Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Missional Leadership

In my post of February 6, 2009 on “Ministry and Leadership” I argued that there were people who were called out from the rest of us to be ministers, pastors, and priests and these people had “a special responsibility to others to teach, facilitate, and to show others what it means to be missional in their lives.” An example of this kind of missional leadership is…of course…Jesus.

Many who follow the teachings of Jesus contend that the Gospel of Matthew in the new testament portion of the bible is a manual of missional leadership. In this writing, we are presented with stories of Jesus teaching others, facilitating their efforts, and, perhaps most important, showing others what it means to be missional with their lives. So, we can look on these stories as a guide to how we might lead others into being missional in their lives.

Let me say right up front, however, that one of the most important parts of this leadership that Jesus exhibits to us comes when he tells his disciples…”Guys, I am going to go away. You are going to be on your own!”

Why was this so important?

It was important because Jesus understood that the disciples could not grow and mature in their missional calling if…they still had Jesus to directly lean on. Look at what weak individuals the disciples seemed to be when Jesus is still in their physical presence. Look at what a sniveling idiot Peter was when Jesus was around. Peter had to be out on his own…he had to call on the memory of what Jesus taught him, both verbally and by example…before he could truly grow and mature in his missional activity.

Now, Jesus obviously knew this problem existed…and more specifically…he knew Peter was going to have problems. Remember, in loving others, Jesus gave us the example of one who “knew” a lot about those who he was working with…this is a part of showing “love” to the other. So, remember that Jesus called Peter…the “Rock”. At the time Jesus refers to Peter as the “Rock” many readers have to wonder about where Jesus is coming from. How can Jesus call this weak, uncomprehending person, the “Rock”?

Jesus “knew” Peter and knew that as Peter grew and matured that he would turn into the “Rock” that Jesus claimed he would be.

But, Peter could never have become the “Rock” if Jesus had stayed around. The same with all the other disciples: Jesus “knew” who they were and chose them because of this knowledge. Jesus also knew that each of them would never reach their calling unless they were allowed to grow and mature into their own missional person.

So, the first lesson of missional leadership is that the leader must understand that those that they are working with must be released at some to go out on their own. So the leader teaches, facilitates, and shows the one preparing for missional activity what it means to be missional knowing full well that at some time in the future the student, for his or her own good, must be “on their own.” The leader must be able to turn the student loose from his or her power and control…for the student’s own benefit!

Now let’s go back to the other three items mentioned above that have to do with missional leadership: teaching, facilitating, and acting. To me, the most important of these three factors of leadership is the acting part. In fact, this is how we have defined missional activity…acting toward the other…whether it be another person (literally the neighbor)…or creation…or oneself…or God…in a loving way. The best way we can be missional is to show other people what it means to live a life that is consistent with what we believe contributes to wholeness and unity. The leader sends out a message in his or her words…but, unless people see how living in that way can change their lives…and change them for the better…the words are just empty.

In this, missional activity is very pragmatic…the life style we are promoting in our missional activity works! And, because it works, people can see for themselves what results from living in that particular way. And, by seeing it, before their eyes…they have something concrete to latch onto…and hold onto when times are not going their way.

This is where I believe the “spirit” comes into play…whatever the “spirit” is. The person has the memory of what a life lived in this particular way means…the memory of what kind of decisions one should make to live such a life…and the feeling or understanding that has been experienced to know that these kinds of decisions lead to greater wholeness or unity…even in times that are very bad. There is a “spirit” in living in this way…and, we are told, this “spirit” will be available to us in the future when called upon. One knows when one is in unity… and that is a signal that the “spirit” is present in the situation.

Teaching is important. Words, alone, are not enough…for they must be consistent with actions. But, words are important…telling stories…relating facts…inspiring others. Teaching helps us to learn things. Teaching helps us to pull things together and understand relationships. Teaching helps us to comprehend in a way that we have not been able to, up to this point. Teaching can inspire us to want to learn and do more. Teaching can be done in many ways…as different people respond to different types of learning experiences. Of course, we know Jesus applied many different kinds of teaching techniques to his followers…this was the only way that he could possibly reach all the different people he had chosen to be with him. He told parables…he told stories…he told proverbs (like, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount where he was just talking to his followers after he drew them away from the huge crowds.)

However, what is learned must be practiced. This, to me is the facilitation part. Those that have been taught must be given opportunities to experience the “acting” under the watchful eye of the teacher. Jesus did this by asking his followers to pass out the fishes and bread to the entire crowd that had followed him for days…and the followers saw what happened right before their eyes. As they became generous with the little they had…the crowd also became generous with what they had…and much more was collected than the followers had given out. A miracle? Or, was this a lesson in what unconditional giving can bring about?

Jesus sent his followers out on different “day” journeys…and then asked what happened on those journeys. In these, and other, ways, the followers of Jesus got feedback on how to live, the impacts of their decision making on outcomes, and how things might be done differently. It was this process that actually got them started on the road to taking full responsibility for their missional activity…the responsibility they would have once they no longer had their leader.

Then, the followers became the leaders. The followers became the implementers of missional living. These followers could now grow and mature fully into the faith and confidence that would bring them unity and peace in their lives…and a feeling of wholeness. Peter could become the “Rock”.

To me, this is what missional leadership is all about!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Ministry and Leadership

In my blog post of February 2, 2009, I discussed what I consider to be the general responsibility of individuals…to be missional. This general responsibility is to live a life that “reveals the image” of the life you think everyone should live. Note, however, this does not mean that you want people to live just like you in the specific things you do or say. That would require people to seek a specific “outcome” and this is where we can get into a tremendous amount of problems.

If we require people to achieve specific “outcomes” then, essentially, we want people to be and act exactly like us. We then have an explicit standard by which we can judge you and hold you strictly accountable for not behaving in exactly the same way we do. The “outcomes” become the “law” which you must be able to recite and the “law” then becomes your judge and jury. Your life is bounded and controlled.

The alternative to this approach is to stress that the image you want to reveal is of a “process”, not one of “outcomes”. By “process” I suggest that we can reveal how one addresses problems or decisions; by stressing “outcomes” one has already determined what the solution to the problem should be or what the decision is that one should make.

I take an example of what I mean by the reported behavior of Jesus. Let us look at what he did when he healed people. One could think that Jesus revealed the image of God by healing people from their infirmities. Certainly, a loving God…and we are told that God is love…would want to heal people and in this way make their lives better.

I don’t believe that this is what Jesus is showing us. The thing that has proven to be so remarkable to me is that after Jesus heals the individual physically, he has a message for that person. To one person, he tells them to go do this. But, to the next person he tells them to go and do something else. And, to a third person he tells them to do something entirely different from the first two people.

I wondered about this for a long time. Why did Jesus do this? And, even more important to me…why is it important that we know that Jesus did this? The answer finally came to me that it was important for us to see that, first, it was not the healing that revealed the image of God to us, and, second, Jesus treated everyone differently in terms of his relationship to them. Maybe…just maybe…it was the “process” of what Jesus was revealing and not the “outcomes” of the actions of Jesus…the healings.

More specifically, if Jesus really loved these individuals, he would want to do the best thing he could for them…that is, he would want to suggest or commend to them the action that would be as helpful to them, in terms of living a better life, that he could. But that action would necessarily be different for every person he talked to…because everyone is different from every other person.

This, to me, is what loving is all about. Jesus is revealing to us what loving our neighbor really is. Jesus is revealing to us what it means to say that God is love. And, it this is the way in which we are to behave.

How can I say this? Look at the encounter that Jesus had with the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler asks Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds with the question, “What do the commandments say?” The rich young ruler responds correctly and adds that he has done all this. And then we are told that Jesus looks on the rich young ruler “with love”. Then tells him that he must sell all he has for his riches are getting in the way of his wholeness.
The point here is not that Jesus tells the rich young ruler to get rid of his riches. The important thing is that Jesus looks on the rich young ruler “with love”.

This is all fine and good…but if we are to reach out to each person in the way that is best for them…we have to know an awfully lot about each and every person. Please note…this does not mean that we reach out to the other person is a way that they would like or a way in which they would like us. In the example of the interchange between Jesus and the rich young ruler, Jesus certainly did not give the rich young ruler a pleasant task…for the rich young ruler went away very unhappy…he had many riches.

The focus should be upon the “process” of love. Jesus knew a great deal about everyone. In the Gospel of John we are told that the woman that Jesus talked to by the well reported to her neighbors that Jesus told her all that she had ever done. This was one of the reasons Jesus was special. We are told that he had great insight into others. And this is how he could love. Because he could see what it was that others needed in order to be more whole, more complete, more at peace within themselves.

And this is the image that is revealed to us…that we are to try and become as knowledgeable of “the other”…whether it is another person…another group…or creation…or parts of creation…as we can so that we can be in unity with them in the sense that we, like Jesus, can see what is really needed in a situation and “through love” act or be in a way that serves “the other” in what is needed. This is the “process” of love…and this is what, I believe, we mean when we say we have a responsibility to be missional in our behavior. We are to reveal in our actions this “process” of love because it is the way that we believe that others should lead their lives.

In being missional, we are all asked to be leaders. In being missional we are leading other people, by example, into the way we believe that all people should live their lives. In being missional we, like Jesus, are “revealing the image” of a god we believe to be the ideal of love. In being missional we are showing others what it means when we say that God is love.

In showing this leadership we are being ministers and this is what comes out of some of the New Testament writing. This is called “the priesthood of all believers.” In essence, everyone is, or can be, a minister. And, yet we are told that everyone has different talents…different abilities…different experiences. Everyone is not supposed to do the same thing that everyone else does.

And, in this light, certain of us are separated out to be ministers of the ministers…that is, to be ordained pastors or priests or ministers. And, given what has been written above, this to me means that these ministers that have been separated out have a special responsibility to others to teach, facilitate, to show others what it means to be missional in their lives. This means that these ministers that are separated out have a special responsibility to focus on what I have called “the process” and not emphasize “outcomes.”

I believe that too many of our “separated out” ministers have been taught in seminaries to focus on “outcomes” and been encouraged by their peers to focus on “outcomes” and been charged by their religious organizations and churches and congregations to focus on “outcomes” and this has left us in the state that we are now in. These ministers are not entirely blameless themselves for they like the power and control that comes to them by being the one who is in charge of telling their flocks what “outcomes” they should be pursuing…and their flocks…what they still have of them…blindly follow their shepherd.

Energy and initiative come from the teaching and facilitation of “process”. Energy and initiative come from people that are missional…that study and learn and gain experience in what they do so that they can “love” others…including creation…as they have been commanded to do. Our ministers that have been “separated out” need to step back and discern how they can release all this energy and initiative to the world…even if they lose some of their power and control.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Reveal the Image Of...

Over the past several years I have used the term “Missional” to capture what it is that I think that we should be doing. We all should be “missional” in our lives.

The word “missional” was created to be more meaningful in a modern sense to the worn out terms of “mission” or “missionary.” These terms were used to describe any number of different activities, some of them not so positive, and so people produced the word “missional” to captured a more specific and limited type of behavior. To be “missional” one was to behave in a way that was representational of the way a Christian was supposed to live. To be “missional” was to glorify God in all that one did. Then, to take a Roman meaning of “glorify” where a statue of the current Caesar was put on a cart and drawn around a area where the statue revealed the image of the person who was then Caesar. That is, the image looked like the reigning Caesar and this then brought the populace into closer contact with the Caesar because individuals now knew what Caesar looked like.

In similar fashion we are to glorify God by acting in a way that will reveal the image of our God. We take as an example of this a person, Jesus of Nazareth who was thought to glorify God better than any other person who has lived. That is, Jesus is said to have revealed the image of God to others so that individuals would have a real, concrete image of how one should live ones’ life as God would have him live his life.

But, in what way did Jesus reveal the image of God?

Well, we are told that “God is love.”

But, what does this mean? Do we have any more information about how one should live ones’ life? I mean, if God is love and we are to reveal the image of God…then we must be “love” as well. How do we become “love”…how do we reveal this image?

Perhaps our next clue comes from what we are told we are commanded to do…the “Great Commandments.” These are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all are mind and the second is like it…it is to love our neighbor as ourselves. So the whole thing about revealing the image of God is about love…about loving God…about loving others…and in the broader sense other people and creation…and about loving ourselves. In this was we reveal what is meant by “God is love.”

How do we “love God”?

First of all we must know God…know about God. That is, we must put ourselves out and learn…gather information about God…review existing knowledge about God…and keep open and search in every way we can for more information about God.

Why do we have to put out this effort?

We have to make this effort because we cannot really love…we cannot really love God…unless we know as much as we can about the one to be loved. We have to know as much as we can because how can love the one to be loved if we don’t know who the loved one is, what the loved one does, what is best for the loved one…where the loved one is.

If we are to love the loved one we need to know where the loved one is and what will make the loved one happy and what will be the optimal things to do in relationship to the loved one. That is, to love God, we need to know where God is and what we can do to be in unity with God.

But, to be able to love God we also must be able to love ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, how can we love anyone, anything, or whatever. We must have, at a minimum, a certain care or concern for ourselves. Again, in order for us to love ourselves we must learn about ourselves…know ourselves sufficiently so that we can act in our best interests. This does not mean to act selfishly, or greedily, or in a controlling way to get our own way. It means that we must really find out about who we are, what we need to do to really act in our best interest, and to then act in a way that will bring us into greater unity with who we really are. So, knowledge and a long term view is very necessary to love…both self and God.

The same is also true of loving our neighbor as our self. We must again gain as much information as we can about other individuals and about creation. We must make an effort to learn a sufficient amount about others and creation so that we can move to attain greater unity with others and with creation. Study, learning, knowledge…all sorts of efforts like these must go into loving the other…not trying to get our way…but to learn where they are and what is in their best interests. This is how we love our neighbor as our self.

So, this is what it means to love…to study…and to act. To learn about the one to be loved…the part of creation to be loved…and then to act in the best interest of the one that is loved.

This is what God does…we are told. This is what Jesus has revealed to us…in his life and actions. This is what we are supposed to do…this is what it means to be “missional.” We are to live a life that shows to others the example of how we think people should live…how we believe God loves.

We are told that God “created” the world…and that he saw that it was “good.” That is, God saw the world and he loved the world.

When we study physics…when we try and learn the way nature works…so that we can work with nature in a way that raises our standard of living and helps people…and then we work to build this knowledge and act in a way that is beneficial to all. This is seeing God’s creation…it is loving God’s creation…and it is revealing the image of God to others…so that others will emulate this behavior.

The same thing is true of loving another person…let’s take a potential spouse…as the extreme. We date…we do things together…we talk with each other…we learn to become friends…we learn whether or not we can tolerate each other over a long period of time…we learn whether or not we can act in the other’s best interest putting aside our own interests when it is important to the relationship…we learn about each other so that we can be where they are not where we are…and this is love…and this can lead to a great marriage.

This is the foundation of “missional” behavior. If we are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves…then let us act in that way…let us be “missional” to one another. It doesn’t mean that we go overseas…or that we go into the cities…or that we make a special effort to reach out. Yes, being “missional” may include all of these…but being “missional” starts with the next person you talk with…the next person you see…the next thing you do. Being “missional” is action…right where you are…right with what you are doing at this very moment.

Being “missional” is revealing the image of what you believe to be the most important way to live.