My most Compelling Leadership Quality

What follows is something I've been working on, off and on, for at least a month.

It started out as a comment on the tension between institutional church, uh, hierarchs' aspirations to lead and develop leaders and the teaching of the apostle Paul that the church is a body consisting of interdependent parts with Jesus alone as the head of the body and of Paul's admonition that all disciples "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

And, it is that.

But, as this post developed, it became something like a journal entry containing reflections on my life as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God on my job where my job is to be a leader. And, on how Jesus informs how I lead.

I hope you'll read it for what it is.

---------------

I am committed to living under the lordship of Jesus and, to the best of my ability, to function in the world as a subject of the Kingdom of God.

I gave up the role of pastor/parish priest in the institutional church many years ago.

And, while I am part of the church, I rarely think about that because I'm trying, as best I can, to live as a subject of the Kingdom as a servant of the Master.

I reject the idea that any human being can be a leader in the Kingdom of God, yada yada yada.

As a man of the Kingdom, I live in the world, though I do my best not to be of the world.

I have a job.

In that job, I'm paid to be a leader. And, I do lead, according to my job description, to the best of my ability.

But, in truth, my ultimate purpose in putting in time on my job, is to serve the Lord as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God.

----------------

I work very hard to complete the duties contained in my job description, but I work even more diligently in my ambassadorial role.

And, I'm constantly evaluating what I do in the role of Kingdom ambassador.

(What follows in this blog post is the result of my self-evaluation.)

----------------

As a Kingdom ambassador, I had been befuddled by one reality:

I choose to behave on the job in the world in a way that people gifted to be shepherds function in the church.

During my church days, when I was being paid to be a pastor, I chafed at doing the work of a shepherd.

More than ten years ago, I declared on Brian Miller's Emerging CGGC Blog, that I don't have a shepherd bone in my body.

So, in my role as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, I befuddled myself.

----------------

Since I was a kid, I have loved being on a team.

I never have been even a decent athlete, but, as a kid, I played baseball and football and basketball...all rather poorly...but well enough to make the team and warm the bench.

And, I absolutely loved it...because I had the opportunity to work toward a common goal...

...among people with gifts and abilities different than mine!

I've realized that, even to this day, I yearn to be a team member in anything I do.

----------------

So, on my job, I befuddled myself because I did what a shepherd would do.

After a long struggle for self-understanding, I realized that what I did was nothing more than attempt to be a team member.

I did that even before I was invited to join the leadership team.

I believe that my yearning to be a source of support and encouragement to everyone...to behave like a member of a team...prompted the owners of the store to elevate me into the leadership position.

And, I've been stunned by the affection I am shown by the people I, uh, lead...people from 16 to 80 in age.

I am absolutely convinced that they respond to me in the way they do because I bond myself to them as their servant.

I support their success and celebrate their success as if their success is my success because, for the member of a team, we win...and lose...lose together.

----------------

Here's why I say all of that:

My life working in a grocery store is one in which it is easy, even natural, to function as a member of a team...

...but, in my life in the institutional church, I never, personally, experienced team work.

In the institutional church, I never knew life in the body as Paul describes it.

----------------

Paul speaks of the community of the followers of Jesus as a body.

He points out that we are all different from each other and that we all have our own function and that each member of the body must depend on the other members of the body.

And, he points out that the head of the body isn't one of the followers of Jesus.

The head of the body is Jesus.

Paul says that Jesus leads all of the members of the body who are, in turn, entirely dependent on Jesus... and on one another.

The members of the body exist in a state of interdependence and mutual submission.

----------------

That state, in which all members of the body submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21), existed in the first days of the Kingdom of God.

Paul says that Jesus gives apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds and teachers, not to lead the church, but "to prepare the saints for works of service." (Eph. 4:12)

As a student of Christian revivalism, I believe that that spirit, dominated by a commitment to servanthood and mutual submission, existed in every era of awakening or revival.

It certainly existed in the movement days of the Church of God when John Winebrenner and his brothers and sisters served, not led, our body.

Sadly, that commitment to servanthood and a life of mutual submission, is absent in our CGGC today.

The people who work out of offices in Findlay and, for me, in Harrisburg, want to be leaders developing other leaders.

They themselves want to be followed.

They don't ever say, as Paul did, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." (1 Cor. 11:1)

They want to lead and raise up other leaders. Or, they want to coach and recruit other coaches.

----------------

To be honest, the people who work out of offices in our denominational headquarters are in my experience, nice and good and gentle (mostly) men. And, they aspire to be nice and good and gentle leaders...

...but, they don't imitate Jesus.

They are not men whose attitude is the same as that of Christ Jesus who being in very nature God,...made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. (Philippians 2)

They, without recognizing their sin, seek to lead, to be the head of the CGGC body...

...to coach the team, not to be a members of the team.

And, of course, in the CGGC especially,...

...the more they aspire to be leaders developing other leaders, the more it is true that we experience numerical decline and spiritual decay and...

...the more it becomes obvious that the Lord of all authority and power and blessing isn't blessing us.

----------------

My most compelling leadership quality, I am convinced,...

...as I work on my job as a manager in a grocery store, where my real task is to be an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, is that...

...I never aspire to lead. Ever.

I try to be who Jesus was, from the manger to the cross.

I serve. I encourage. I celebrate the success of my team members. And, when they fail, I console them and comfort them and encourage them, even teach them.

Never as their leader. Never even as their equal. But, as that bench-warming teammate (a role I played often in my younger days)...

...as their servant.

----------------

And, and this, for me, has been the stunner:

...they follow...

...what I do.

Stunningly, many of them seem to genuinely care about pleasing me...

...serving...me...

...and, as a result,...serving the purpose of the team.

Because they trust that I would never, ever presume to lead them, that I don't think of myself as being superior to them, or as having authority over them...

They trust that I will all-but-kill-myself to work with them and to serve them to support their success...

...and, ultimately, our victory as a team.

In the end, they follow.

And, for most of them, that comes easily, even naturally.

It stuns me that I am followed.

----------------

In the institutional church today, there is so much talk about leadership. And, in my denomination of the institutional church, there is so little following.

Yet, in the world, in the world where I work at least, there's no talk whatsoever about leadership, even among the leaders...

...but there is the doing of what-turns-out-to-be leadership, and in my small world, people do follow.

Without caring about leading or being a leader, our leadership is followed.

----------------

Based on my honest self-evaluation: I'm not particularly competent in doing my job. There are many ways I need to improve in my job performance. Several of the people who follow me, do the job better than I do.

But, curiously, my incompetence doesn't seem to matter...at least as far as my ability to be followed is concerned.

Could it be that being followed is the fruit of serving?

What I'm learning is this:

I am followed ...

...whether I aspire to lead, or not.