Theology of Credible Leadership - Lesson 15

Dr. John Johnson
Theology of Credible Leadership
Skill Sets of a Leader
Lesson Transcription

So we're talking about leadership competence, and I inadvertently stated, and what I last shared is that we've looked at these five, and we will move to look at it from a theological side. But, but actually I mentioned that we need to see, seven that are common assumptions that we see in leadership books. So let me mention, two others that I left out. So when we think about core skills, talking about stewarding time, competent leader knows what time it is.   

Competent leader knows how to manage, manage resources, manage people well, is flexible, knowing that things change. There are going to be disappointments. There are going to be, maybe good things that were not anticipated or bad things. There has to be, deep, deep, great preparation. A leader who is skillful understands the importance of this engaging people in meaning is what I last mentioned, that somewhere the leader has to stand up and say, let's, let's understand why what we're doing is so critical.   

But there's a sixth one, and that is a leader has to be skilled at strategic alliances. That is, a skillful leader realizes the folly of going in alone, that realizing that collaboration is, is critical.   

And collaboration itself is a skill. How do I work with people? How do I collaborate in a way that takes people seriously? How do I collaborate without micromanaging? How do I collaborate in a way that does not compromise the leadership they need from me, but yet also at the same time, they are sensing that they have a voice in what we're doing.   

So it requires really great communication. It requires team development and knowing how to work with teams. The seventh one over here is the competency of focus. A leader who is competent, is not distracted, is not random, has to stay, attuned to what matters. And so, a skill here is to stay centered to, like, let's say someone on a tennis court that stays focused upon the objective on the strategies, plays to the edges, if you will.   

A leader has to play to the edges, test the limits, but know what limits, one has to stay within. Another way to describe this is having a quiet, calm, even in the eye of a storm.   

No matter what happens, a leader is focused and, and gets the leaders he or she works with, focused on the main objectives on the tasks at hand. The task will talk about, later on. So the question now arises as to looking at theology. Is there anything theology contributes to the competence of a leader?   

What does it add? So let me start in a general sense to say this, theology underscores the importance of competence. And there's nowhere I find in scripture that God legitimizes incompetence in God's kingdom. There's no room for ineffective leadership, sloppy organization, mismanagement, leadership, ineptness. There is certainly for sure in theology leadership, ineptness.   

There are many illustrations of it, but it's not what God sanctions, God desires or God wills at, at all. We're actually called to be thorough, to be careful, to be skillful. So there are certain passages, I particularly go back to Paul who says, for example, in one Corinthians nine, so if you're going to run, run in such a way that you gain the prize.   

So if you're going to do it, do it really well. This is what you sense God is saying all through scripture. He tells Timothy, don't neglect your gift for Timothy four. Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself wholly to them. What do you hear? You, you hear, a mentor to someone he's developing to say, if you're going to lead the church, Timothy, then be all in.   

Do it with great competence. Do it with great skill. Or I think of Proverbs, Proverbs 22, 29. Do you see a man who's skilled in his work? He will stand before kings. It's just an observation. The sage, of course, in Proverbs making life observations. But saying, who, who is it that stands before?   

Others of rank? Who's the one who gets noticed? The one who is again, skilled, in his work? So competence, does it matter to God? Well, just stepping back in general sense, I start with this, yes, competence matters. And so I think God would say to us who choose to be leaders, if you're going to lead, then become skillful.   

Learn the skills. So we therefore see a passage like Romans 12, six, where Paul listing the gifts gives the gift of leadership. And he says to leaders, to those who are gifted, to lead with diligence. He uses this word here. If in leadership, he says, Romans 12, six, diligence or this, this term, spee, which has the idea of zeal or haste.   

Just an interesting, when Paul listing spiritual gifts and comes to, to leadership, this is the word he chooses.   

It seems to suggest anyway, that Paul is saying, if in leadership this, if this is your giftedness, if you will then do it with great skill, with great competence, do it with great effort. Or another, maybe, perhaps meaning behind this term is with great pain. So behind this, I hear Paul saying, if your gift is leadership, then again, be all in. So the question then is, what does that mean exactly?   

What are the skill sets from a divine perspective? We need to make sure we, we develop that we exercise. And so I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to begin to make a list and we'll call these skill sets of a leader from the reference point of theology.   

So the first one that stands out maybe in, in a bit of a logical order, is followership. That is, if you're going to be a skillful leader, which means you step back and ask yourself, okay, what are, what are the necessary skills?   

What is it I have to be really good at? It would seem that it starts right here. This ability to follow, to say that if you're going to be able to lead followers, you first have to understand what it means to be a follower. Someone put it this way, he who cannot be a good follower, cannot be a good leader.   

And I think that's true. Going to military school, right out of high school, it was one of the first things I learned because certainly in military school or in that environment, you start at the bottom of the bottom. And it's all about developing you to one day be a leader, but you first of all have to learn how to follow, how to follow, all the instructions, that, that are given to you.   

And scripture under underscores this, when I look at leaders who were proficient at leading, they had to first of all, become really adept at learning. And learning to lead begins with learning to follow God. That that really is the start point. If I'm going to be a skillful leader, it, it's fair to ask the question, do I know how to follow God? Because if I don't know how to follow God, I'm not going to be a great leader.   

This was humanity's first mandate to get in step with God's purposes and with his boundaries. It continues with, with Jesus, who again said, follow me. We see it in the manner of transfiguration. When the Father says, listen to him, that is, learn how to follow following God is not a skill we pick up easily.   

We have a propensity to not follow God. We have a tendency to get ahead of God or push back from following. But yet, when you look at leadership stories, almost every story is about learning. First of all, to follow God. So God calls Abraham, and before Abraham can ever be a leader, he spends years learning how to follow God, follow God's timing, follow God's ways, follow God's direction.   

You could say the same thing about Moses. Before he ever led, he had to learn, he had to learn what it means to follow, to humble himself. Just as David had to learn how to follow God and the disciples who weren't thrust suddenly into leadership, eventually there would be the upper room discourse as innocence, Jesus is handing off to them who will now lead the church.   

But that came after three years of learning how to follow or one thinks of Paul, or one could go on to just almost any, excellent leader in, in scripture. It requires discernment. It requires knowing who to learn from, when, and where and how, that, and that's why, for example, I think one of the, one of the first essential things coming out of seminary, for example, is having a season of learning to follow, to say, be an associate pastor, to somehow be on a staff to learn how to follow before, one ever leads.   

Here's a second skill, and that's a skill to know how to think. Scripture talks to a certain degree about our mindset, developing a careful mind, effective, effective leaders.   

Let me lemme step back and think of it this way. Skillful leaders know how to use their minds. They experiment with ideas. They unlearn the safe and familiar, and learn how to assess and reassess and search matters out that Proverbs 25, 2, it's the glory of a leader to search a matter out.   

So a leader who's skillful is a leader who, who thinks, who gives a certain amount of energy to contemplation, to reflection, to curiosity. And people are going to follow a leader who thinks things through, who does careful research, who looks for multiple angles.   

But I wonder sometimes today, if we're losing this ability to think, because more and more we are letting others think for ourselves. I'm grateful for, but I'm really suspicious of artificial intelligence, perhaps like you, I find it a bit unnerving to go on particular sites and put, a subject to something that, I want answers for, and I'm allowing someone else to do all the thinking for me.   

Now, the reason that's a concern, is not only because much of that then is plagiarism, it's just getting ideas from everyone one else. But it's because I think there's something really true. Not that I am a, a scientist studying the brain, but I've read here and there pieces that tell me that how we use our minds forms our minds.   

How we use our brains, shapes our brains. For example, think about it this way. We more and more rely on GPS, but what they're finding is because we rely on GPS, we are losing our ability to spatial awareness.   

If we are no longer really researching, but just looking at the information level on the surface, we slowly over time, begin to format our brains to think in a superficial way. That is, think about it like this. We, we are developing mines that are like hydrofoils, that just skimm on the surface and are no longer able to be like submarines that go down with any kind of depth.   

I'm simply suggesting, no, I'm arguing for the fact that if we're going to have leaders who are skillful, we need leaders who are thinkers. That is, they know how to use their minds. They keep their minds, if you will, in shape. They press themselves to think hard about issues, rather than just rely on things, on the surface.   

I think it was an article read some years ago entitled, why The News Makes Us Dumb. And that's because the news as it's generally given to us today, is given to us in sound bites. We hear things like in-depth reports, but they're in-depth reports that might go for 30 seconds. So we begin to think like that, and actually we become dumber and dumber and dumber when what people need and want.   

They desperate are, they're desperate for, are people who are thinkers, at least, who keep refining, keep giving some of their best time and energy to stretching their thoughts, to energizing their arguments, to expanding their imaginations, to, as Philippians fore putts it, to give ourselves to thinking on those things that are true.   

Because when minds are renewed, leaders are transformed and they know what to approve and not to approve as Romans 12 puts it. So here are some questions on this particular skill. If you're, if you're convinced of the importance, then here are things I want to know. What are you reading? At what depth? At what level? Tragically I'm finding that there are less and less people who read today.   

I found sometimes to my great disappointment with the staff I led, and I led some pretty great people in my last church. But when I would ask them as I did on occasion, tell me what you're reading, I was actually shocked at how few were reading anything. We have become less and less a culture who reads, but it, it's reading that's essential that, that informs, that expands your awareness.   

So what are you reading? Who are you reading? What strikes your curiosity? Because you see, I think we need leaders, and it is a skill leaders who are curious, that is they use their minds. Here’s an example. My wife and I recently purchased a place on the Oregon coast.   

It's a beautiful place in Arch Cape. And every day I walk the beach when I'm there. So I walk back and forth and I notice tides and tides and how they shift. In fact, I've become really intrigued with the fact that every day I walk the beach, it's as if God lays out a canvas. And, and he paints yet a new picture.   

And a lot of that is driven by the tides, tides that go back and forth. Different times of the day, I began to think about tides, and they, it drew my curiosity as to why are there tides? What drives tides? So I found this book by Jonathan White entitled Tides. And I went on a journey to read about tides, to find how the moon and the sun affect tides, high pressure, low pressure, meteorological issues, storms out to sea.   

All of these things, affect tides. And it's just a small little example. I think this is what leaders are constantly doing. They're asking questions. They're not just reading religious books for those of us in the religious realm, but we read things, in broader ways, and that we step back and ask ourselves the question.   

So what, for example, as I just finished the Kennedy imprisonment, I wanted to step back and ask the question, what does this teach me about power? What does this teach me about leadership? Reading about Admiral Nimitz, I stepped back to say, why was he so, influential?   

Why was he able to achieve such great victories? What, what made him tick? What made him different than other admirals? And I've done the same, whether it's with Teddy Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, books that are just there. There's so many great books today, inhabiting time. Maybe that's why I focus on time recently as an issue of competence, because James KA Smith writes one of the most compelling books about how you understand time.   

This is what leaders do, they force themselves. It's a discipline to expand and stretch, because if we don't, the mind then begins to become, begins to become shaped by the way we use it, which is why one of my great fears when I look at the church today is to see how many churches are filled with passive minds.   

People who it's not asked of them to do anything more than to sit in a pew who then sit and watch, whether it's worship or whether it's preaching who are not stimulated and challenged to use their minds. But it all has to go back to a leader who models it, who uses his mind. And that's a skill. Here's a third. There has to be the skill to see, leaders have to see.   

They can't afford to be narrow myopic. Leaders have to develop the skill of seeing from multiple angles. They have to see the overarching whole of a matter. They have to see the relationship of the individual parts. They have to grasp the total situation.   

There is a book, reframing organizations, a book I read years ago I found really helpful in which, Bowman and deal writing the book, reframing organizations make this point that in every, every community, every organization, let's think of the church, or you can think of a corporate institution, or you can think of a governing body in every institution there are, there are four layers, if you will, you a leader has to see.   

So a leader, first of all, has to see the, the structural, maybe I'll just mention these here. What is it a leader has to see? A leader has to see the structure of the organization. That is the architecture. A leader has to see what his role is, where he is, on the flow chart, where others are.   

Another way to say it is a leader has to see the skeleton, if you will, of the organization. If anybody, must see it, it has to be the leader. A leader not only sees the structure, a leader also has to see, the politics. Because every organization, has politics. That is, who are the, who are the influencers?   

Who in a church, for example, or the church mom or the church boss, or who are the, who are the cheerleaders? Who are the people who are the resistors? A leader has to see, has to see who are the people I have to network with, make, essential, trades, if you will, sometimes, because part of leadership is bargaining.   

It is trading. It is saying, okay, what is it we need to do to get from A to B? So a leader has to see in terms of the organization, has to see when you, let's say imagine you gather people in a room that you're leading. Again, what is the structure? Where do I fit in this structure, in this hierarchy? Where am I leader? Has to see the politics and to sense who are the people that are with me?   

Who are the people that are against me? Who are the people I have to win? Who are the people I have to persuade? It's all part of the political part of an organization. Leader also has to see the human. So bowman and deal make the point that part of the skill of seeing is to see into the hearts of people, to see the morale. So a leader might say, well, here's the vision.   

Here's where we need to go. But the leader more than anyone else, has to see, are the people ready? Do they have the courage? Do they have the will, do they have the energy? So effective leadership is not just looking at the politics and the structures. A leader has to see into the hearts of people and, and, and what they're saying. And then Bowman and deal notice, no one other important thing, and that is the symbols, or maybe a word I'll use here also, is the history.   

Now, what is it they're, they're saying that they're saying a leader has to, a leader has to look at the people he or she is leading, and ask the question, what is the story? And, and, and what are the symbols, around this story? I think I can honestly say in my first church, this is where I had to learn the hard way, the importance of this, because I didn't spend enough time seeing this.   

And so I found a certain resistance. It was a, it was an older church. It was resistant to change almost in any imaginable form. They were stuck in things just as they are like getting stuck in concrete. They had no sense of where to go.   

And here I was this young, ready to go for it, lead the charge. And I found that people just set their feet in a resistant way. They pushed back. And part of what I wasn't seeing, I was starting to see the heart. I understood some of the politics in a hard way. I was still navigating to see structurally how much voice, how much voice do I have, how much authority has been given to me.   

What I wasn't seeing was the symbols, the history. Let me try to describe it this way. What, what I needed to do, what I think every leader needs to do, especially leaders facing a, a difficult organization that's drifted over time, that's begun to wave the flag of status quo, is to say something like this.   

You know, I've been studying our history. I've been studying who we are. I've gone back to the original formative years of this church. And you know what I discovered? I discovered that in this church were amazing dreamers of people who were risk takers, people who gathered, as I think about my first church, and I do know the story now, who gathered in the space of a little apartment, and they began to say, what if we plant a church in this area?   

So way back, 80 plus years earlier, they did, and over time, they began to invite people and it began to grow. And they met even over in the, upstairs, over a local tavern. And it grew and it continued to grow until one day they said, let's build us a, a sanctuary.   

And so they were all in, and they, they sacrificed and they labored, and they built, and the church flourished. And it grew to 300 plus people. Oh, my point is, I needed to go back there and say to people, this is our, this is in our DNA, this is what I see.   

And look around you. Look at the evidence of all of this faith and hard work. Are we going to, are we going to let it stop? Because you see, if I had seen that and done that, the people might've said, he's one of us. He understands who we are. Now. I think again, that's an essential skill of a leader, a a leader who sees, who sees these different layers, a leader who then, sees God and sees what God is doing, and leaves the, and, and sees the state and the condition of the soul and the heart, and sees the historical sweep of things, and sees culture, sees society, sees as much as he can see, she can see, those are the leaders to me anyway, who are skillful.   

These are the lead leaders we need to follow.   

So let's just stop and think about these essential skills so far, followership, thinkers, seers. And what we'll do is we'll come back and talk about a few other skills. So Dr. Johnson, when you're talking about the importance of reading as opposed to in some ways using AI or some other algorithms to get information that if we rely on somebody else to, to gather and to evaluate information, isn't it true that sometimes we miss out on that process of reading and evaluating those sources for ourselves and what even the spirit might say to us in the process?   

Mm-Hmm.   

Let me first of all, make this admission when it comes to AI that suddenly seems to be expanding. And I read, for example, book amongst my readings each day. I read the Washington Post, wall Street Journal, New York Times. I, I find almost every day there's an article about ai.   

And I realize, whoa, I, this is stepping into a world that, you know, just a few years ago, you hardly heard at the term. Now it seems to be everywhere. And, and so I'm, I, I don't understand a whole lot about artificial intelligence, but I'm mindful that a lot of people are writing about it and writing about the benefits and the liabilities. And I, and I step back and I think, well, I'm sure there are some great benefits.   

It can reduce a lot of hours, of researching something to like 30 seconds. That that can be a really good thing. The, the liabilities I underscore here is that it can sometimes feel like, I know this is an overstatement, but maybe it's not an overstatement, a a a conspiracy to incapacitate. How's that?   

That the more I start to rely on that, the less I'll be able to know how to think, how to research. I go to occasionally over to the seminary where I have taught for, for many years. I go into the library. It used to be a buzz of students and all of their, looking, researching, thinking, but it feels like a ghost town.   

It, there's nobody there. There’s not even this sort of rule to be quiet in the library. It's like, no, we can go ahead and talk. It's like, because research and thinking aren't really parts of it anymore. How, how did this happen? It, it's, it scares me. It alarms me in a way because I suppose it's like with artificial intelligence, we're moving to driverless vehicles, which can be a good thing.   

But then we create a generation of people who have no idea how to drive, or as I mentioned with GPS, who no longer know how to functionally find and get around. And I, I fear with artificial intelligence when it comes to research in that we're no longer able to, well, we may no longer be able to use our, our minds.   

I, if I was a professor today, I, I would find it a huge challenge in giving assignments to students and wondering just how much, much thinking, personal thinking and research they did, as opposed to, going to different sites, right? And, and writing something, or no, not them writing, someone else.   

Writing something that they might step back and go, wow, that's way better than I could ever write. But maybe that's not true. Maybe if they use their mind and their research and their walk with God, right? And their sensitivity to the spirit and what the spirit is saying. These things, of course, that artificial intelligence can't pick up, I don't think or ever will be able to, that's a liability that that scares me.