purpose of this exercise is to help change the culture of your church from top down to relational leadership, where leadership is about helping your community make sense of complexity, and suggest ways of moving forward together.
For reflection and discussion
If we have been listening …
1 What are the children and young people saying?
2 What are the families/singles in our church and community saying?
3 What are the elderly in our church and community saying?
4 If the way we do things in our church is the result of listening to others in our church and community, what have they been saying?
Great Idea 6: Be Able to Say Sorry
ANTON MÜLLER
Whoever is forgiven much loves much
Luke 7.47
Top Tip: Love means always being able to say sorry.
Business Perspective: Successful organizations understand that a creative and profitable organization accepts that mistakes will be part of its operational life. They understand that mistakes are based on the belief that if the organization had done something different it would have been more successful. This enables them to learn from the mistake, correct it, become more profitable, rather than waste energy on blame.
When a business has been caught out it is likely that they will engage in a strategic apology which more often than not means ‘I’m sorry I was caught’, or ‘I’m sorry that you are offended’, rather than being sorry for the misdoing or for causing the offence.
The reason for such strategic apologies is nearly always about saving face or saving one’s job. This, however, is not apology as Christians should understand it.
Christian confession and apology can only take place in the context of forgiveness. When we apologize for something we are also asking for forgiveness. An apology that is not seeking forgiveness is not an apology, it is a political manoeuvre.
Jesus apologizes for the human race when he says, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ As a church we can apologize for the shortcomings of our race and we can seek God’s forgiveness for the whole of the human race. This is what Jesus does and we can do the same because by his death and resurrection we have been made like him.
What are the leadership implications for the Church and for the world?
There must be a culture of forgiveness in the organization that must come from the leadership of the organization. This is called a ‘no-blame culture’ and in such a culture all members of the organization are safe and free to apologize. Vital to this process is an acceptance of responsibility at all levels. Acceptance of responsibility also means an acceptance of consequence. A no-blame culture requires more of every member of the organization not less, hence the need for compassionate forgiveness. A no-blame culture is more creative and consequently more productive. It is not a free-for-all or a disregard for the vision of the organization. There is an acceptance that mistakes will be made on the way to success.
A blame culture is often a risk-averse organization that stifles participation, creativity and productivity which is the engine of profitability.
Consider the parable of the unforgiving servant. In this story the master, the leader of the business, sets the precedent for a culture of forgiveness but the ungrateful servant fails to live according to that precedent.
God has set the business and organization of his Church within a culture of forgiveness. Confession and repentance can only take place within such a culture. Confession and repentance will not take place within a culture of judgement and condemnation. The world judges and condemns and litigation suits lurk behind every potential mishap. In such a world apology and forgiveness are dismissed as weakness while that world is becoming increasingly sick and disabled by judgement and condemnation.
A culture of apology and forgiveness are the strengths of an organization, not its weakness. Those who have the courage to apologize, to forgive and to be forgiven show true strength and true leadership wherever they are in the organization. In biblical terms they are the ones who will be vindicated, healed and made whole.
Too often it seems that the story of the prodigal son is one which the Church likes to tell but seldom wants to live. The older brother of that story is alive and well in many parts of the Church today, both lay and ordained, at all levels.
The lesson of the prodigal son in the end is not a lesson about repentance, it is a lesson about unconditional love and acceptance ‘even while we are still far off’.
For reflection and discussion
1 What is the present culture of your church?
2 How did your church respond to the last occasion where mistakes were made?
3 When was the last time you accepted full responsibility for a mistake that you made and apologized?
4 How will you create a no-blame culture in your church?
Great Idea 7: Be About Your Father’s Business – Part 1
MICHAEL LOFTHOUSE
My Father is always at his work to this very day and I too am working
John 5.17
Top Tip: Church leaders need to formulate profitable objectives for their organization.
Business Perspective: When leaders know clearly what their objectives are and can legitimate those decisions within the management team efficacy is the result. Effective leaders discover how their environment and the capability of their organization are changing by gathering facts through a continuous process of scanning, research, consultation and monitoring. Formulating objectives that are feasible, sustainable and acceptable is the primary task of the leader of any organization. This is the management heart of leadership. And why do leaders engage in this process? It is because they want their organization to grow, continue and succeed. They want it to be a profitable organization.
The Church is no different; it needs to grow, continue and succeed. It needs to be a profitable organization. Church leaders need to formulate profitable objectives for their organization.
The difficulty is that the collection, analysis and exchange of information uses resources, is time consuming and incurs costs, and the process is often outside the skill set of most church leaders. An additional significant difficulty is that church leaders conflate ministry with management. They fail to disaggregate the organization leading to aggregated decisions that are bounded by individual preference.
The first step is to understand and accept that at the management level the church is a business; that effective management is the necessary foundation of effective ministry. Now a church leader can disaggregate the organization so that strategic elements of the organization can be identified (see Figure 1). By disaggregating the organization we create a linear model that segments the organization into its component parts.
Now we can engage in
