Lead Time
Lead Time
The Genius of Jesus in Leadership
What if everything we thought about leadership was backward? In this thought-provoking exploration of "The Genius of Jesus," we unpack how Christ established the most effective leadership development movement in history—not through controlling hierarchies but through radical trust and empowerment.
• Jesus exemplifies genius by seeing connections others couldn't see and establishing an upside-down kingdom
• The Pharisaical tendency in leadership seeks identity in power over others rather than empowerment
• Healthy organizations foster innovation through teams rather than bureaucratic hierarchy
• Trust functions as currency—when present, it propels ministry forward; when absent, it creates resistance
• Effective leadership balances high trust with high accountability through transparency
• Decentralized decision-making requires clear values and principles that guide but don't restrict
• Leadership thrives when principles rather than rigid rules govern behavior
• Effective leaders instill thirst for mission rather than merely creating manuals and procedures
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This is Lee time, so I wrote a blog called the genius of Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah and um. Yeah, obviously Jesus is the greatest leader of all time. Is that about? Through his death and resurrection and his ascension and rain and his spirit descending upon all of the baptized? Said about the greatest leadership development multiplying movement. The world has said about the greatest leadership development multiplying movement the world has ever known, and so obviously we agree on that. I'm just going to read a little bit of the blog, jack, and then I'll throw it to you to get comments.
Speaker 2:So Jesus is a genius. He's God in the flesh, incarnate with us now, by and in the spirit, in the word, his word, through his body and blood, through and in us, the church, his body. The mystery is jaw-dropping. So why was Jesus a genius, jack? Well, there's many reasons. His power and authority to heal body and soul, the curse reversed. His sacrificial willingness to suspend his power through his suffering, so much suffering. His hanging on a Roman cross for our sins, the sins of the world. His rising from the dead, awakening hope, seemingly suspended. His ascending to rule and reign at God's right hand. His sending of the spirit to accomplish his heavenly kingdom expanding reign. And finally, through us, the church, the baptized and taught the baptized and taught, sent to baptize and teach others. All that he told us. So that's the gospel in a nutshell there. Jack Jesus is a genius. Any take on the story of Jesus and how it should shape us as a church.
Speaker 3:Well, the story of Jesus is genius. But I wanted to think just for a minute and hang on that word how do we define that word genius? Because I agree with you on that statement. So when I think of what defines a genius and people may obviously there's textbook definitions of that, but I'll give you kind of my definition is a genius is a person who sees the big picture and sees connections and draws connections that other people can't do Right, which makes them extraordinary in that way. Right, when we say the word genius, there's an extraordinary amount of and we're're talking about God and man together, so there's that extraordinary piece of it.
Speaker 3:But Jesus, the divine right, is seeing connections and drawing connections and making certain things happen that connect together that we normally wouldn't like. We wouldn't have drawn that connection. The people that were following him, even as disciples, weren't drawing the connections until they fully played out right, and I think that's part of what I think about the genius of Jesus. Right, coming in and creating an upside down kingdom. This is a type of genius, right, that's not the type of kingdom people were expecting Jesus to establish. They think of a conqueror, right, they think of a king, and Jesus's kingship is radically different than what people expect and I think that's one of the things that makes Jesus a genius is drawing that connection mobile and creating a type of mobilization on that right which is radically different than what people would have expected.
Speaker 2:You know there's in popular culture today. What do the experts say? Yeah, your take on. What's the difference between a genius and an expert? Jack, any take there.
Speaker 3:An expert knows sort of kind of the orthodox way to do things inside and out right. So if you're an expert mechanic, you know everything about how that engine works, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're the person that's going to come up with a new way of designing the engine right. So you can be an expert on something and also not be, in theory, not be the person who designs or redoes or reshapes the way that thing works in the future. You just kind of know how you are intimately connected to how it works right now, and so in many ways the Pharisees were types of experts right Sure In the law, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And they created other laws that helped give their community more definition and differentiation from pagan Gentiles. Right and Jesus. So Jesus, speaking to the Pharisaical tendency, Jesus is a genius because he could see what those laws were doing. That was helpful and maybe not so helpful. And what was not so helpful is they were finding their righteousness based on the doing of the law rather than in their identity in the law giver, in Yahweh. And what is the law's primary function? It is to point our sin out and lead us to a savior, Jesus is like hey, all these things, you're finding your righteousness.
Speaker 2:I'm here Like the one that's going to fulfill it, is speaking to you in your hearing. This word has been fulfilled, and obviously they were very, very offended, because who is a man to tell us how to do? Well, it's the God man. Sorry, guys, you've been trumped by not president Trump, but not Jesus in in the flesh. And so the pharisaical tendency is to find our identity in power over right, and that I found that control over and power over that leads toward. You. Do this, because this is what I, this is what I say, and and Jesus says well, you should do what they say, but don't take on the heart, because Jesus knows the heart right and cause. Their heart is like whitewashed tombs. Outside it looks good, but Jesus says some hard words, man, but inside and this is holy, and this is Holy Week when Jesus said these words right In his Matthew's commentary this is after he's come in, in Palm Sunday Inside you're like whitewashed tombs, man, it's dead. People are inside, and so do I. Have a pharisaical tendency. Every leader has a pharisaical tendency right.
Speaker 3:If you have to be in control of anything for sure, then that's going to creep in right. Yep, and that's certainly true in my role right At Christ Greenfield, executive Director. There's a lot of things I have to exercise control over right. But how do you balance that? How do you think of that in the most healthy way? How do you think of that as an empowering exercise rather than merely a restricting exercise? And that's the challenge I think that Jesus is inviting us into as leaders in the church.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'll go back to the blog here and we'll keep going and then I'll pause. It's quite astonishing when you think about it. God gave us his authority. God's in control, complete control. Nothing goes on apart from his control. Yet he's invited all of us to his leadership table. He's decentralized his authority to broken and rebellious sinners forgiven by faith. What strikes you there, jack?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's that upside down kingdom again. So this is wild, tim. Like the Great Commission, all authority has been given to me. Now you go make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them on his authority. So he has the authority. He's clear about that. Now what does he do? He gives that authority to them, and now baptism and teaching and discipling and proclaiming all of these things are valid, not because of who they are, but because of who Jesus is.
Speaker 2:Isn't that wild. And it's valid insofar as it points back to the one who has authority, right, and the word and the work, and then the way of Jesus. We got to go back to the ultimate source and that's what keeps us, because I think a lot of times in this conversation well, how are we going to stay orthodox, right, are we going to stay confessional? Well, we just go back to the source.
Speaker 3:What has Jesus?
Speaker 2:given us in his word and what is the work that he has done? And carry it out in the humility of Christ. That's all the that's all. This is a big all. That's what the apostle Paul is saying now, and really the early church's first anthem in Philippians 2, he who had every right to take the high place, humbled himself to the point of death, even death and a cross, and it's through this is the way of the cross, it's through death to life that elevation comes, that you could say status comes. It's the leader goes first in terms of dying to my will, so that the will of God, the will of Jesus to make more disciples would be what reigns, anything more to say there yeah, and he who knew no sin became sin right.
Speaker 2:Man, that is wild.
Speaker 3:That is wild.
Speaker 1:That's a divine exchange.
Speaker 3:I don't know if people had that in their mind when they thought about the Messiah. Right, it is, so it is. It's really radically subversive when we think about it. Right, I would use that term. But the whole goal of Christ is justification, redemption. And how does he do that? He makes it not based on you anymore and based on him right, and it radically. It frees us man. It is radically freeing when we know that our righteousness is based on the righteousness of Christ and not in ourselves.
Speaker 2:Jesus, started the greatest movement of love through dispersed leadership development, all for the sake of more and more believing in Jesus. It's not complicated, but it's far too rare, and unfortunately it's rare today. So what is our leadership tendency in dysfunctional businesses and even in local congregation? It's controlling hierarchy, setting rules enforcing compliance, centralized decision making, power in the hands of a few, discouraging innovation, innovative problem solving. It could get too messy, so just stay in your lane and exert power over rather than power through. So this is a shout out on my podcast, the Tim Allman podcast, we're gonna be having these authors on. Jonathan and Aaron Clark are the children of Kim Clark.
Speaker 2:This is a Harvard Business Review Press book leading through activating the soul, heart and mind of leadership. It's one of the better leadership books that I've read in some time because it gives a behind the scenes look at healthy businesses, healthy organizations. How does the leader at the top actually function? That leads toward long-term growth, sustainable growth, and they do a lot of work at looking at different businesses. Now you can look at these businesses. You know them very well, right? You don't need to adapt, you don't need to change. Everybody's always going to come to Blockbuster Video Store to get their videos. Well, that was a poor decision. Blockbuster it was a death right. There are many, many businesses stories that are shared here and in many different books of BlackBerry right. There are many, many businesses stories that are shared here and in many different books of BlackBerry right. Where's BlackBerry today?
Speaker 3:They had a nice run. Early on. It was the standard for PDAs. Man Like why would you need to change? They set the standard right. They do, they do.
Speaker 2:So there are many, many of those stories and I think there's something for us to learn in the local church in terms of our style. So I'm going to have four different summary points from the book and still invite you to check out the podcast once they come on, because I'm sure they're going to go deeper. But the first one is this innovation through initiative distributed through teams. So innovation comes through teams rather than and teams of teams is what they'll say rather than a bureaucratic hierarchy. Jesus worked in an ever-expanding and multiplying teams. These teams became networks of leaders and churches by the Spirit's power. These teams discover, develop and deploys leaders who built other teams called churches right. These teams form the church, freely carrying the message of the gospel to their communities. Any example and that's honestly in our context we don't do it perfectly by any stretch, but we teach and try to live out teams of teams being sent to do ministry, to reach people with the gospel. Jack.
Speaker 3:I think, if you want to look at some practical applications of this Tim we've been a 40X church for a while the four disciplines of this, tim, we've been a 4DX church for a while the four disciplines of execution, and what we do is we try to get our team rallied behind like, hey, what's one thing that needs to change in this season? Right, let's call it three months to six months horizon. We have a goal we need to get from X to Y in a period of time. So we think about the lead measures and then we give away those lead measures, right. So now that's the opportunity for the team to be creative. What are, what are some? And when I use the word innovation, to me, tim, that word means creative problem solving. Right, what are some ways that we can curate solutions or create solutions is going to solve this problem? Get to get the lead measure done that we need to do to get to the end result Right?
Speaker 2:So that is a very, very practical example of what giving innovation away to teams looks like, and we work together on those teams to develop the lead, but we establish the lead measures that are going to get us toward the end. Right, and that's not one person in a room saying this is the best. No, there's multiple different means to get us toward that end, but let's all come together and agree on the respective end. That's what 4DX helps us with, jack.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to say another thing too is the higher that you move your own leadership in an organization right? This is getting to Maxwell's law the lid that you, the leader, you are creating a lid on the organization. The organization can only function as well as you are functioning as a lid. You need to move yourself up higher as a lid as you're. In this process, you're bringing people on, both individuals, leaders and teams that are geniuses in certain areas that you're not a genius in Tim.
Speaker 3:When I was very early in my role, I think the thing that made me successful is that I was kind of a jack of all trades. I could lean into any kind of topic and kind of have a competent solution for something. But as I grew as a leader, I couldn't do that anymore. I had to rely more on bringing on people who knew more about certain areas of ministry than I do, and initially it may seem unsettling that there's people that may be more creative and have more expertise and can do these things that you're not in control of and you have to give that control away. But when you can do that in a very winsome way, that's really what helps the organization flourish. Right, inviting that genius to operate and contribute in a way that could never do so otherwise.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a cascading effect. That's super fun, I guess, on if you're a control freak Right which all of us, all of us have a tendency.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, for sure, we're all working it out, you know. But Jesus was definitely he's in control of all things. But the way it got exercised was through sinful, broken, frail people. It seems kind of wild, but there are so many things that go on here at Christ Greenfield and in our family and ministries, there's no possible. We got into a kind debate last week at a staff meeting. We can talk about it, about communication right. About communication A little bit.
Speaker 3:Go ahead Pulling the curtain back. Somebody very rightly brought up that there's some instances where things are not getting communicated to all staff and maybe we'd like to know more about it. Totally fair right. But the solution brought up was maybe we need to do more email. And this is where the discerner in me pops out and says there's no way you can send enough emails to keep everybody, to have everybody know everything that's going on in this organization. That is not going to happen. That's just not going to happen here. We've become too complex as an organization and some level we have to get comfortable knowing that this group knows what they're doing and this group knows what they're doing and not everything. They're not going to know everything what every group is going to do. And honestly, that's kind of more of Tim. You're in I's job to be an activator there, to be an integrator, to try, and you know, a lot more of my work is working across departments to make sure that they're pulling in the same direction here.
Speaker 2:Right, and that they're communicating well in meetings Like and then they're communicating well in meetings. If the whole group needs to know about it, then just bring it up. We have plenty of standing weekly meetings, our Gilbert campus meets. There's plenty of, I think, tactical sharing that goes on there, like we're putting on Holy Week. I just sat in a meeting and I'll be quite honest, as it relates to the minutiae detail stuff, that's where I'm trying to work hard to stay engaged in that, because that's not where my mind lives. Ask my wife. You know I live more at the 30,000 foot view, but sometimes you got to put on that. Hey, we got to get it done and there are people on our team who love the details, jack.
Speaker 3:I love it and I love them because they love it, I love it and I love them because they love them.
Speaker 2:I love them Exactly For sure. All right, let's move on. The second point that the Clark family makes is in healthy organizations, personal agency is given through responsible freedom. I'll just read a little bit Jesus gave personal agency to his disciples and it started with an invitation come follow me. There was no demand, it was an invitation to adventure, I believe, sealed with a smile and a tone signaling humility and courage, a voice worth following. The disciples followed in faith. When you hear personal agency, I think in a Lutheran I don't have any kind of agency because it's all passive faith right.
Speaker 3:A charged term there right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's certainly like decision, theology and all of these kinds of things. But we have vocations right, and within the realm of those vocations we've been called to make decisions right. And so to a certain extent, we do have, we have been given certain agency and you know, I like this term that there's things above us and things below us, right and so we do have agency over certain things that we've been given responsibility for and that we have accountability to make sure that there's good outcomes for that. And it doesn't mean that we're taking the place of Jesus when we're doing that Right. That's the key thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and this is two kinds of righteousness stuff here right.
Speaker 2:We're talking in relation to the world and our work together with one another, filled with the Holy Spirit, in love for our neighbor. Here's a thought experiment that the authors had. If you have the book leading through worth getting, it's on page 140. In terms of agency and personal freedom, responsible freedom, imagine I got back from a three-day road trip and my young kids were dirty and he told me they had not eaten in three days. What would I do? He says. Well, you're a negligent parent if that's the case. But what would I do? Nonetheless, I would feed them and give them a bath.
Speaker 2:Now think about a similar situation in an average organization. You come to work and you hear about a problem. In most cases, you would not do anything about it because it is not your problem. Somebody else in a different, well-defined role, created it, so you don't need to fix it. This is the tendency. Where they're speaking to here is that's that department. If I see something, I don't wanna say something. What we found out is when across departments see something and say something, the leader that's responsible for that. They may not see it. You're right If you're. If you're outside looking in, you can see it more clearly often when you're in the whirlwind, right in the trenches of whatever the problem is. You either don't see it, or you see it and you you're praying.
Speaker 2:No one else, You're praying no one else actually sees it Right, because you're going to be kind of called out. Any take on that, jack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is a balancing act because I would say, in my own leadership, I would say, first of all, in our community. I would describe our community as highly, highly, highly collaborative. So we're having conversations all the time about how work in one department is impacting the others, the time about how work in one department is impacting the others. Sometimes I have to be a little bit protective and sometimes I have to say, okay, maybe you're owning too much of what's going on in a different department and you need to back off a little bit and let them do their thing right.
Speaker 3:I've seen both sides of that. So I would say that that's maybe a coin where there could be a good side and a bad side to that approach. You could go too far with that, with feeling like you own other people's work, and you could also, like you said, be hands off and say, well, that's their department. You know and I'm not going to speak into some dysfunction that I'm seeing, even if it, even if it's clearly impacting people. So I would say there's a bit of a healthy balancing act on that. I think it's well, Tim, I'm gonna use this word trust. I think that's really what it boils down to is does your environment of trust invite the right kinds of conversations? And when you're giving a criticism to, let's say, a different department or a different leader, is that a trust-filled criticism or is that a control-filled criticism? And depending on the tone that you give, that's going to radically depend on how that's received by other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, every time there's some. Yeah, I started two sentences and now I'm thinking about how I want to respond. So I will. I love it when people come up to me and because I have a higher tolerance for frank conversation and just tell me what they think about a thing. You've heard the the crap sandwich right To have like a super. I got to like build you up and I got to tell you all this kind of stuff You're doing great and stuff no.
Speaker 3:For me, based on my personality, you don't you don't want the two pieces of toast on the ends. I don't need it.
Speaker 2:Like, exactly, Just give me the meat and we toast on the ends, I don't need it. Like, exactly, Just give me the meat and we're going to grow. And there's a, there's a systems perspective to that too, because I, in our organization, we're a, we're a healthy. We're not perfect, but we're healthy, and I truly believe the level of health is governed by how clear and honest and truth-filled, loving and kind our conversations are, and because we have a foundation of trust. There's not one person on our team or, frankly, in our congregation.
Speaker 2:I'm just thinking in general. If they come up to me and tell me something that they see that we need to improve on, yeah, I'm going to agree at least with some element of what they're seeing and we're going to work on it. We're going to work on it together. If there was a ping in me which there can be I could get triggered on various things, right, Like I did again to tell this story from last week's staff meeting, I said and I even use this language I'm getting mildly frustrated that this conversation has gone on for as long as it had. And then it continued. This is Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 2:I continue another five minutes, Anyway so it doesn't mean that you're always like perfectly in love with everything people are saying, but the relationships are strong. You can have the difficult conversation with the person if the relationship is hard and I even use that in difficult conversations. Do you trust me? If so, here it is. Here's what we need to work on and off we go. Anything more to say to that, Jack? Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's. It is like the ability to do that, to give personal agency and have responsible freedom in certain areas. The currency of that is trust and trust building. I was, I was, I was just at a conference the other day people who do a lot of what I do, similar types of roles and this guy talked about trust as a currency. And when he onboards people, he says, hey, when you have trust at your back, it's like a 20 mile an hour tailwind pushing you forward with ministry For sure, and if you don't have trust, then it's like a 20 mile an hour headwind pushing us forward with ministry, and if you don't have trust, then it's like a 20 mile an hour headwind that you're pushing into.
Speaker 3:So he encourages all of his people when they're onboarding to say one of your primary jobs here is to steward trust. You are a steward of trust. You need to try to guard that trust with your life and don't do anything that undermines that trust. And then what that actually looks like, I don't know in his context, but to me I think that's a very powerful thing. Are we a trust building organization? And, as we're doing, trust building is that giving you know? Is that resulting in giving people the appropriate amount of autonomy and empowerment that they need within their specific areas. All right, so they can lean into their specific genius?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that they need within their specific areas right so they can lean into their specific genius. Yeah well, the next point, the third out of our four points we're making, leans into trust even more deeply. It's in healthy organizations. Decentralized rather than centralized decision-making is the norm, jesus. Decentralized authority. Go make disciples, you'll receive power to feed the forgiveness of sins from the Holy Spirit. He did not set up a top-down strategy for decision-making. Unless you view the top as the Holy Spirit, think about how much trust was needed in the early church to make sure the purity of the gospel was preserved. The world was big Roads, and letters rather than videos, texts and emails helped preserve the message. Did heresy happen? Yes, did the church respond? Yes, creeds and confessions maintain the truth of the gospel from town to town so that the nations would hear and believe in Jesus as King and Lord. Any take on decentralized rather than centralized decision-making, jack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think technology is starting to transform our ability to decentralize. You mentioned some key phrases here in decentralization that there's things like confessions and creeds which are norming our norms, right.
Speaker 2:Values.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, Dominic.
Speaker 2:No, those are values, right yeah those are values.
Speaker 3:We don't use that language much, but why?
Speaker 2:they did. That is, we have to put a line in the sand and say we will not go anywhere beyond this confession. These creeds centering us in the word of God, they were strong values I would say values and truths that we are adopting organizationally.
Speaker 3:right, so they're truths and they're values that we're adopting organizationally, and by adopting that I'm inviting others who I trust to hold me accountable to that Right?
Speaker 2:Well they're, you know. So they're not contextual values, right, right, they're universal values.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So where the decentralization of decision making can happen is where there needs to be contextualization of decisions, where values can be different. I'm going to tell you right now, just within our staff, that the values of our central business central business operating team, as it's lived out, is different than what it's going to look like on our marketing team, which is going to be different than what it looks like in our worship team, because they're dealing with different types of challenges and issues, and so they're building culture slightly different, they're making decisions slightly different across those things, and yet there's an organizational norm for us that we have our six values in our context, right Jesus, bible, lutheran, community, mission, leadership. Those things are universal, but they're gonna play out at higher, at greater levels of intensity in different departments, based on the needs of the work that they're doing. Right, and that is an example, I think, of decentralizing decision making. I think, with respect to decentralizing decisions, the way that that's done is through extreme clarity and extreme transparency.
Speaker 3:And so, tim, you and I have walked through this with a governance change in the church. Right, we went to what people call the Carver model or the policy governance model, and what are the two things that people use to describe that model. It's high trust, high accountability, right? High trust, high accountability. So what does that mean? Tim, you, as the senior pastor, have authority. That's been like a tremendous amount of authority that's been invested into you by our board, which you also have the authority to give away, and that's been entrusted to you in exchange for a lot of transparency and a lot of accountability for the results that we're delivering Right? So our organization, our board, does not micromanage decisions that are happening in the church, and I've been in governance where that does happen, and I can tell you that model of high trust and high accountability is the standard that every ministry should be aspiring to in terms of actually getting stuff done.
Speaker 2:Well, let's take that in two different directions. If trust is there, if trust outpaces accountability, yeah, that can be dysfunctional, very dysfunctional, that's over that's the pastor.
Speaker 2:The pastor is kind of doing everything and power struggles can take place on that side If there's on the on the maybe the church worker side, if the other and this is the balance, which is why I love our, the model of governance which is rigorous, by the way, our team works so hard on these on the monitoring reports that we put together to prove that we're living within the boundaries, the limitations, and we're achieving the ends that the congregation and then being held accountable through our board of directors have put in place. Like there's no, trust me, you like me, I'm a good guy. No, like, show me the data. This is why I think, just to back up a little bit, this is why we have conversations around a variety of different data markers as we look at the broader LCMS and are wondering what are we doing about some of these data markers? Right, it's because we live connected to the data Behind all the data are people of high accountability.
Speaker 2:Behind the data are people who are hopefully being served well, because we have to give a lot of surveys for how we're treating the members, how we're treating our staff, how we're advancing then the gospel of Jesus. And so there's no, just trust me, because there are stories and data markers that show that we're winning or not losing.
Speaker 3:basically, you know, tim, I'm thinking about a military story now, something that was remarkable learning about military history in World War Two. They were raising up leaders rapidly and they would make somebody a general Right and they had six months. They had six months to prove that they could perform on the battlefield or whatever role that they were supposed to support in their division or battalion Right, and if they didn't perform they were replaced. Period, that was how it was. So they had remarkable authority during that period of time, but there was an accountability mechanism and like if, hey, if you weren't, with all of this authority that you've been given, there's, there's, there's responsibility that needs to be achieved, and if you're not going to get it done, then we got other people in the pipeline that are going to get it done.
Speaker 3:And I don't know that our I don't know that that type of accountability exists as much in ministry, maybe as much as it should. Maybe it's healthy that we have more grace than we do. I don't know. I'm just my head is spinning on that right, because, hey, this is the great commission that we're going after and we're spending resources on this, and lives matter right, like soul. Care is deeply impacted by what we're doing. And do we have that strong accountability that there should be some markers for outreach and mission and reaching people and, you know, bringing people into the church and bringing people into small groups and bringing people into discipleship and actually seeing that happen in exchange for the money that's being invested in people who are serving in staff roles. But we're also going to give you the authority and the freedom to do this, to be innovative, to test things, to try things out, right? So I guess I'm going on a little bit of a rant here.
Speaker 2:No, kudos to our board and other boards, committees, elder groups that are lovingly caring for encouraging those that have been called into ministry in the local context and not falling off on too much the side of and I don't have to have accountable conversations toward reaching people with the gospel, with that, with that leader, please engage in those with love and clarity and kindness, but but please engage in those conversations with your and and if, if the leader say the pastor, the, the called or commission called and commissioned worker is healthy, they'll receive the feedback and say, hey, will you help me Because you're a part of the body of Christ, will you help me with this? Help me grow in this gap that you're obviously, obviously seeing. And I think what you're kind of referring to, jack, is there could be a tendency this is the last thing I'm going to say on this topic there could be a tendency for some leaders, pastors, to hide behind the call rather than invite the congregation. The church always wins, by the way. Yes, if pastors seek to play the power game at the local level, guys, that's not a game you really want to play, because the church, the body of Christ, the movement of Christ, that is the ultimate and you are in service to the advancement of the gospel, connected to the local church.
Speaker 2:The final indicator of health in organizations and can be applied in the church are principles with clear guidelines rather than rules govern behavior. This teaching is a bit more nuanced than we've been talking around it. In the book leading through. They say rules tend to prescribe specific behaviors in advance of when action is needed, leaving people with very little room for agency. In contrast, principles tend to be less specific and more general and universal, preserving more freedom of action. For example, a rule would be every attender at our church will receive a handshake. A principle would be we will make every attender feel like they belong at church. See the difference, jack Go off on rules and principles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I guess what I would say is that culture right is defined by behavior, more so than our language right. So it starts with language and it does result in an expected type of behavior and things. So if you'd say, what is the culture of Christ Greenfield? Well, people are measuring our culture based on how we behave right, and so handshakes, holding hands in service during certain times, greeting your neighbors, having a welcoming environment, the value is the welcoming environment there does need to be this is what I'm going to challenge a little bit here on this there does need to be sometimes an expectation of like well, what does this value look like as a behavior right? And then sometimes we can evaluate whether that behavior is happening or not.
Speaker 2:And the community. So let me piggyback on that. Yeah, and it's not one person saying this is the way we do it, this is how we do it and you.
Speaker 2:but no, no, no, it's the community together saying here's one of our behaviors that we've turned into a ritual, right, that we've made into a ritual or a rite. And you know, it's easy to look at the divine service as one of those ways in which we've agreed to function as a group of people is one of those ways in which we've agreed to function as a group of people. I guess to back up the invitation is hey, if you're a leader responsible, look at all the different behaviors. Which of those behaviors are in alignment with and you're using hospitality in alignment with we want every person to belong here and which behaviors are not. And some of those behaviors have been so ingrained and I'm going to use, since we're on hospitality, I'm looking out at our courtyard. There may be pockets of people who are friends, who huddled together and very rarely open up to see the other people who they don't recognize and invite them into conversation. Right, jack, that's a behavior that a leader has to help the congregation, kind of notice Anything more to say there?
Speaker 3:And I would say well, I've had a lot of conversations about, like you know, is this behavior conducive with certain values and stuff. But what I would rather do, what I would rather do as a leader, is I would talk about why something's such a value and then give away right, give away that responsibility to a team for them to help shape what behaviors are going to lead to that outcome. That would be like as an example of raising the lid of leadership is you know, there is going to be some behavior, some rules that govern behavior to get certain things done. That's unavoidable. But if you're a central leader here, this is where we get into micromanagement of stuff, right?
Speaker 3:I think the best way I've had this described is actually from a book we recently read by JD Greer. He talked about mobilizing people for mission and he said if you're going to mobilize people for mission, you don't give them a handbook on how to. Well, he uses the analogy of seafaring. He says if you want people to build ships, you don't do that by giving people a manual on how to build ships. That's not how you get people to build ships.
Speaker 3:He says you have to instill in people a deep, deep, loving thirst for the ocean. They have to thirst for the ocean, and then they're going to want to learn how to build the ship, right? That's the key thing. And so you can give people manuals and stuff like that, but in reality, there's multiple right ways to build a ship. The key thing is do they thirst for the ocean? Right? And I think maybe that's where we're getting at right now is are you building a thirstiness for this area of ministry, to see that it gets done? And if you have that deep thirstiness embedded, you don't have to talk about rules of behavior. They're going to figure it out, yep.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what Jesus did A love and a thirst for the kingdom, this kingdom that comes out of heaven, a love and thirst for Jesus, the bread of life, and then, post ascension and post descension of the Holy Spirit, to do whatever it takes to get the gospel into the ears and hearts of people that they would know the light and love of Christ. It appears as if Jesus wanted just enough structure, evidenced by the calling and sending of the 12 apostles. Their principle would be love, love for all and the gospel heard and believed by all. It is very evident the church did not immediately establish rules for what, for instance, worship liturgy would look like. Instead, they led with principles to preserve the truth of the gospel. They did not stifle personal and contextual judgment or creativity. This responsible freedom allowed the gospel to spread freely and quickly.
Speaker 2:So here are my two kind of closing contextual questions for those of us who lead at all different levels in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod which of these four principles display our greatest opportunity for change in our local churches, circuits, district and through national leadership? And are we leveraging ultimately the genius of Jesus by the Spirit's power? And I pray we will, the days are too short to do otherwise. Any closing comments there, jack.
Speaker 3:No, I think this has been a fascinating chat here, tim. I'm looking forward to learning more about that book and seeing how people respond to this blog post, and I'm curious to hear people's thoughts about this. What do you, what is your perception about and this is for the audience right now what is your perception and what ways do you see the genius of Jesus as a leader, or do you think we're being crazy by talking about this way? Just let us know, drop us a comment, tell us we're not afraid of having bold conversations about this.
Speaker 2:Oh, exactly, Exactly, and we love you. There's no, I've been thinking about this too. There is no person or group in our church body or in the world that is an enemy and adversary of me or us. This is our perspective and I think it comes from Christ. We do recognize there is an enemy who seeks to steal, kill, destroy and divide, and he wants to keep us from one another and keep us from loving. Let us spur one another on toward love and good deeds. He wants to keep us from loving and spurring one another on toward love and good deeds, and I feel like the paradigm of leading through rather than leading over the humble story of Jesus. It just goes so aligned. It's funny how secular science and so God is always ahead, right, and sometimes social science just catches up. That's just what Jesus did. That's how this thing called the Christian movement changed the course of human history.
Speaker 2:This is Lead Time. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in these podcasts and we'll be back later on this week with another fresh episode of Lead Time. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. Thanks so much, Jack. God bless friends.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.