It Takes A Church...

Hemorrhaging Pastors

Three. In one day. 

On Monday, I heard of three of my pastor friends who all resigned this week.  No affairs, no scandal, no one is renouncing faith.  But three, really good, experienced, pastors all turned in resignations and walked away.  Two are leaving church ministry all together.

The details are as different as the pastors themselves, but the common thread is that they finally got worn down by trying to bring change to a church system that was stuck.

I have been hearing from more pastors these days.  Some of it is related to my work with TAG Consulting, a lot of it is because I am, well, one of them.  We chat and email and text and the common thread is always the same: “The church is stuck and we don’t know what to do.”

Stuck and declining. Stuck and clinging to the past. Stuck and lurching to quick fixes, trying to find an easy answer for what is clearly a systemic challenge. (“If only you could preach better, pastor!” “If only you were more ‘pastoral’ and caring, pastor!”  “If only our worship was more dynamic, pastor!” “Please, pastor, DO something…That is what we pay you for isn’t it?”)

In some cases, the leaders of the church had turned on the pastor making him the scapegoat.  In others, there was a sense that the church just wanted to stop any change process.  For some, they are early in their tenures and are trying to get at the core issues early and bravely, looking squarely at what Jim Colllins calls “the brutal facts.”  But most of them are so far into their ministry at the church that it seems like whatever they do is too little too late.  After trying so hard, it seems that the church just gave up and hunkered down.  As one of my friends said, “This church has gone deaf to my voice.”  And soon after the finger-pointing begins, immediately followed by a big severance, a disillusioned pastor and a crippled church.

Most of my pastor friends acknowledge that they contributed in some way to the very circumstances that are forcing them out of the calling they love.  All of us acknowledge that seminary didn’t prepare us for this.  But, trying to rise to the occasion, they find themselves facing a wall of resistance that quickly turns into a voice of rejection.  The underlying, unspoken issue seems to be: “If only the pastor would stop trying to lead us and just pastor us, then we’d be fine.” 

Except we are not fine.  The culture is changing, the world is changing and churches are facing change on an unprecedented scale.  We are heading into uncharted territory and pastors and lay leaders need to learn to lead a mission together where there are real obstacles, real challenges and where the future is nothing like the past.

Until we do, we’ll keep bleeding pastors and we will watch our churches wither away.

The Leader as Biggest Loser

At the end of our 2006-2007 fiscal year, our church had a $100,000 general fund surplus. In twenty years of church work, I had never seen anything like it.  By all common measures, we were doing as well as a church as we could ever hope.

We were in our tenth consecutive year of growth in worship attendance and membership. We had faced all the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges before us.  We had unified around a vision, we had applied disciplined thinking and acting to most of our ministries, we had even rebuilt our entire campus around our vision to be an intergenerational “Community for the community.”

 And then we noticed something. It was subtle, but there was no mistaking that it was there.  A kind of malaise, a growing sense of discouragement. Leaders were talking about being burned out and others were hesitant to step up.  Even more, we noticed that some families were beginning to slip away.  While the usual "markers" of bucks in the plate and buns in the pew were still pretty good, we began to notice the early signs of disengagement and disconnection.  As the pastor, I was confused.  How could we be doing so well and yet "feel" like "something" was so wrong?

We brought in TAG Consulting to take a good look under the hood.  They led us through their Transforming Church Index process.  It was both easy and comprehensive.  They reported back that our scores were really strong; we were among the healthiest churches in the nation.  But they also told us that there were some disturbing "early warning signs", that could all be traced to an unintended consequence to our “win-win” strategy.

 In my last post I wrote about the importance of getting beyond “win-win” thinking when trying to bring a truly adaptive or transformational change.  Indeed, as I found out personally, the definition of an adaptive challenge is one where someone is going to “lose” something.

The reality of loss is the very reason why these truly transformational challenges are so difficult and enduring. Even more complicated, the “problem” you face to today is very often the result of the “solution” from the past. While “win-wins” feel great, the bad news is that a "win-win" strategy often only perpetuates the gridlock of competing values that keeps the organization stuck.

In our case, the success of a unified vision had given birth to an overly centralized institution.  The very unity, discipline and alignment that had been needed to bring the church together to rebuild the campus around our vision were now stifling creativity, passion and energy.  In an entrepreneurial culture like south Orange County, we had become way too "corporate." 

Our lay people reported that while they trusted the leadership and appreciated the ministry, the most common response of most people was “this is a good church, but they don't need me here." Our church members told us, "We love the preaching, worship and programs, but there is no way for ME to make a difference, express my gifts or fulfill my own sense of calling here."

When our consultant Kevin Ford, laid this out before me, I grimaced.  "So what's causing this?  What's at the heart of the problem?  What do we need to change?" I asked in almost rapid-fire questioning.  He looked at me and said.  "You." 

I gulped. 

Kevin continued, "Tod, don't get me wrong.  These people love you.  They respect you.  They appreciate your preaching and they trust you.  In fact, we have never had a church talk more about a senior pastor than this church talks about you.  And that is the problem.  It's not your problem, at least not yet.  Nobody thinks that you are trying to build the church around you, but that is in fact what is happening.  You could continue on for another ten years and the church will remain healthier than most.  But without even trying to, the culture that you have created here under your leadership will continue to disempower, disengage and finally create disconnection for the most creative and passionate members.  Unconsciously, the message that is going out is that everybody here thinks it is their job to support the ministry that YOU are having here.   And that is slowly sapping the passion from the church."

Kevin and I talked about the options open to me at that point:

1. Do nothing. The church would continue to revolve around me and it would likely not become a huge problem until someday after I left the church. 
2.  Resign.  If I was out of the way, then the church members and would-be leaders would be forced to reengage and rediscover its ministry without me and my vision at the center.
3. Learn to lead differently. This would be hard, and it would be a risk.  While the danger signs were evident, the church was still relatively healthy.  There was a significant chance that trying to create a less-centralized and more collaborative culture would be both resisted and resented (especially by those who liked the church the way it was.)  And especially it would mean a big "loss" for me.  I would lose the sense of competence that comes from using a leadership style that I clearly was comfortable with and which had had success. 

Because I love my church and being their pastor, I opted pretty quickly for number 3.  I have been re-learning what it means to lead ever since. 

It wasn't easy.  In fact, it was one of the hardest and yet best things I have ever done.  Today, not only are the "markers" even stronger, but even amidst this great recession, we are still solidly growing.  We have faced hard cutbacks with clear values.  We have maintained unity and have more diverse creative, lay-run ministry than ever.  We are seeing more and more people step into leadership and express faith in missional service.  While I am not as central as I one was, I am still firmly part of a more collaborative ministry. 

Today I consult for TAG and help other pastors learn or re-learn how to lead in this changing world.  And it all began with understanding that for our church mission to "win" I had to "lose".

I had to lose power and control, I had to lose "say" over aspects of the mission, and I had to lose my place at the center in order for our mission and vision to be even more central in our church.

Learning how to be both a good leader and a good loser is where I will pick this up next.

Canoeing the Mountains: A Sneak Peek

Here is a clip that can serve as a "Sneak Peak" to the presentations that I will be making on October 28 for the San Diego Presbytery Pastors and Leaders Retreat Day.

How do we "canoe" mountains?

How do we lead our churches into uncharted territory? 

How do we lead when the way in front of us is completely different than the terrain we were trained for?

What does this changing world require of us as leaders?  

Video: Technical vs. Adaptive Challenges

http://www.youtube.com/user/LRPtvOdyssey#p/c/E379D76ED5580A04/1/rrJk_co28XE

When Win-Win is Wrong-Wrong.

The first leadership book I ever assigned my staff team was Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People. It was, as my pal Charlie would say, “the right tool for the job.”  My team indeed became more "effective" in lots of meaningful ways.  One of the concepts that helped us the most was Habit #4: “Think Win-Win.”

Coming into a situation where there had been lots of “every ministry for itself” thinking and little teamwork around a unified vision, we needed to learn how to think “Win-Win” in as many situations as possible.  And it worked.  Within a remarkably short time, we became a “Win-Win”-seeking bunch of teammates all working together around a clear vision of what our church could be for our community.

Fast-forward a decade and the same “Win-Win” team finds itself “Stuck-Stuck”.  We had made a lot of good changes, the church had grown and we had re-built our entire campus.  Things were good. Mostly.

But now we faced far more complex challenges.  Challenges that had no clear cut solutions. Challenges that were more systemic in nature.  Challenges that required us to learn what we didn’t know.  Challenges that couldn’t be solved through a conference or a video series or a program.  What Ronald Heifetz calls an “adaptive challenge”.   Adaptive Challenges are the true tests of leadership.  These are the enduring tough problems that require PEOPLE to change in order for problems to get solved.  And, by definition, an “Adaptive Challenge” CANNOT be solved through Win-Win. 

Adaptive Challenges can only be solved through careful, wise, discerning, collaborative decision making that results in someone losing.  Indeed, if the organization or church (or  business or state, or country!) doesn’t face this hard reality and insists on “win-win”, the only real result will be “lose-lose.”

One executive pastor of a large Presbyterian church put it to me this way:  “Until now, we could solve every problem in our church through ‘addition’.  If there was a problem, we simply added another ministry, added more money to the budget, add more staff to the team. But now we can’t afford to add anything more.  Any changes we make now are going to have to come through making hard decisions and ‘subtraction’.” For a church that’s used to addition, ‘subtraction’ is really, really painful.

In our own church, getting beyond “win-win” required me to learn to lead differently.  Specifically, while the first decade of my ministry was built around getting “wins” together as we moved toward our vision, if we were going to truly fulfill our mission, we were going to have to make many more tough choices where someone was going to lose.  Perhaps for me, the most important day in my ministry at SCPC was when I realized that if we were going to move beyond “Win-Win” to bring genuine, missional, faithful, change the first “loser” was… me. 

More next post.

"A Central Paradox of Change"

"The organizations that best adapt to a changing world first and foremost know what should not change. They have a fixed anchor of guiding principles around which they can more easily change everything else. They know the difference between what is truly sacred and what is not, between what should never change and what should be always open for change, between 'what we stand for' and 'how we do things.'" Jim Collins

Gus and Hal PLANT a Church: A Vision to Move Churches Forward.

Gus can’t walk, Hal is blind.  Alone they would each be what we sometime call “shut ins”.  Octogenarians both, they don’t get around very easily on their own.  But put them together, as they usually are, and those limitations don’t limit then all that much.  Gus sits in his wheelchair and gives direction, Hal pushes the wheelchair and follows Gus’ lead and together they get to where they want to go.

The first time I thought about Gus and Hal was at the New Church Development Conference that our church hosted for the Presbyterian Church (USA) Church Growth ministry.  The NCD pastors and team members in attendance were given an assignment to practice their observation and analysis skills in our community.  Teams spread out over a twenty mile radius and then came back with reports on what they saw.  As each team reported in, I scribbled notes.  It was as if I had been lent the eyes of a church planter to see my own community. 

But there was another tone to the church planter’s reports.  Sitting in the midst of our recently refurbished church campus, most of them couldn’t help but feel wistful at the abundance of opportunities they could see, and the lack of resources that they had (especially compared to our “established” church).  That is when it dawned on me.  The church planters are Gus: they can see but they don’t have the means to get to the needs.  The established churches, like my own are Hal: they have the energy to push, but can’t always see the need or opportunity.   Alone, we don’t move.  Together--Hal pushing Gus, Gus leading Hal--we travel into the midst of new places to do new things we could never do alone. 

In other posts, I offered Gus and Hal and their collaborative partnership as an opportunity for pastors to ward off burnout by returning to a vision of leadership that is closer to the New Testament model of partnership.  I have also suggested that the key for Gus and Hal (and Lewis and Clark) was to be humbly aware of our limitations, but focused on using our strengths.  In this post, I want to suggest that we consider this model for whole congregations. 

What would happen in our denomination if every church had a partner new church development?  What if for every blind, but energized Hal, there was a visionary, but lame Gus?  What would happen if each church saw the possibilities of this kind of collaborative partnership for both congregations?  Even more, what would happen for the mission of Christ?

Gus and Hal Go to Church: Possibilities for Burned Out Clerics

Gus and Hal are widowers at my church.  Octogenarians both, they have become friends since their wives passed.  It's getting harder for both of them to come to church on Sundays, but to be sure when they are there, they are there together. 

Hal is blind. Gus is an amputee confined to a wheel chair.  When they come to church, Hal pushes Gus and Gus directs Hal.  They make their way through the parking lot and the patio to their place together in the pew.  And together, and only together, they come to church.  A blind man who can't see giving energy to a man who can't walk.  A lame man who can't move giving direction to a man who lacks vision. But together, they worship, take part in community and offer their gifts, and, well, inspire a whole lot of us.

Amidst the recent posts on clergy burnout, a number of thoughtful contributions have been made to both causes and possible cures, but one possibility is presented in the friendship of these two older men: partnership.  Honest, authentic, mutually interdependent partnership.

I contend that so much of the burden that leaders feel comes from the noble but misguided belief that leadership requires broad shoulders and an ability to stand under pressures alone.  Most of us give lip service to needing colleagues and being collaborative, but when the "buck stops", we really do believe that it stops on one desk only.

Sadly, this is a far piece removed from the New Testament witness where, short of Jesus' own work on the cross, virtually every other expression of the ministry of the Spirit was revealed to the world in pairs or threes (or more).  Jesus sent the 70 two by two.  Peter, James and John healed and preached, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Silas, Paul and Silas and Timothy, Barnabas and John Mark.  Priscilla and Aquila.  And a host of other examples, of course.

We also forget in all of our ministering that the church is first and foremost an organic relational “system”: a “people”, a “community”, a “family”, where the demands of an "emotional field"  are so complex that they most like the human families we grew up in that are ideally (though obviously not always, not necessarily and not perfectly) led by a partnership called "Mom and Dad."  Instead, churches eagerly organize ourselves into "single-parent families" and wonder why most pastors aren't up to the demands.  (And again make us marvel at actual heads of single parent households who so often do such an amazing job.)

Somewhere along the way, partnerships were considered too unwieldy or unworkable and we started thinking more in hierarchies, where there is one "head".  Today, you'll hear people speak of a kind of military chain of command that is necessary in the battle for the Kingdom of heaven.  Community and collaboration may be good for dividing up tasks in "camp" or when we are "settled" in some place.  Partnership may be good for a family, but not a mission, we think.  On the "front lines" someone needs to be in charge. If we are leading into "hostile" or "uncharted territory", it's best we follow one vision, one voice...so we think.

While I'll save saying more for another post, let me just quickly remind us of the first true explorers in American consciousness.  True heroes who defied all conventions of the day, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark not only were the first Americans to cross the continent, but they did it with it extraordinary success.  And, as Stephen Ambrose reminds us, they are etched in our minds as one relational unit, "Lewisandclark".  They were partners, "equals in all respects," they declared over and over again.  In a world where most still believed in the divine right of kings, where even American presidents were from a different standing and class, in a military culture where there was a clear chain of command, and in the midst of a task that was filled with the unknown and uncertain, the only thing that Lewis and Clark counted on was that "in all respects" they would be "Lewisandclark."  (For a fascinating book on the leadership lessons of Lewis and Clark, including the “principal of productive partnership, see Jack Uldrich’s book on the topic.)

For my own denominational clan, this addiction to individual leadership is a contradiction to our core principles. As much as we Presbyterians live under the constitutional conviction that all leadership is shared between elders and pastors, still most of us function as if the role of elders is either to be a "board of directors" with the pastor being the Executive officer, or the spiritual "counsel" giving advice and offering prayers to the ONE true minister of the church.   Ironically, the phrase repeated over and over again to describe that actual work of pastors, begins with the clause, "Together with..."  Pastors lead the church, "together with..." the Session, the elders, the deacons, and, of course, associate pastors.  But of course, we don't-- at least not enough to really make a difference in our functioning and health.

I believe that our probably is that we haven't taken seriously our limitations when we carry the burden of leadership alone.  Some of us are blind, some of us can't move.  Most  of us don't have the "energy, intelligence, imagination and love" that a congregation needs all by ourselves.  And frankly, the stubbornness to think that we can lead without taking into our accounts our limitations is likely much of what is burning us out.

And in the next post, I'll explore the secret behind both Gus and Hal and Lewisandclark that can help us not only keep from burning out, but actually help us to move forward healthy and well.

Clergy Burnout: What’s really causing it?

"The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness."  David Whyte

A recent article in the New York Times on clergy burnout has been getting lots of attention amongst my pastor friends (and some kind church members who are concerned about me).  The article suggests (I think, accurately) that the cause is in large part the unhealthy professional boundaries between pastors and their congregations.  It also points to the reality that in our highly connected technological world, it is extremely difficult for a pastor to ever truly “vacation” from the congregation (Indeed, recently, I received word of the death of an infant in our congregation while I was at 30,000 feet winging my way to Italy on a family vacation.)  The article wisely encourages pastors to get better and more regular rest and offers some good resources.  And I wholeheartedly agree.

But, all the while affirming the need for regular days off, vacations, and sabbaticals (indeed: I enjoyed a glorious one four years ago), I want to ask my colleagues: Is that really what’s causing the burnout?  

The fact is that clergy and congregations have always had bad boundaries.  In previous generations, being eager to work all-hours and having one’s ego fed by the need to be needed was practically a pre-requisite to a call from God to ordination (not that I am affirming that!)  The truth is that most of us LOVE a good pastoral care crisis. It is the place where we are most competent and add the most value.  We pastors thrive on people being spiritual open to the presence of God in life and love nothing better than walking with searching souls in a journey of genuine authenticity.   Most Pastors will never admit this publicly but most of us would rather being officiating funerals than weddings.  (At a funeral people are far more open to spiritual things; at a wedding everybody wants to get on to the reception as quickly as possible.) 

So is the cause of burnout really too many souls in need of care?

A follow up article by a minister suggested that the cause of burnout is congregational consumerism.  People now demand that their pastors be part shrewd cultural commentator and part comic.  We must entertain, inspire and instruct a little, all the while never really challenging the worldview or tribal instincts that make us Christians seem little different than anyone else.  Mostly, people come to church to be affirmed, encouraged and given some tips to get God on their side in their self-improvement strivings for the good life.  We pastors, as my friend Charlie says, are expected to be Tony Robbins with prayer.

Again, I agree and this unhealthy expectation on the part of church-goers is undeniably part of the problem.   But is that the root cause?   Or are pastors and congregations not only suffering from bad boundaries, but also colluding to alleviate a deeper anxiety that plagues us all?

Here is my hunch:

Poet David Whyte famously wrote, “The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.”
We clergy are burning out because we have lost our wholeheartedness about pastoral ministry. 

By this, I DON’T mean our passion for the gospel or our commitment to the Kingdom of heaven (though that may be true for some).  I also DON’T mean our sense of call to serve people, to preach, teach, counsel, or care (though again, that may be true for some).  What I mean is that most of us are now asked to do a job that we didn’t sign up for, in circumstances that are far different than we expected.  The culture is changing and the church is in crisis and most of us were not trained for this.  And so we are less wholehearted than we once were and are unsure if we are up for the task that has been thrust upon us.

A couple of years ago I spoke for a group of Methodist Christian Educators in Maine.  After three lectures on the Kingdom of God and the Community of Faith, I was asked to do a “speaker talk-back” where anyone could come and ask me questions.  Of the 200 attenders of the conference, 60 came to my talk-back session.  I polled the room to ask what kind of questions they came to ask and soon found that one question was being asked by virtually everyone in the room.  It wasn’t a topic I had raised in my lectures.  It wasn’t a subject that the organizers had even planned to address.  But for the pastors, lay leaders and teachers in the room it was the only one they wanted to talk about:  “How can we keep our churches from dying?”   You could practically see the discouragement written on their faces.  We pastors are working harder than ever and not seeing results.  It’s like we are stuck in an aerobics class from hell.  We just keep running in place.

We pastors are exhausted because we are ambivalent.  We are ambivalent because we are sincerely called by God, deeply committed to minister to souls and eager to speak to the spiritual condition of life and, at the same time, we know that we are rapidly becoming irrelevant to many.  

Most of us were unprepared for how rapidly and demonstrably our culture was changing. Most churches (with a few obvious exceptions) are dying.  We pastors wanted to be at the helms of ships that would head bravely into the adventure of an open sea and a beautiful distant land.  Nobody told us that we were training to become captains of ships that are all slowly going down or being abandoned.  We are ambivalent because this isn’t the ministry or the context that we signed up for and we are burning out because we just don’t know what to do. 

Youth club sports is considered by most parents to be more important for forming the character of our children than the church.  Spirituality has become wildly popular but so deeply individualistic that the fastest growing “religious affiliations” amongst college students are “none” and “spiritual-not-religious”.  We pastors who were trained to teach those who show up, to care for those who call for help, to lead those who will volunteer and to administer the resources of those who willingly give are now called upon to minister to a passing parade of people who treat us like we are but one option in their personal salad-bar of spirituality. 

We are in uncharted terrain trying to lead mostly dying churches into a post-Christian culture that now considers the church as an optional, out of touch and irrelevant relic of the past.  Most people think of pastors not as experts of the soul for the big questions of life, but as curators of the flat earth society or pawns for a political action committee.  To make matters worse, we pastors who used to be held in such high-esteem are now just assumed to be charlatans or pedophiles or widow-fleecing fundraisers. When masses of ordinary people want spiritual insight they turn to Oprah, not the church.  And committed church goers and church leaders are panicked about it. 

Burnout comes from not only bad boundaries and trying to meet unhealthy expectations, but also from an ambivalence born of uncertainty about our own competence and relevance. 

Most of us got into this because of the Bible and people.  We wanted to teach the Bible and care for people.  We felt called to nurture the souls of people and communities of faith.  So when we are doing those things (even with some not-so-good boundaries) we are mostly fine.  Most of us also understand and acknowledge that there is a difference between felt needs and real needs and that there is always a degree of work involved in reaching often distracted people with our messages. (Isn’t that why we work so hard on getting good illustrations, jokes, even videos for our sermons?) 

But, most of us weren’t called and don’t feel equipped to be change-leaders in a rapidly changing world.  But that is the reality and that is our call.  Until we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to that reality and that call and all the ways that we pastors are going to need to learn, and grow and change ourselves (grieve our own losses along the way) to be relevant in that changing world, we will just continue to live on the verge of burning out and giving up.

“Let’s Put on a Show.”

“Leading is convening.”          Peter Block

My kids have grown up with a few other families that are closer than kin, no matter where our lives have taken us, we have gone out of our way to stay connected to each other, to spend a couple of holidays together each year and on a occasion to vacation together.  The parents are all best friends; the kids are all like cousins to each other. 

And whenever we can get the whole crowd together it’s like all of our small nuclear families take on a “big family”, clan-like feel.  Armed with numbers, they start doing things together that they could never do alone.  Big touch football games on the beach, “Capture the Flag” games in a big grass field, and even more often than not, some kind of production for the parents.

When the kids were much younger (they are all teenagers today), whenever they would get together, someone (usually Kara!) would inevitably come up with the idea of putting on a play for the parents.  After playing in the pool, or frolicking on the beach, the kids would disappear for hours on end to get their “script”, “roles” and “lines” down, only to reappear for the big moment. 

Now, to be sure, the play was never very long…or involved.  Indeed, there was far more going on behind the scenes than in the play itself.  We parents could hear the kids in the other room, arguing over who was in charge, who gets to play what role, who gets to wear what costume and why the boys weren’t “playing along” with the girls.  The debate, discussion, arguments and (yes, a few tears) in the planning process was most of the “drama”.  But inevitably, “the Show (as it were) would go on”.  The tradition continued through the years and last summer, as the kids grew older, “the play” gave way to making a “music video” (and that one was really good.) 

Indeed, they are an imaginative, smart bunch of kids.  They also have relationships built over years that lead them to enjoy doing big projects together.  But the other ingredient is that within the group there a number of leaders who are willing to take a risk at the one thing necessary to bring about new creative endeavors: Convening collaborators. 

And I want to suggest that this ability to pull people together, mobilize them into a working group and pull off a creative project is a critical component of leadership in a changing world.

In this brief series of posts on the To-Do List of the Leader of the Future, I have sought to set out the difference between the mental model of leadership that is often at work in our congregations and organizational contexts today and that which is necessary as we move into the future. 

Leadership of the past was about “action”.  It was about doing something. It was about some expert leader seizing the reigns of the chariot and single-mindedly driving the horses toward finish line.  Leaders were expected to KNOW what to do and then do it.  They were EXPERTS and they were ACTORS.  The leaders were the “Best Practitioners”: the fast-drawing, gun-slinging marshal cleaning up the town, the visionary CEO turning around a company with a new plan, an inspiring President giving simple, clear messages, a Pastor who brings a new exciting program.  Leaders of the past were the “best and brightest” and they accomplished goals through charisma, great ideas, or sheer will. 

But as the world changes, the problems we face are far more complex.  The issues that face our communities and companies and congregations are rooted in deeply entrenched, highly-cherished competing values.  The challenges are far more systemic and the old answers aren’t working any longer.  And one of the key skills of leaders of the future is to bring people together to “co-labor” through the mess and drama of all the various ideas, values, perspectives and agendas to come up with new creative ways of getting things done. 

For community organizer and leadership guru, Peter Block, this act of “convening” is THE act of leadership.  Bringing people together to enter the drama, share the work, listen and hang in with each other, build trust and come up with a new creative approach to an old stuck problem is what leadership is all about.  For Peter Block, this means that the leader of the future is not some charismatic wonder, not some all-knowing expert, and not some official authority, but anyone…ANYONE… who is willing to get people together and say, “Let’s put on a show.” 

Leadership is the capacity to initiate a future distinct from the past, a quality that distinguishes it from management…One way to encapsulate the leadership required to create an alternative future is to consider the leader as primarily a convener-not leader as special person, but leader as a citizen, sometimes with legitimate power, willing to do those things that can initiate something new in the world. In this way, "leader" belongs right up there with cook, carpenter, artist, and landscape designer. All of us can develop this ability with a small amount of teaching, and an agreement to practice-the ultimate do-it-yourself movement.

So if the “Past Leaders To-Do List” looked something like this:
1.    Act.
2.    Act Expertly.
3.    Act Expertly and Quickly (even by yourself, if necessary).

The Future Leader’s To-Do List looks like this:
1.    Say “I don’t know” (about the problem in front of you). 
2.    Resign as the Resident Expert (and become the “Chief Learning Officer”)
3.    Convene Collaborators.

In the next post, I’ll interrupt this list with a personal testimony about how hard it’s been for me to make the transition from the past to the future in my own leadership style and the friends who have been teaching me along the way.