Leadership on the Line, Chapter 8: Manage Your Hungers

With only about 5 days and 4 chapters left, I like you, am cramming to blog these last chapters before our meeting on Sunday night. So if you're reading the book as a part of our Leadership Development practicum, it may be time to play catch up. Like I'm doing now.

Chapter 8 begins 4 chapters on the personal side of Leadership and the personal dangers we face. The sentence that best sums up this chapter is found on page 166. When you lead, you participate in collective emotions, which then generate a host of temptations: invitations to accrue power over others, appeals to your own sense of importance, opportunities for emotional intimacy and sexual satifaction. The authors go on to say... But connecting to those emotions is different from giving into them. Yielding to them destroys your capacity to lead. Power can become an end to itself, displacing you attention to organizational purposes.

It has been my observation that there are three types of people in leadership in churches. The first is the natural born leader who gravitates toward leadership in all circumstances. Whether out of a need for power or a need to assure that things go right, they tend to grab the reigns and move things forward. There is nothing wrong with natural born leaders, I assume that many of you fit that category. However, many natural born leaders are also workplace leaders. Pastors and nominating committees in churches observe some amount of worship attendance, recognize a persons leadership in their own particular vocational field, and assume church leadership is a good idea for that person. The issue, clearly, is when that workplace leader leads a church like a business, or leads it away from it's missional purpose.

The second type of person in leadership is the person who doesn't find any amount of control or influence in their home or work life and seeks to exert some control over their church life. (By the way, this is a case study in any non-profit situation.) Their leadership often starts out as effective as they usually have enough passion to get things started. However, as their lack of leadership skills catches up with the demands of their position they tend to either grow disillusioned, or controlling. Either way, its a recipe for disaster unless someone steps in and helps them learn how to become an effective leader. (Assuming they are open to suggestions.)

The final type is the person with the humilty to recognize that the task of the church is not about self, but others. Not about glorifying accomplishments, but glorifying God. Not about seeking what works for self or family, but what works to make a change in lives for Christ.