Thank God

This is the first church that I pastored. In 1985 I was asked to serve as the Interim Pastor of the Caribou Church of God in Caribou, Maine. There were seven people in the congregation--me, my wife, our infant son, and four other people. I received no pay, in fact, what little bit of tithes we could pay from my wife's Air Force Sergeant's pay was almost all that came in to cover the cost of electricity.

Twenty-three years later I'm pastoring a church that is averaging over 300 a month in attendance and in which the sanctuary of the Caribou church would fit in the foyer. I'm no better now than I was then and God is no better to me now than He was then. Still, I'm grateful to God for allowing me to grow and to for my ministry to grow as well.

I have much to be thankful for, including the fact that this week I passed my comprehensive exams in the Regent University Ph.D. program in Organizational Leadership. I was at Caribou when I earned my bachelor's degree, and at Conyers I've earned my D.Min. and am now a Ph.D. candidate.

The date on that photo is wrong, I didn't reset the clock on the camera. In fact, I took that picture this past Summer when my son (who is now 22) and I when back to Maine to visit the state of his birth. I thank God that I have children (Sons 22 and 12, and Daughter 19) who have never given me any real grief. No drinking problems, driving infractions, drugs, or rampant libido.

Then of course, I am thankful for a wife who has given her encouragement and support to my educational pursuits. She has often had more faith in me than I've had in myself.

Thank God.

Who Knows What the Future Holds?

Admittedly, the election did not turn out as I had hoped. I am saddened by the fact that the President-Elect is going to pass legislation that will remove all restrictions for abortions, and that now a portion of my hard earned money, taken from me in the form of taxes will now be used, against my will, to fund abortions.

In reality, there are many issues that loom large on the horizon of America's future. There is the growing Russian threat. There is the deepening economic crisis. There is the socialization of American banks and businesses. There is the failing stock market. There is a moral crisis in America. There is growing unemployment, home foreclosures, international tensions, the shifting tectonic plates of American culture. At the same time there is and will be a resurgence of white power groups and threat of terrorism both domestic and foreign.

The Bible tells us that such a time would exist and just as all are about to despair, a great leader will be embraced by the world, he will promise peace, he will seem to have all the solutions, and he will even gain the trust and allegiance of the Middle East nations, including Israel. But then, just when it seems the world is experiencing unparalleled prosperity and peace, he will break the treaty he has brokered with Israel and the world is thrust into a time of great tribulation and ultimately ends with the battle of Armageddon.

Who knows what the future holds? God knows, and He holds the future. Regardless of how I wished the election had turned out, God's plan is on track and I believe the end is in sight.

Weary With Politics?

I don't know if you feel the way I do, but sometimes I just get tired of politics. I get tired of the exaggerated promises and the exaggerated attacks. I get tired the hyperbole and the hubris. I just get tired of it.

I know it's important to stay informed. We need to know what the moral issues are, we need to know where the candidates stand and then we need pray and vote for the candidate whose values must closely align with God's standard.

We need to know, for example that one candidate has promised that within his first 100 days in office, he will sign a piece of legislation which will effectively end all restrictions on abortions (parental notice of minors seeking abortion, partial birth abortion, fetus rights legislation, etc.), and this will result in millions of unborn babies dying if this person is elected.

We need to know these things. But the truth is that by now we should all know where the candidates stand. They've been talking for two years! But we also need to know where our local candidates stand on issues. We need to know the "platform" of both parties. One stands for a pro-death agenda that supports killing the most innocent members of our society, and supports a homosexual agenda which seeks to "force" those who disagree with their immoral stand to keep silent under the threat of legal repercussions. The other party promotes a pro-life agenda and has resisted the homosexual agenda while seeking to respect the rights of all people.

We should know these things by now. If we don't then maybe we shouldn't vote. We should never vote party lines simply because our parents were in this party or that. We should not vote a certain way because the preacher or the politician says we should. We should vote the way we vote because we know the issues, we know where the politicians stand, and we know how these issues and stands align with the moral code that God has given us.

I'm tired too, but I'm not too tired to go to the polls and cast my vote. Please be informed, pray, and then cast your vote. Then come home and take a nap.

The Impact of Unemployment on Churches

It seems that we are at the beginning of a fairly significant downturn in the economy. By all accounts it may take two to three years for the trend to bottom out and for recovery to begin. During this time unemployment is likely to increase significantly and churches are going to have to provide ministry to hurting families, while at the same time the churches will have to deal with the financial impact of lost tithes and offerings. The double hit of needing to do more but having less to do it with will challenge church leadership. There will be a need for new ministry paradigms and for innovative methods for creating multiple income streams for the church.

Fortunately, the churches that are debt-free will be able to weather the storms, but those who have been living on the edge of their resources with large mortgage payments will find themselves in a precarious position. In fact, many may default. In the past denominational headquarters may have bailed them out, but with decreasing property values, taking on the debt while HQ is also dealing with a money crunch make this much less likely.

Churches with these mortgages will be forced to ask their cash strapped congregations to give more, to do more, and to give sacrificially, but this push will only result in exacerbated feelings of guilt as people begin to divert tithes to pay for their home mortgages and other debt payments.

How did we get here? A focus on facilities with little attention on economic trends while going into debt and calling it a vision has resulted in grand facilities with dwindling income.

How do we get out? We must continue to evangelize, keeping our eyes on the harvest rather than on parishioner's pocketbooks. We must offer healing to the hurting, counsel the confused, and love to the lost. We must be willing to do more with less and rely more upon the Spirit than we do upon our money.

Finally, as churches begin to default on loans, congregations must be willing to merge as debt-free churches offer haven and love to those no longer have place to worship. This must be done with humility and without a spirit of triumphalism on the part of the church receiving the financial refugees from the failing churches.

God Driven vs Success Driven

It seems to me that too often Christian leaders are more “success driven” than “God driven.” By this I mean that pastors too often measure their own success by the externals rather than the eternals. We tend to put a premium on those things that can be measured and observed by ourselves and by others. For example, we can see the numbers in attendance or the new building that we’ve built, or the new state-of-the-art equipment in the audio-video department. Eternal things, however, according to Paul (2 Cor. 4:18) are invisible. What are the invisible eternals? Some of them would include our own devotional life, our witness, our prayer closet prayers, and our faith. When we God driven rather than success driven our decisions will be in alignment with God’s will and God is able to do things that we cannot do for ourselves.

Let me provide an example. When I went to Kansas I soon found that Church of God churches were few and far between. As the district pastor God birthed in me the desire to plant another Church of God church. I began to visit other towns near Junction City (which is where I was pastoring) and found the beautiful small town of Abilene, Kansas. It was the hometown of Dwight Eisenhower, and I fell in love with it. There were other Pentecostal churches in the town, but I still thought that I should plant a Church of God church. However, try as I might, nothing opened up and I never planted a church in Abilene. Instead, there was another little town about 30 minutes south of Junction City – Herington, Kansas. It was a little hole-in-the-wall town (pop. 2,500) that was out in the middle of wheat and milo fields. As it turned out there were no Pentecostal churches in Herington and in short order God provided a beautiful worship facility for less than six thousand dollars. It was a debt free church in two years. That’s a God thing.

If I had pursued my own plans in Abilene and we would have had yet another Pentecostal church in the town and a large debt to go with it. God knows what He’s doing and His ways are the best ways. That's why every leader should strive to be God driven rather than success driven. The ultimate success will be to hear God say, "Well done thy good and faithful servant. Because you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over much."

Leadership Style

A few days ago I was asked by someone what my “leadership style” is. I hadn’t really thought much about a particular “style” because frankly I feel that the style of the leader is determined in part by the follower(s), the situation, and the task at hand. In some circumstances, with certain followers, the “style” might be more autocratic and directive in nature. In other circumstances the “style” might be more democratic and participatory in nature. This is the approach promoted by Hersey and Blanchard’s “situational leadership” theory. It is, in my estimation, the approach used by Jesus. He used the leadership appropriate to the person and situation.

Regardless of the style, however, it is always my goal to enhance follower self-efficacy and thus to empower them to act and perform with more autonomy and to become self-directed learners and leaders. This is only possible when the values and vision of the organization are shared by the follower and when they have demonstrated proficiency in their area of responsibility. A leadership function, then, is to clearly communicate vision and demonstrate and illustrate the organizational values as he or she is developing followers.

There are various leadership theories that sound biblical, such as, transformational and servant-leadership, but it should be noted that neither of these theories was gleaned from scripture, but from secular organizational models. Certainly, they can be employed in ecclesiastical settings and “Christianized” but they are not inherently Christian in origin. Furthermore, less Christian sounding leadership styles can be appropriate in ecclesiastical settings given the situation. For example, Jesus could be very autocratic at times (“no man comes to the Father but by me”), as well as exemplifying servant-leadership as He washed the Apostle’s feet.

Some argue that a leader has “one effective style” and cannot change to match the situations, and as such, the organization must match the right leader with the needs of the organization. To compensate for the lack of leadership range, then, the leader must hire a great supporting staff which will result in synergistic team leadership. Research and opinion is mixed in evaluation of the question of whether a person can effectively employ more than one leadership style. Taken together they suggest that some leaders have only one set style, probably a result of their personality matrix, while others are able to employ various styles with equal competency.

There are a number of leadership style measurement tools available which will help one to determine his or her predominate style, such as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and it can be helpful to see where one falls on the spectrum of leadership styles. Having identified one’s predominate style, the leader who would aspire to multiple leadership styles to match situations, should begin a program of self-directed learning in the leadership styles he or she wishes to develop. This is a continual process of leadership improvement. The use of a mentor or coach in this process is very helpful. Call me.

STOP THE BLEEDING!

I stood beside the bed of a friend as the doctor's and nurses frantically worked to keep him alive. They had put unit after unit of blood into his body, but as they were putting the blood in, he continued to bleed out. His clotting factor was so low due to the blood thinners he had been on that a relatively minor surgery now had his life in peril. Thankfully, due to the dedicated work of doctors and nurses they stopped the bleeding and he lived.

In business and in churches a flow of finances is essential to the continued operation and success of the organization. The simple fact is that if there is more going out than there is coming in, then Houston, we have a problem. There are two ways to deal with the financial shortfall: first, increase the in-flow of money, and second, decrease the out-flow. Or a combination of these two.

God has blessed me with the ability to quickly scan the financial situation of an institution and to get a feel for the incoming and the outgoing. I almost always approach the problem from two fronts, both looking for ways to increase the income while at the same time finding and eliminating waste.

In an economy when many churches have felt the pinch, our church has had a strong summer of giving, while at the same time we have tightened our belts. We've had some emergencies come up with air-conditioners failing and such, but thankfully we've been able to match every emergency without having to borrow or beg.

In our own homes and personal finances we need to do the same. Everyone should have a realistic budget and should endeavor to live by that budget. It may mean tightening our belts, but we can survive financial upheaval in our economy if we make wise and God directed decisions.

Twenty-Four Years of Marriage:Lessons Learned

July 30th, 1984 a twenty-three year-old man and a twenty-one year-old women joined hands in a bridal shop in Caribou, Maine and a notary public, wearing a red, white and blue dress, married Mark Hardgrove and Sun Chi. I wore my Air Force dress blues and Sun wore a white dress she purchased from a mall in Canada. We couldn't afford a wedding dress, but ironically there were mannequins all around us wearing wedding dresses. Only my mother, my step-father and Sun's good friend Shirley were there to witness the occasion.

We were two people who could not have come from more diverse backgrounds. I grew up in West Virginia; she was born in Seoul, Korea and lived in Los Angeles, California. She was a city girl and I was a country boy. She is Asian and I was a white hillbilly. We had known each other for a little over eight weeks, but there we were getting married.

Frankly, we barely survived our first year. Two years later our first child, a son, was born and our common focus kept us together. For the next four years I worked all night and went to school all day working on my M.Div. Sun was home alone a lot with our son. Two years after our son was born our daughter was born and Sun was now home with two babies and not much of a husband. I finished my degree, we took our first church in Junction City, Kansas, saw God do great things, moved to Lawrenceville, Georgia to work as an associate pastor, and in 1996 our youngest son was born shortly before I became pastor of the Suwanee Church of God. For the past eight and a half years we've served the Conyers Church of God.

What are the lessons I've learned from this twenty-four year odyssey? First, I've learned that there will always be ups and downs in a marriage. Enjoy the highs, learn from the lows, but as Winston Churchill said, "Never give up."

Second, I've learned that people can change. My wife has developed a wonderful sense of humor that she did not appear to have when we first met. I have learned not to take every disagreement as the end of the world.

Third, I've learned that time does fly. I went back to Maine with my oldest son this past June and we visited the old Loring Air Force Base where he was born 22 years ago. So many old memories came rushing in upon me. I was grateful to be there with my son, but I was wishing that my wife was there as well. I took a picture of the barracks (dorms) where she and I first laid eyes on one another. We had no idea that a seemingly chance meeting would change our world.

Finally, I've learned that God does have a plan, even when it appears that we have done everything wrong, God has a way of making all things work together for good.

As I wrap up my Ph.D. studies and I look ahead at the prospects before us, of the future that God still has for my wife and me, I live with the anticipation of a wonderful adventure ahead. Twenty-four years from now (should the Lord tarry) I'll be 71. I have no idea what lies ahead, but I fully anticipate that Sun and I will be together celebrating 48 years of marriage. Perhaps we'll have grandchildren by then, maybe I'll be retired and writing my memoirs, but oh the stories we will tell.

What does this have to do with leadership? I read a study that found that, with few exceptions, most great leaders had been in a committed relationship for many years with a supportive spouse who believed in them. I don't know if I'll ever be considered a great leader, but I have a supportive spouse who believes in me and together we have done more than I would have ever done alone.

Friend are Friends Forever in the Lord

An old friend is in the hospice. He was the administrative bishop in Kansas who appointed me to my first church. Though only 62 cancer has brought him to the door of eternity.

We often walk through life with little thought of the way our lives intersect and impact one another. When I graduated from seminary I had three ministry options-- one in Virginia, one in Arizona, and one in Kansas. I chose Kansas because my cousin was attending the church there. John was the administrative bishop and upon my first meeting with him I was impressed at how personable he was. Both he and his wife are humble and people who reach out emotionally and take you in as a friend.

I will never forget the day that I felt like my ministry was coming to a screeching halt and the first person I thought to call was John. I’d had an accident working at the church I was pastoring in Georgia and soon found out that I had absolutely no insurance to cover my debt of around $60,000. I thought that my only recourse was to go bankrupt and I figured that would mean the end of my ministry. I called John literally crying at the prospect of leaving the ministry. John listened quietly until I had vented my fears and then he said, “Mark, I know that over the past thirty some years of growing up in West Virginia without a father that you’ve overcome bigger challenges than this. Trust God. He’ll get you through this.”

Thirteen years later he is fighting for his life, but his words are alive in my mind and heart. Shortly after talking with John, the hospital called offering to pay the bill off through indigent care, the doctor lowered his fees, and the church I was working for insisted on paying the remaining $4,000. Not a penny came out of my pocket.

I had come so close to packing it in and quitting, but an encouraging word from a friend made all the difference.

Thank you John for being my friend. (John passed on to glory, 4:00 am, July 18, 2008)

Looking At Life Through the Eyes of Another

I'm a people watcher. I can sit at a mall or in a public park for hours and just watch people walk by. I love to watch how people interact with one another, how they laugh and how they cry. When I see someone crying, especially children, it makes me feel sad. My fascination is a mixture of curiosity and empathy.

Often we are so consumed with our own little world that it rarely occurs to us that every person on earth has their own story, their own history, their own joys and sorrows. As a writer I often have this urge to go uninvited to a table in the food court and ask that person to tell me their story. I suppose many people would think I was just weird, or the woman eating alone might think I was making a pass, so I resist the urge to ask. Still, I think each of us should try to expand our view of the world and try from time to time to look through the eyes of another.

We might want to start at home with our children and our spouse. Do we even know how the people closest to us experience the world? Do they view it as hostile, as inviting, as opportunity laden, or as a foe to be defeated?

I think that empathy enables us to be a better leader than we would be as an aloof, task only oriented person. At times even empathetic leaders have to make decisions that are painful--both to the person being affected and to ourselves--but we should make those decisions with compassion for those who are affected. If we have to fire someone one, they may effectively be removed from our "world" but their world goes on and we should be sensitive to that fact.

The Beautiful Question

e.e. cummings wrote: "Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” I found a blog by a young man identified as Pat. He states:

Are you a question answerer by nature? I have come to believe with all of my heart that it is a profound and highly successful ministry that learns how to ask beautiful questions . . . . (Geography of Grace).

He is dealing specifically with ministry to at risk youth, but I think his insight is meaningful to us all. In “science” we spend much time answering questions. As a Pastor my response to questions from my parishioners is to try to authoritatively answer all questions related to Scripture, after all I have a M.Div. and a D.Min. and if I can’t answer the questions then what hope is there for anyone else? Lately, however, I’ve been more inclined to answer questions with questions for the purpose of helping others discover the truth that is revealed in Scripture. My goal is not the more beautiful answer, but the more beautiful question and along the way the humbling reality that I might just learn something as well.

cummings, e.e. Poems 1923-1954. NY: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. 1954.

Geography of Grace (n.d.) The art of asking beautiful questions. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.geographyofgrace.com/2008/06/the_art_of_asking_beautiful_qu.html

The Power of Framing and/or Reframing

The aesthetic value of a picture is enhanced or diminished by how it is framed. This is why people will often spend more on a frame than they do on a picture or painting. A great picture in a bad frame looks cheap, while an average picture in a great frame looks like it must have some value. One of the most important roles of a leader is framing.

Looking at framing as an act of communication, it refers to how we verbally explain, describe, or promote an issue, policy, situation, etc. Unfortunately, too many leaders are not very good at framing and as a result good ideas are diminished in the minds of the followers. Let me give an example. A church wants to start an early Sunday morning service and eliminate the Sunday evening service. Whatever the motivation, the framing of the proposal for the church will make all the difference on how enthusiastically the new schedule is embraced.

A bad job at framing would be for the pastor so say: “Well our people just aren’t as committed as they once were and they won’t come for the evening service, so we’ll just cancel Sunday evening and try to get them out in the morning.”

A good job at framing would be something like this: “We know that people’s schedules have changed dramatically over the past couple decades, and Sunday evening isn’t an option for many of them. However, we understand that some people could come to an early service and many of our members would prefer to come earlier rather than later. So, we are going to move our Sunday evening service to the early morning and see if we can be more effective and reach more people.”

The same event is framed in two different ways. Which one would have the most appeal? Obviously the second. Every leader should spend a considerable amount of time considering how he or she will frame important decisions, changes, and innovations. Paul said we are to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:14). Love should always frame the topic, even when the truth hurts.

Change, change, change. . . .

When one thinks of change it suggests an event or result that brings a person or organization from one state or mode of operating to another. In the Lewin-Schein change model the process is threefold: unfreeze-change-refreeze. The unfreeze stage is the stage at which the need for change is championed. It requires a critical mass of acceptance among members of the organization before change can be initiated. Often this need for change is motivated by discontentment with the current state or condition, as well as a desire for a preferred future state. As the unfreezing stage has influenced a critical mass of individuals the change process is initiated. This is the enactment of a strategy designed for the purpose of moving the person or organization to the preferred future state. However, given the propensity for humans to digress to familiar patterns of action, especially during times of duress or stress, Lewin-Schein proposes that change is not successful until the refreeze stage is complete. This is a process of structural and procedural codification of the change that endeavors to keep the individual or organization from moving back into old familiar past behaviors that predate the change stage.

This is a simple change model and one that can be effective. However, more recent reflection on this model proposes that the final stage of refreezing is impractical in the current era of rapid social, economic, and cultural change. Instead, some are suggesting that no organization should ever believe that it has achieved a state of rest, or settle into a current state or stage of development. What does this mean? It means that we live in a world that is in a constant and unabated state of transition and these transitional states are occurring with more and more rapidity. As such, even as an organization is moving from one state to the next it must be thinking three and four changes ahead and not merely looking to the next stage in the organizational life.

Let me illustrate. I used to play billiards and I wasn’t very good. I usually only looked one shot ahead. I looked for the next easiest shot and no further. I began to notice that the really good players were planning two and three shots ahead. When they took a shot they were setting up the next shot, and the next, and so on. When an organization moves only from one shot to the next it will never be ahead of the game but will always be playing behind the changing environment in which it exists.

Perhaps a new model of change would be unfreeze-change-change-change . . .

Change and Transitition

I recently attended a conference (Engage 21) that was addressing the issue of identifying emerging leaders. The purpose of the conference seemed to be an acknowledgment on the part of the denomination that with aging pastors in many pulpits there is a need to raise up younger ministers. There is a need for a mechanism to identify these younger men and women and have a structure in place that encourages them to participate and contribute to the overall vision of the organization--and perhaps even to forge a new vision.

This is a challenge in that the younger demographic is not nearly as loyal to any organization as their parents and grandparents were. (This is not a value statement but a fact revealed in a number of studies.) In society at large, secular organizations (and perhaps even religious organizations) have proven to have little loyalty to workers and therefore workers feel no compulsion to be particularly loyal to organizations. In light of this, organizations need to come to a new realization that loyalty and commitment cannot be assumed, but must earned.

How does an organization earn this loyalty from a younger and often skeptical demographic?

First, the conference was a good start, in that, the organization must be willing to listen. These younger leaders need to believe that their voice will be heard. If they will not be heard within the organization, these men and women will make their voice heard in others venues, such as blogs and message boards. Older organizational leaders have decried the participation of pastors on such boards such as Actscelerate.com, but instead they would do well to visit and read them for themselves, not to criticize, but to understand.

Second, the organization should invest in the youth. If the youth can't or do not want to assume the pastorate of an existing (dying) church, then we should regentrify. That is, as older churches close, reinvest that money in a proven young leader in a new church plant. When the organization uses the money from sales of older properties to bolster state budgets or pay-off state debt, the net result will continue to be negative for the long-term prospects of that organization.

Finally, the youth need to appreciate the wealth of wisdom and experience that is available in the older ministers and learn from them. Admittedly, things have changed and the good-ole-days weren't all that good, but just as organizational leaders need to listen to the youth, the youth need to ask questions and listen to the older ministers.

I'm somewhere in the middle, moving quickly to the older status, and I am eager to share anything of value that I have learned with others. After finishing my Ph.D. in organizational leadership, I hope to do some writing and coaching, and along the way to continue to learn from my older and my younger counterparts.

I Like Leadership

As someone who has served for many years in a leadership position, in fact, as the senior pastor of three churches, I’ve found that being a leader is usually enjoyable. We don’t use the term enjoyable very often when speaking of leadership. We hear words like challenging, tough, courageous, and bold. However, for the most part it has been an extremely enjoyable experience for me. Yet, it is somehow seen as arrogant or prideful to admit that we like being a leader, so we walk around like it is a cross to carry. We think that we should be the reluctant leader like Moses, or Gideon. Peter, however, was a leader and he (like most the disciples) embraced the mantle, as did Elisha.

We hear a lot about pastoral burnout and about pastors who are leaving the church. At Wal-Mart, the turnover of management positions is extremely high. In other organizations we hear about burnout and about people dropping out of the “rat race.” However, ninety percent of my leadership experience has been great. Studies have shown that it is the ten percent of the leadership that is not great that often leads to leadership disillusionment.

Admittedly, 200 people can tell me what a wonderful job I’m doing and I take it all in stride. I don’t get the big head, or feel too exalted, but let one person tell me that I did or am doing something wrong and that criticism or comment follows me home and haunts me through the night. We need to hear the criticism. If we surround ourselves with yes-men we will only hear what we want to hear, rather than what we need to hear. But it can still be painful to hear. The pain is part of the growth process that helps us become better leaders, and therefore find the job even more enjoyable. So if you are a leader, enjoy!

Church: An Open or Closed System?

Most churches are filled with self-appointed consultants who feel that it is incumbent upon them to share their findings with the senior pastor. One "consultant" will say that the need is for the church to return to core traditional values, reflected in worship styles incorporating hymns/Southern Gospel . Another "consultant" will say that the need is to respond the external environment and offer a program that appeals to the community, thus the need is to employ more contemporary models--praise and worship or contemporary Christian music. Two people, two perspectives, both probably shaped by personal biases, that is, personal preference.

The underlying question is whether the church is an open system or a closed system. If it is a closed system that is designed only to respond to internal environmental conditions, then it may be possible to have a happy but dying church. On the other hand, an open system that responds to external needs and conditions may produce discomfort among members, but result in growth.

Reflecting upon the ministry of Jesus, it seems He intended to birth a church that was responsive to the external environment without sacrificing foundational truths. The existing first century religious establishment was a closed system and that was part of the problem. Few of the religious elites who were ensconced in the existing system were willing to look through new eyes. The apostle Paul is an exception, and he had to be blinded before he could see.

Dr. Dutta Roy says that it is impossible for a person who is in the system to be a diagnostician of the system he or she is in. In others words, neither members nor leaders will be effective at diagnosing the needs of their own organization. He argues that accurate diagnostics of the organization must come from an outside, objective, source. This is true both at the local and the organizational level.

Dealing with Dis-Appointments

"Disappointment". . . if you look at the word it suggests that an appointment was anticipated, but it was annulled, or it was canceled. It suggests a letdown, a setback, a frustration, if not a failure. Every leader will have to face his or her share of disappointments. A leader may hope for something to happen, may anticipate a certain outcome, may even plan for and make arrangements for an “appointment” only to be dis-appointed. How a leader handles such disappointments may ultimately determine how far he or she will go in leadership.

For some, the disappointment may result in a bitter retributive spirit that seeks to get even with the individual or the organization who denied the anticipated objective. Such retribution often takes the form of disparaing remarks concerning those that the leader perceives to have thwarted his or her would-be appointment. Another reaction is to retreat into lethargy, a “what’s the use” mentality that surrenders to mediocrity and sinks into complacency. A third and more productive response to disappointment is to assess the reasons for the disappointment, make adjustments and improvements, and then refocus for the next “appointment.” It may require that one change goals, it may mean a new focus, or it may mean that one must revisit the appointment with new skills, experience, resources, or education.

It is too easy to blame others for our disappointments. However, there may not even be need for blame. It may have simply come down to the fact that someone else could deliver a better product, or could produce it at a lower cost, or that they simply appealed to some intangible attraction on the part of those making decisions relative to the appointment.

Truthfully, sometimes it isn’t fair. That’s life. A good leader will roll with the punches and get back up off the mat to fight another day. Some punches will be below the belt and sometimes you get a thumb in the eye, but wallowing in self-pity and self-justification will not gain a victory, now or later.

The Apostle Paul faced his share of disappointments, but he never quit, he never backed down or gave ground. Instead, he continued to press toward the mark until, at the end of his life he could honestly say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." Good leaders keep the faith.