Why Leading Christians is Painful
September 28, 2009
The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Painful Side of Leadership
“Hey Jeff, do you have a minute we could talk?”
When leaders ask me that question, it’s seldom because they want to share good news. They usually ask me how to handle some difficult leadership problem. Often, the situation includes a painful, personal dimension. This book is a about we discuss in those conversations.
Leading Christians is a tough job. But it just doesn’t seem like it should be so difficult. The most popular biblical image for Christian leadership is a shepherd with his sheep. How pastoral! How peaceful that seems! Yet, any experienced Christian leader will tell you this contented scene is only found in the Christmas pageant – and then, only if you’re lucky.
The realities are sheep bite, run amok, get diseases, wander into trouble, and are attacked by wolves. They do dumb things (even the seemingly smart ones), injure themselves (often blaming the shepherd), and nip at each other (usually some other sheep’s fault). And occasionally, through no fault of their own, a storm comes up and many get hurt by circumstances no none could have anticipated or controlled.
Shepherds are also less than perfect. They get angry, desert their posts, or neglect their responsibilities. They drive their sheep, lash out at them, yell at them, and even hit a few with their staffs. And, worst of all, shepherds sometimes flirt with other herds, hoping to find greener pastures and some better sheep than the ones they are stuck tending.
The idyllic, pastoral scene illustrating Christian leadership is often just wishful thinking. But, given our significant spiritual resources and high ideals,
why?
God loves us, loves our followers, and wants the best for all of us. Christians want to love and obey God in return. We have clear biblical instructions on how to relate to one another, relate to those in authority over us, and relate to those we are responsible to lead. We have ample spiritual resources to empower healthy relationships. Those include the filling of the Holy Spirit, instruction from the Bible, positive examples of other believers, and encouragement from living in Christian community.
We also have a shared mission that is supposed to unite us. We are responsible to fulfill the Great Commission in the spirit of the Great Commandment (Matthew 28:18-20, 22:34-40). All of us working toward the same goal should produce unity, focus, cooperation, and harmony. Besides all this, we have formal covenants, contracts, policies, and other agreements to systematize our organizational relationships.
So, with all these things going for us, why is Christian leadership often so painful? Here are six reasons, but by no means an exhaustive list.
One, Christians still make sinful choices.
Two, Christian leaders are sinners too.
Three, sin infects everything.
Four, Satan is one the prowl.
Five, God allows painful circumstances for our good.
Six, leading (a leader’s job) is hard.
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Steps to a More Disciplined Life - Part 3
September 21, 2009
For the past two weeks, we have considered some practical steps to improve self-discipline. We conclude this week with a fourth and final strategy.
Controlling your emotions
A significant challenge and responsibility for leaders is controlling their emotions. Leaders are expected to be cool under pressure. Developing self-control of emotions is vital because ministry leaders often find themselves in very intense situations. Self-discipline is required to maintain emotional and spiritual equilibrium during stressful circumstances.
Leaders must learn to control many emotions but the two most prominent are grief and anger. Christian leaders are with people during times of profound loss and interpersonal tension. We are often present during death and bereavement, terminal illness, sick children, lost jobs, and teenage pregnancy. We are there when church members argue, difficult decisions are debated, employees are terminated, and volunteers are displaced. These are stressful, grief inducing, anger causing circumstances.
Managing grief. Sometimes, the ministry relationships are so personal your emotions will be very difficult to manage. My friend Adam played baseball on several teams with my oldest son. His father and I coached together and our families became friends. We shared meals and good times at each other’s homes. Our friendship was genuine and lasting. Little did we know our friendship would involve such deep pain.
Tragically, Adam was killed in the war in Iraq. It was if our world stopped spinning. The cost of the war on terror became very personal – and very high. Adam’s family asked me to officiate his memorial service along with a general and the governor of his state. The service was filled with poignant memories and emotions. We watched video greetings from fellow soldiers in Iraq, heard moving tributes from the military and civic leaders, and saw a beautiful presentation from Adam’s family about his life.
The service included full military honors, including a rotating honor guard at attention beside the casket throughout the two-hour service. The burial procession was more than 100 cars long. The walk to the grave was led by a full bagpipe corps and escorted by dozens of men in uniform from all branches of military and public service.
Keeping my emotions in check was difficult. But what the family and mourners needed from me was competent leadership through a grieving process, not a public display of my feelings. The focus had to be on their needs. My purpose was giving them permission in a safe atmosphere to grieve their incredible loss. Part of guiding that service was leading some people from denial into grief.
Another emotional situation involved childbirth. A young father, frantic because of birth complications his wife was experiencing, asked me to hurry to the hospital. When I had arrived, he rushed me into the delivery room shouting, “We’re so glad you’re here. My wife needs you.”
There was blood everywhere! His wife was trying to deliver. The nurses were urgently scurrying to do their jobs. The doctor was intensely working to save both mother and child. A very frightened young woman grabbed my arm and shrieked, “Pray, please pray.”
For the next few minutes, I held one hand and arm while her husband held the other. The nurses kept working. The doctor kept trying. The mother kept pushing. Finally, the baby emerged and was rushed to intensive care. The focus changed to stabilizing the mother. Fortunately, all had a happy ending. For years, on the child’s birthday, the family sent me a photo and update about how his life has progressed.
During the crisis, my emotions were all over the map. For a while, my grief almost overwhelmed me as I imagined helping a father deal with a dead child and seriously ill wife. Then I feared telling the couple their child might be seriously injured or handicapped. These were my friends!
While this was happening, these friends needed a leader. They were counting on me to control my grief, fear, and other emotions. My focus had to be on their needs. Leaders are expected to manage their emotions during crisis and keep the needs of their followers their priority. Self-control enables you to manage emotions like grief. Self-discipline does not deny your emotions or your emotional needs. It simply gives you the spiritual power to keep your focus on meeting the needs of your followers.
Self-control does not mean you deny your grief or model fake stoicism. Controlling grief means you express is appropriately. Debrief with your spouse, a staff member, church leader, or trusted friend. Talk through your grief with those in the grief-inducing situation. Shed tears with the hurting in the right setting. These are appropriate ways to manager your grief without slipping into denial. Leaders implement solid strategies to manage grief. These enable you to keep the focus on your followers and handle your emotions effectively during trying times.
Managing anger. Perhaps the most important emotion for a leader to manage is anger. Leaders get angry. Sometimes, leaders get very angry and lash out at followers, associates, and fellow believers. Because leaders have greater influence, their anger has the potential for greater damage.
It took me a long time to learn this principle. One of my earliest memories in ministry is an angry outburst I unleashed on a young woman. My reason? I thought she made an unwise decision that embarrassed me! Looking back, the intensity of my legalism and mean-spirited attack astound me. When I finished my tirade, she was in tears. I remember feeling self-satisfied and thinking, “I really straightened her out.” All I really did was devastate her.
Another time I made some very cutting remarks to a person who worked for me. His performance was substandard and reflected poorly on me (or so I thought). So I unloaded on him. Rather than correct his performance, all I did was deflate his spirit and damage his loyalty to me.
Slamming doors also works well to let people know how you really feel about what they have done or not done. Nothing speaks louder, right? It’s embarrassing I once thought this was a good way to motivate someone. Yelling at my children when they frustrated me, snapping at my wife, or lecturing players I coached were all futile demonstrations of anger. All of this became clear to me one night on a baseball field.
A very fine young man was working with me as an assistant coach. He really looked up to me. As a young husband holding down a full-time job and going to college, he was sacrificing to help with the team. He made a split-second decision while coaching third base that made me angry. I let him know, in very plain terms, how I felt and how inadequate he was. The look in his eyes still haunts me.
My friend was devastated. He admired me and wanted to please me. He probably had me on too high a pedestal but, nonetheless, I was up there! As my ire spilled out on him, his shoulders slumped. Color drained from his face. His eyes, his usually vibrant eyes, lost luster and became like limp pools. Even though I apologized later that night, the damage was done. It took months to recover our relationship.
That night, something happened in me. I realized, as a leader, how much people are influenced by my opinion of them – for good or bad. My opinion matters more than a peers’ opinion. What I communicate can control how a person feels about himself. When I am angry with people, they take it personally. My responsibility to manage my anger became very clear.
Managing anger, like managing grief, does not mean denying it. It means you learn to express your anger appropriately (Eph. 4:26-27). Jesus modeled this. He was occasionally angry and expressed it (Mark 3:5, Matt. 21:12-13). Managing anger means you have the self-discipline, like Jesus, to express it appropriately. Controlling your anger and how you express are essential for effective leadership. You can learn to manage your anger and express it appropriately by using these simple steps.
First, understand anger is a result of feeling threatened. When you are threatened, you feel angry. It really is that simple. Lower your threat level, by understanding your security in Jesus Christ, to manage your anger. The more you practice the securing presence of Jesus, the fewer issues will anger you.
Second, label anger for what it really is. Call it anger. Don’t say you are frustrated, put out, put off, or upset. End the denial. Admit to yourself and others, “I’m angry.” Labeling anger is a key step to managing it appropriately.
Third, talk about why you are angry. Learn to talk about your anger, not talk while you are angry! Rather than lashing out in anger, learn to say, “I’m angry with you and I want to talk about it” or “I’m angry right now. I’d like to come back and talk about this later.” Talk about your anger rather than acting it out. Yelling, slamming doors, peeling your tires, making obscene gestures, throwing things, or striking another person are never positive expressions of anger for a leader (or anyone else!).
Fourth, manage circumstances that make you more vulnerable to anger. Most people get angry more easily when tired, hungry, or stressed. Understand these situations and manage them more effectively. Be alert to predictable circumstances that make you and your followers more susceptible to becoming angry.
Finally, accept the biblical conclusion anger does not accomplish God’s purposes (James 1:20). If you are using your anger to manipulate, intimidate, or otherwise control people, you are misusing anger. You may get short-term results but you will demoralize your followers. While they may not confront you, they will simply drift away. Leaders who vent their anger through harsh preaching or speaking may build the crowd for a while. But eventually, people drift away from consistent verbal abuse – even so-called “prophetic” preaching.
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Steps to a More Disciplined Life - Part 2
September 14, 2009
Last week we covered the first two steps to a more disciplined life. Here is the next strategy to employ to increase your personal discipline.
Build habits that work for you
As a boy, my mom constantly corrected my three worst habits – biting my nails, resting elbows on the table, and talking too much. I have successfully overcome the first two! We all have bad habits. Most of our attention regarding habits focuses on correcting bad ones. But building good habits is also productive. Good habits can be as helpful as our bad habits are distracting.
A habit is a built-in pattern of behavior requiring little or no use of the will. It is engrained behavior. Habits are actions you do automatically. They are your default mode. Habits, good and bad, are learned behavior. Most of them are learned subconsciously, as part of your upbringing, and influenced heavily by your early social interactions. You hitch your pants a certain way, sit in the same place at the table each night, or drum your fingers when you get nervous. These habits can change but it usually takes an intentional choice to do it.
You probably assume your habits will change as you become a more disciplined person. That is exactly backwards! The process works the other way. First, you make an intentional choice to change your habits. Then a more disciplined lifestyle ensues. Trying to change your life without first adjusting your habits will be frustrating. You will continually fall back into old patterns. You must start new habits and stop old ones. In this transaction, greater discipline is realized and lifestyle changes result.
During college years, getting up early for daily Bible reading and prayer was a challenge. Daily devotions were an up-and-down, hit-and-miss effort. Establishing this habit seemed impossible. As a young pastor, my devotional life continued to be a problem. My attempts to solve this problem always focused on being more committed to devotional practices, not the addressing the real problem. The real problem was my bad habit of staying up too late.
Solving the devotional problem required new discipline in a seemingly unrelated area. Developing the habit of going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time as often as possible was the key. Waking up early and feeling rested is no longer much of a problem. Since I am more alert, having more consistent devotions is easier. My devotional discipline improved when I stopped focusing on being more committed to my devotions and simply established new sleep habits.
Changing a habit can also lead to a more disciplined lifestyle in other areas. One leader wanted to spend more time with his young children. His habit was morning coffee and newspaper to start the day, followed by an early trip to the office. He made the choice to change his morning routine to include helping his children get ready for school, eating breakfast with them, and driving them to school. He solved his problem by developing new morning routine habits.
A pastor wanted more disciplined morning study time. He was in the habit of arriving at about the same time as the rest of his office staff, parking in the same spot, entering through the main entrance, and visiting with many people on the way to his study. His social nature often turned this into a lengthy distraction. He solved his problem by establishing a new arrival routine. He arrived a few minutes earlier than the rest of the staff, parked in an alternative location, entered a side door, and went straight to his office. By doing so, he eliminated the distraction of the morning social hour and became much more disciplined in his study. And, when his messages for the week were finished, he could enjoy fellowship without the nagging sense that he was neglecting his preparation for preaching.
A church planter with young children at home and his office in his car was frustrated by his poor study habits. Working on his messages late at night and early in the morning while his children slept left him fatigued and moody. He solved his problem by establishing the habit of study at a nearby retreat center. One day each week was spent holed up working on his messages. No phone, no distractions, and no exceptions! Creating this weekly habit gave him the routine study time he needed.
A denominational leader moved from a distant state and often talked about how things had been done “back home.” He really wanted to break the habit of constantly referring to his former place of leadership. He asked his co-workers to charge him a dollar every time he mentioned his home state. It did not take long for that habit to be broken! Doing so enabled him to be more disciplined in his focus on future challenges, not past ministry successes.
Changing habits to improve self-discipline requires transactional thinking. Many leaders want to change or add new behaviors without altering or stopping current patterns. That is not usually possible. Most of the time, old behavior has to stop before new patterns can be established. Plan a behavioral transaction when you consider starting a new habit. For every new habit you want to solidify, stop or significantly change the old behavior limiting the change.
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Steps to a More Disciplined Life - Part 1
September 9, 2009
While developing discipline is a spiritual process (see last week), there are practical steps you can take to actualize this spiritual process. Here are two, followed by two more next week.
Master a difficult area
When we were first married, I was the “before” picture in the bodybuilding ads. Regular meals and hours filled in the skinny places. Soon my ribs no longer showed! My weight stabilized for several years. Then, one day, I woke up fat. Not obese, just chubby. I jiggled when I walked. I felt sluggish. I had the spare tire, love-handle look.
For the first time in my life, I had to change my eating habits. “No problem,” I thought. Big problem, it turned out! Eating had become a hobby. I enjoyed it. I discovered it was very difficult to control my appetite. At first, I tried choosing different foods. But my weight stayed about the same. My issue was not food choice, but lack of self-control. The real problem was not my weight. It was deeper than that. I had to control the urge to eat. I needed a new level of self-discipline.
To break a long-standing habit like this required some dramatic action. My goal became breaking the control my appetite had over me. My strategy was several multi-day fasts over a one-year period. My objectives were to master my eating habits, break the tyranny of my appetite, and overcome the temptation of hunger pangs. When you fast for several days, you reach a point where you no longer feel hungry. It is an exhilarating and empowering experience! Reaching that point would be both difficult and liberating. Reaching it repeatedly over several months was essential to the process.
When the hunger pangs abated during the first fast, I had come to a new level of self-control. It had been a hard few days. I felt hungry, really hungry! My stomach thought someone had cut my throat and kept sending urgent “feed me” signals to my brain. My family, of course, kept eating which provided a thrice-daily temptation. But I made it. Eventually, I no longer felt hungry. I was no longer tempted to eat. I had mastered my appetite, so I broke the first fast.
This fasting experience was not primarily about seeking spiritual insight. Most fasting has that purpose. This fast was about breaking my appetite. It was about getting control of my urges. It was about being master of my body. So, when the first fast accomplished its purpose I ended it. A few months later, I repeated this process. This time it was easier, but still challenging. Again, however, I felt the same exhilarating release from the controlling influence of my appetite.
A few months later, I repeated the process the third time. This time, when the hunger pangs started, my response was easy. “Beg all you want,” I told my appetite, “you’re not in charge anymore.” The third fast was not difficult at all. When it ended, I knew I had control of my appetite. From then on, I knew I would in charge of my eating habits.
These fasting experiences happened many years ago. Since then, I have maintained my weight within an appropriate range (although it is getting harder as I get older!). Occasionally, the old temptations or holiday feasting get me off track. But these diversions are easily corrected with a few days of careful eating. I do not diet (although I do eat more nutritiously) but I do control the amount I eat. My appetite is no longer in charge.
The point of this process, however, was not primarily about food, weight loss, appetite control, or spiritual insight. It was about mastering a difficult area, therefore increasing my self-control. In doing so, something remarkable happened. I discovered a new level of discipline in other areas as well. Mastering a difficult area has a “spill over” effect in our lives.
When you master a difficult area, the discipline you develop becomes a life skill or life resource. Its effect is not confined solely to the area you mastered. This is the remarkable result from mastering a difficult problem. It helps you in other areas. After this experience, I was more able to handle sexual temptation and control my anger – two other very challenging areas.
So, choose a difficult area and master it. Create a year-long project to establish a greater level of discipline in one area of your life. For example, turn off the television for one year. Save a significant amount of money every month to break your spending habit. Choose an exercise – like walking or cycling – and do it rain or shine. Get control of your anger by significantly changing how you react to troubling situations.
Choose a difficult area for you. Do not try to do more than one at a time. Choose one area and master it. You will be surprised at the freedom this will bring. You will also be delighted how much more disciplined you will be in other areas as a by-product of this effort.
Work on a special project
Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Practicing discipline makes it a permanent life skill. While mastering a very difficult area can lead to lifelong breakthroughs of discipline, choosing an occasional special discipline project can practice and sharpen self-control.
For example, a group of co-workers formed a scripture memory group. We worked for one year to improve our scripture memory skills and requisite self-discipline. We met at the beginning of each month for 30 minutes to choose a passage and a partner from the group. Then, throughout the month, partners held each other accountable to learn the passage. Because most of us traveled, we would often leave voice mail messages of attempts to quote the passage. Since we changed partners every month, no one drifted or became complacent. We all stayed sharp holding each other accountable.
We worked on this project for a year. We memorized several passages from the Bible that improved our overall spiritual self-discipline. Once again, a concentrated effort to improve discipline in one area had a broader impact. Participants also reported more discipline in areas like prayer and Bible reading.
Another year, another group of co-workers formed a witnessing accountability group. We met monthly to discuss our attempts at personal evangelism. We prayed for one another, for the people we were witnessing to, and for sensitivity to divine appointments. Once again, the accountability of the group produced results. Not only did we witness more consistently, our overall spiritual discipline was again heightened. Group members became more sensitive to the needs of people God brought across their paths.
These special projects do not always require a group effort. For example, you might develop a pre-determined annual reading program. Each year, choose a subject, a group of books, a type of literature, or an author and lay out a reading plan. Staying focused on the plan not only deepens your knowledge in a specific field each year, it also reinforces discipline in others like time management. Making time to read and reading instead of wasting time (like while traveling), spills over and improves discipline in other areas as well.
Be realistic. Be transparent. In appropriate ways, be hard on yourself! Choose good projects with attainable goals. Do your best and be honest with your level of success. Work with a group for encouragement and motivation. The special discipline projects you create will shape you in a specific area. But the pleasant surprise is they will also impact you in many other areas as well.
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