Leading Major Change in Your Ministry

Dr. Jeff Iorg

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781462774616
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Many ministries must undergo major change in order to fulfill their mission, and more importantly, to fulfill God's mission, in today's world. This book tells the story of the relocation of Gateway Seminary—as well as other stories of major change. In doing so, it lays out the principles and processes necessary to get the job done. The first section of Leading Major Change in Your Ministry outlines foundational concepts to leading major change. The second section explains a six-fold model for leading major change in churches and ministry organizations. The book includes illustrations throughout, not from hypothetical situations, but from real-life ministry challenges in both local churches and large organizations. While theories about leading major change are interesting, practical insight about how to do it—written by someone who has led multiple organizations through major change—is far more helpful. The stakes are high. Leadership decisions in ministries have eternal consequences. Almost every church or organization needs—or soon will need—to be led through major change. Leading Major Change in Your Ministry is your guide to successfully getting it done.

Part One

Foundations for Leading Major Change

1

Leadership Is about Real Change

If you Google “defining leadership” and click around for a while, then you will soon discover the only commonality among hundreds of competing perspectives: confusion. Leadership is described, analyzed, and lauded, but not really defined by many who write about it. When it is defined, most experts do so in their terms, based on their experiences and unique demands in their context. While nuggets of truth are sprinkled throughout these perspectives, objective insights producing a precise definition of leadership are lacking.

Judging from the confusion among students in my leadership classes, Christian leaders (and leaders-in-training) also use the word leadership without having a specific, working definition of what it means. When thirty students are asked to define the concept, thirty different definitions will be presented. These definitions have nuances spanning a wide spectrum of perspectives and practices (often based on biases emerging from limited ministry experience or proof-texting favorite Bible passages). This confusion makes it difficult to teach about leading major change because there are such widely varying understandings of what leadership really is.

Before you work your way through the rest of this chapter, try this exercise: write your definition of leadership. Craft a straightforward statement of what it means to lead. You might think, “That’s easy.” Try it. Write a one-sentence statement, without using any commas or conjunctions, that clearly and succinctly defines leadership. You may be surprised how hard it is to define something people talk about all the time.

This is more than a perfunctory exercise. If you are going to lead major change, you must first know what it means to lead. Once you settle on what leadership means, you will be better equipped to implement the disciplines and practices to get the job done.

An Academic Perspective

There has been a proliferation of helpful resources on leadership over the past three decades. Books by authors like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, Jim Collins, John Maxwell, Patrick Lencioni, George Barna, and Thom Rainer are full of practical wisdom, catchy insights, and real-life illustrations. Books like these presume readers are more interested in learning leadership practices than analyzing leadership fundamentals or narrowly defining what it means to lead. Before constructing the superstructure, however, it is helpful to build a sturdy foundation. Developing a data-driven definition of leadership is prerequisite to knowing how to do it. Using that definition to evaluate best practices is also essential to determining the effectiveness of leadership behaviors.

At the end of the twentieth century, Joseph Rost and his research team set out to define the word leadership for the twenty-first century. Their methodological goal was formidable—reviewing every use of the word leadership published in the United States in the past century with a goal of writing a one-sentence definition of leadership. They produced a monumental study—published in an expensive, tiny-print format, mostly appreciated by other academics. This seminal book, Leadership for the 21st Century, provides foundational insight into the problem of defining leadership and creates frameworks for understanding best leadership practices.

A Brief History of Words

When Rost’s team started scouring publications for a definition of leadership, they naturally went to the source for definitions—the dictionary. What they found reveals how recently the concept of leadership has been identified as a distinct discipline. Some of the earliest dictionaries (Candrey, 1604 and Cockeran, 1623) did not contain the words lead or leadership. By 1775, Samuel Johnson included the earliest definitions of lead in an English-language dictionary. He provided rather extensive definitions of lead but no mention of leadership. The earliest definition of leadership as “the state or condition of a leader” is found in Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary, but is then dropped from subsequent editions (only reappearing in 1965). By 1933, the Oxford Dictionary had six pages on the definition of lead, but only two lines defining leadership as “the dignity, office, or position of a leader, esp. of a political party; also, ability to lead.”1

Dictionary writers have struggled to define leadership, deflecting the issue by simply connecting it to lead and leaving it there. Contemporary sources are not much more helpful. Dictionary.com calls leadership “the position or function of a leader,”2 and other online dictionaries mimic this tepid attempt. Defining leadership is apparently tougher than it seems.

A Brief History of Concepts

Since dictionary definitions were not that helpful to Rost’s team in defining leadership, they turned their attention to discovering how the word was described, rather than defined. They worked through the literature of the twentieth century—one decade at a time—tracing the evolving uses of “lead” and “leadership.” While their detailed findings are worth careful study, a summary of their insights will suffice for our purposes.

Rost’s team identified six primary ways the word leadership was used in the latter part of the twentieth century.3 These categories are still valid for describing the ways leadership is understood in the early twenty-first century. In the short summary below, one or more current examples are included as illustrations (although the output of some of these writers/teachers can fit more than one category).

Leadership as Doing The Leader’s Wishes

Leadership is the leader having his or her way, getting followers to do what he or she wants, or followers fulfilling the dreams of the leader. This description descends from the “great man” theory of leadership and is exemplified in books like the popular On Leadership series of biographies summarizing the philosophies and practices of prominent personalities.

Leadership as Achieving Group/Organizational Goals

Leadership is the practice of facilitating groups and practicing human relations skills. This description focuses on influencing group outcomes and focuses heavily on managing people to effectively produce specific goals. Works by Ken Blanchard, international management expert, are good examples of this perspective.

Leadership as Management

Leadership is communicating the “what” and “how” of assignments and motivating followers to accomplish the tasks. This description focuses on getting people to do something and emphasizes efficient production rather than change. The leadership parables of Patrick Lencioni are entertaining examples of this perspective.

Leadership as Influence

Leadership occurs when followers comply with the leader because they want to accomplish shared goals. While coercion or force are shunned, this perspective still usually focuses on the value of healthy authoritative relationships. Books by Paul Hersey and Jim Collins are good examples.

Leadership as Traits

Leadership happens when persons with certain qualities or characteristics (natural or learned) use their gifts skillfully. The focus is on learning the trade secrets of effective leaders and shaping behavior accordingly. A very popular Christian example of this perspective is John Maxwell.

Leadership as Transformation

Leadership is a process in which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation, accomplishment, and living. This perspective focuses on moral dimensions in both the relationship between leaders and followers and their shared activities. James McGregor Burns won a Pulitzer Prize for espousing this position in his massive work Transformational Leadership.

When Rost’s team finished the herculean task of surveying how leadership was described in the past century, with a special emphasis on the final twenty years, they sarcastically coined this camel-like definition.4 Leadership is “great men and women with certain preferred traits influencing followers to do what the leaders wish in order to achieve group/organizational goals that reflect excellence defined as some kind of higher-level effectiveness.”5

While that tongue-in-check summation tried to cover every aspect of anything anyone had ever connected to leadership, Rost’s team ultimately reached a more helpful conclusion. After completing their comprehensive analysis over a century of the uses of the word leadership, they offered this potent and cogent definition: “Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.”6 That’s been my working definition of leadership for more than a decade. Let’s unpack it in the next section, with particular attention to how the definition begins to inform our understanding of leading major change.

The Leading Part of Leading Major Change

Leading major change begins with understanding what it means to exercise leadership—and that can be learned by dissecting the definition and allowing its nuances to shape leadership practices. Rost’s definition has four major components. Considering them will reveal how effectively implementing each aspect is essential to leading major change.

An Influence Relationship

Many attempts to define leadership emphasize influence or some synonym that describes healthy behavioral modification or adjustment. The key to understanding how this applies to leading major change in churches and ministry organizations begins with “Christianizing” the definition.

A common critique of Rost’s definition (at least by seminary students) is the failure to mention God or include any spiritual perspective. This is an important point. Rost defines leadership, not Christian leadership. Leadership is not a Christian concept, since a person does not have to be a Christian to be a leader. Rost’s definition is an academic definition encompassing all kinds of leaders and leadership settings precisely because it lacks moral qualifiers. Leaders with nebulous or nefarious methods sometimes exercise influence to accomplish despicable goals. Not all leaders are Christians.

For Rost’s definition to be helpful for ministry leaders, though, it must be infused with Christian meaning at key points. The first of these is shaping a distinctly Christian understanding of the phrase influence relationship. Ministry leaders have considerable influence because of their position, but gain significantly more influence through serving others. Jesus was crystal clear about this. He told his disciples who were squabbling over their leadership rank:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to be become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. (Matt. 20:25b–27, emphasis mine)

He later added, as if to underscore the point, “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matt. 23:11, emphasis mine)/

Servant-leadership is more an attitude than an action, but it is an attitude demonstrated by actions. You cannot have one without the other. If you want to have the kind of influence required to lead major change in your ministry setting, your followers must be convinced you are passionately driven to serve them. They will be convinced by your actions, not your words. Servant-leadership is demonstrated by both professional competence and personal engagement.

One of the reasons God delayed initiating the seminary’s relocation until about ten years into my presidency was to give me time to gain influence and earn trust through serving employees and students. When it came time to move the seminary, most employees were convinced they could follow me without fear they would be harmed unnecessarily by the move. Dozens of people were willing to follow (to be influenced by my decisions) because they had watched me protect people from critics, expand opportunities for service, and improve their overall compensation—for about a decade. Students had similar feelings. Although many of them had known me for less time, they were willing to follow me because of improvements over the years to seminary operations that enhanced their training opportunities. Both employees and students had also received pastoral care from me during past crises—both corporately and individually. My leadership (while sometimes self-focused and self-serving) had often benefitted others professionally (through strategic decision-making) and personally (through pastoral ministry). Those actions had convinced most of my followers they could trust me to make wise decisions on their behalf, with their overall best interests in mind.

Servant-leadership—even in large organizations—always has a personal comp...

Table of contents

• Prelude: A Lifetime of Leading Major Change
• Part One: Foundations for Leading Major Change
• Part Two: A Model for Leading Major Change
• Appendices
• Notes