rather than leading to closure. Allow an ever increasing number of inputs and open loops and life eventually overwhelms us. We start to run just to stay standing still and eventually we can’t sustain it any more. Our diaries can be a critical tool for a wise, God-directed life if we use them to help us be proactive, not reactive, about our life-choices and spiritual-life-choices.

Discipling Leaders

I had a very interesting conversation over lunch yesterday with Adrian Reynolds, director at the Proclamation Trust. In it we reflected that we often use a wrong category when we think about developing leaders. Namely that all of our effort goes into training rather than discipling (of which training is one component).

It isn't that training isn't a biblical idea - it is. I need to do some work though on just how dominant it is. ie. we are told to train ourselves in godliness. However I find passages such as 2 Tim 3:10-11 compelling as a leader development passage, and the training there seems to be much more than skills or comprehension. Speaking to Timothy, Paul says:

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured

I am always terribly tempted to stop after "you know all about my teaching" because it is much easier to invite a leader into one of my teaching sessions than it is to invite them into my life. I know how to teach them to understand the Bible text, but am much less good at showing them, up close and personal, my way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love and the rest.

How does my methodology need to change to reflect the desire to disciple rather than train? I don't have many answers to that yet, but I think the question is important. I don't merely want to equip leaders, I want to father and nurture them too.