Healthy Leaders | Issue 38
Your own life is your vision, mission, and values statement!
Welcome to Issue 38 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue: Jesus built alignment. So can you.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.1
Given the amount of teaching that Jesus did, it can be tempting to think that instruction was the primary way He brought about alignment among His disciples. However, the reality is that His approach to alignment was thoroughly holistic. He didn’t just talk at them and expect them to get on board as a result.
Of course, as we discussed last time, aligning your followers to the vision requires that you communicate it with clarity, passion, and credibility. But alignment is a whole lot more than just communication.
Let’s look at the example of Jesus.
Your life of dependency on God, your own life example, and how you empower others form a holistic context for the words you use to bring about alignment. In other words — and if you’ve been with us for even a little bit, you might know what’s coming — you need spiritual, relational, and experiential dynamics for your instruction to be effective!
One of our East Asian leaders, Brother X, exemplifies this level of alignment.
Brother X is a member of the top leadership team of a large regional church movement. When he first joined one of our long-term training programs, he was extremely lonely and deeply tired. However, he encountered God in major ways during the training — in a context of deep spiritual connection to God, challenging assignments, and a secure relational environment.
During the teaching about healthy leadership, Brother X was deeply convicted. He confessed that he and the leadership team had been serving God purely out of position, not out of faith, love, passion and vision. In repentance, he invited all of us to pray for him and his team, that God would restore them to simplicity, faith and love.
When he completed the training, Brother X put together a three-day spiritual retreat for his top leadership team, with the goal of personal restoration, relational healing in the team, and vision-casting for the future. Forty leaders attended, from all of the different regions within their church movement. God moved in such a deep and beautiful way that every single one of the leaders, from the oldest and most respected to the least, voluntarily and publicly repented with tears. They began to see each other with new eyes, recognizing that all along the problem had been with themselves, not with others. And then together they embraced the vision of healthy church with unity, joy and excitement!
After this retreat time, with all the top leaders of all the regions beautifully aligned to, and on fire for, the vision of healthy church through healthy leaders, Brother X was invited to each of their nine big regional church networks to do a shorter version of the spiritual retreat they had just done with the top leaders — personal spiritual life restoration, restoration of relationships among co-workers, and casting vision for healthy church through healthy leaders.
“I am overwhelmed by God! I am experiencing intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit every day like never before. Every day at 4 a.m. God woke me to pray, and gave me revelations and designs for the training I would do that day. God was amazingly present everywhere I went. People just responded in tears and repentance, in reconciliation with each other, and in full agreement with the vision of becoming a healthy church body through building healthy leaders.”
This is what alignment can look like: total personal dependence on God, setting an example for your followers, and giving them the opportunity to take hold of the vision in real, practical ways. Stay tuned for the next issue, when we’ll share what happened as a result of this alignment.
What about you?
How are you setting the example in your own ministry or organization? Here’s a few ideas:
Clarify your own personal values. People expect their leaders to stand for something, and to have the courage of their convictions. Leaders who lack core values are likely to change their position with every fad, and will be judged eventually as inconsistent and “political” in their behavior.
Build a consensus of shared values based upon the Scriptures. This takes time since the people must truly own the values; unity is forged, not forced. Biblical values are not negotiable but it still takes time for the people to understand and personally own them.
Watch your own actions. People pay more attention to the values their leaders actually use than to those the leaders say they believe in. Take time to list the values you preach and then compare them with those values actually reflected by your calendar and checkbook for the last month. To be consistent, how you spend your time and money should line up with what you say matters to you. In the end, the people will do what they see you teach and do.
Seize teachable moments. Critical incidents present opportunities. Effective leaders will watch for these opportunities, and use them to illuminate and reinforce the organization’s values.
Follow in the footsteps of Jesus and His leaders. This is the most vital of all!
We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Book: Leading
For more resources, visit our website.
Thanks to our friends at Fifty-Four Collective for putting together a comprehensive set of video courses for growing healthy organizations, starting with this series of courses on leadership by Malcolm. We’ll be using some of their videos and some of our own. Be sure to check out what they’re doing!