5
Principles of Christian Leadership & Management
ORGANISATIONAL MOMENTUM
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rainer, Thom S. Breakout Churches. Zondervan, 2005
Collins, Jim. Good to Great. Random House, 2001
Collins, Jim. Good to Great and the Social Sectors. Random House, 2005.
INTRODUCTION
In 2005 Collins produced a monograph that explored the application of the good-to-great framework to the realities of organisations (like churches and Christian organisations) that are in the social sector. While this monograph maintains many of the same principles, it deals with issues like:
• How do you define and assess greatness without business metrics?
• How do you think about leadership in the complex and diffuse governance structures of organisations in the social sector where executives don’t have the same authority?
• How do you get the right people when you are limited by a context of tenure and volunteers?
• How do you think about finances when profit is not an issue?
• How do you generate momentum and resources in the absence of clear markets?
Noting the interest shown by churches in Collins’ concepts, Thom Rainer (2005) completed a study of good-to-great (he called them “breakout”) churches.
1. BE A LEVEL 5 LEADER
Collins found that every good-to-great company had what he called a “Level 5” leader during the pivotal transition years. According to Collins, the levels of organisational leadership are:
1. Highly capable individual - makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.
2. Contributing team member - contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.
3. Competent manager - organises people and resources toward effective and efficient pursuit of pre-determined objectives.
4. Effective leader - catalyses commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.
5. Good to great executive - builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Rainer calls this level of leadership “Acts 6/7 Legacy Leadership.” This is based on what he sees as six styles of leadership illustrated in the first seven chapters of Acts. These styles are:
1. Acts 1: The Called Leader - receives and responds to the call of God like the leaders of the early church were called to be witnesses and ministers for Christ.
2. Acts 2: The Contributing Leader - operates as a spiritual leader through foundational functions such as prayer and preaching.
3. Acts 3: The Outwardly-Focused Leader - seeks to lead the church and self to ministry in the community.
4. Acts 4: The Passionate Leader - exudes a contagious enthusiasm for ministry so that other gladly follow.
5. Acts 5: The Bold Leader - willingly takes risks in which success is only possible through God’s power.
6. Acts 6/7: The Legacy Leader - seeks to equip others for ministry while deflecting personal recognition so that the church is built up.
Some “surprising” commonalities displayed by the leaders of breakout churches were:
1. They were not autocratic, but loved their people, recognised that significant change is difficult and takes time, but moved patiently and persistently towards their goals.
2. They were caring people who felt the pain of criticism and difficult times. They dealt with the critics and persevered, but often at great personal cost.
3. They didn’t want or need recognition. They were not personally ambitious, but were ambitious for the church they served. In some ways, they were reluctant leaders.
While reluctant to articulate characteristics of breakout church leaders for fear of reduction to a formula, Rainer found the following qualities of pastoral leadership were present in all the breakout churches leaders, and often were missing in the leaders of the comparison churches:
1. Fierce biblical faithfulness - they preached and lived the Bible.
2. Long-term ministries - they were committed to being around for the long haul.
3. Confident humility - they had a high level of confidence but no appearance of arrogance or egocentricity.
4. Acceptance of responsibility - they were happy to take responsibility for their ministry and did not blame others when things did not go well.
5. Unconditional love of the people - they expressed an intense love for the members of their congregation despite the pain they had suffered through some of those people.
6. Persistence - they were determined to fulfil goals no matter how long it took.
7. Outwardly-focused vision - they were passionate about reaching the lost.
8. Desire for a lasting legacy - they wanted the church to do well beyond their own ministry.
2. GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE ON BOARD
The right people met at least three basic criteria:
1. They shared the core values of the organisation. The key was not to motivate staff to adopt core values, but to find people who already were predisposed to these values and to rigorously reinforce these values so that those who didn’t share them could not remain. Core values relate to character not skills.
2. They didn’t need to be motivated or tightly managed. They were self-motivated and self-disciplined. They woke up every day driven to do the best they could.
3. They didn’t have jobs to do. They had responsibilities. They didn’t focus on a list of tasks but on achieving outcomes.
Collins says that the good-to-great leaders were rigorous, but not ruthless, in staffing decisions. They dealt with the people issues using three practical disciplines:
1. When in doubt, don’t hire. Keep looking. (Corollary: Limit growth until you have enough of the right people.)
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act. But first make sure that they’re not just in the wrong seat on the bus.
3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
Rainer saw many of Collins’ “right people” principles at work in the breakout churches.
• If the right person was not available, positions remained unfilled for long periods.
• When staffing mistakes were made, the breakout churches would act quickly and compassionately. This involved closure, compassion and communication. Communication particularly stood out. When termination or reassignment decisions were necessary, the church leaders communicated clearly with the church.
• Compatibility was more important than competency in the selection of ministry leaders.
• Pastoral team members were held accountable for outcomes, but were not micromanaged.
3. CONFRONT THE BRUTAL FACTS BUT DON’T LOSE FAITH
Creating a truth-confronting climate involved:
1. Leading with questions, not answers.
2. Engaging in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
3. Conducting autopsies without blame.
4. Building red flag mechanisms that ensure vital information cannot be ignored.
Typically this wake-up call came in a progression of three steps:
1. Awareness. Leadership and key persons became aware that the church was not nearly all that God intended it to be. It was common for the leaders to seek some type of outside perspective by attending conferences, intentional reading, or hiring consultants.
2. Belief. The leadership confronted the brutal facts of the church’s reality. They did not despair over the immensity of the problems, but instead had a strong belief that God would use them in greater ways. So they initiated a change process.
3. Crisis. Once change commenced there were painful repercussions that brought the leader and/or the church into crisis. Commitment to see through this pain with a belief in God’s promises marked the breakout churches.
4. FIND AND STICK TO WHAT YOU DO BEST
The companies that went from good to great found their Hedgehog Concept by looking at the intersection of three issues:
1. What are you deeply passionate about?
2. What can you be best in the world at?
3. What drives your economic engine?
In his monograph for the non-profit sectors, Collins translates the three component issues into:
1. What are you deeply passionate about? (Remains the same)
2. What can you be the best at within the communities you touch? (Not best in the world)
3. What best drives your resource engine? (See below)
Like Collins, Rainer comes up with three intersecting issues that locate the vision concept (what Rainer calls the Vision Intersection Profile or VIP Factor):
1. What are your leaders deeply passionate about? (Similar to Collins)
2. What are the needs of the community to which you minister? (Close to Collins’ revised second question for non-profits)
3. What are the passion and gifts of your congregation? (Could be aligned with Collins’ third question about resources - the congregation is the resource of a church)
The overlapping point of these three factors is the vision of the church.
Rainer suggests that the implications of finding the VIP Factor include:
1. Leaders must have passion. The VIP Factor presumes that leaders have a passion that drives them in ministry.
2. Vision must include congregation input. An essential element of the VIP Factor are the passion and gifts of the congregation.
3. You must be passionate about your community. There can be no vision without a clear discernment of the community’s needs and a passion to meet those needs.
4. Then concentrate on what you do best. The breakout churches focused on doing a few things and doing them well. It was the intersection of the issues on which they concentrated. Vision may gradually change over time (as the intersecting issues change), but the breakout churches were amazingly consistent in their vision.
5. DEVELOP A CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE
He came up with the following results:
• Only the 13 breakout churches were high expectation/high freedom churches.
• 25 churches were low expectation/low freedom - little is expected but when you do something there are many rules and regulations.
• 7 churches were high expectation/low freedom - led by an autocratic senior pastor.
• 7 churches were low expectation/high freedom - in other words, they were chaotic.
6. USE TECHNOLOGY TO ACCELERATE MOMENTUM
Collins found that good-to-great organisations thought differently about technology from the comparison companies. They didn’t rely on technology to create momentum, neither did they jump on any of the technology bandwagons. Instead they found the technology that fitted directly with their Hedgehog Concept and became a pioneer and specialist in the application of that technology. Any investment in technology was carefully considered.
SUMMARY - BE INTENTIONAL
For Collins, intentionality is driven by a disciplined process that involves:
1. Finding disciplined people who have character and commitment with a heart for the ministry rather than their own needs or desires, and who will face the challenges with a steely faith that God will prevail. And removing those who do not have this character and commitment.
2. Developing disciplined thought so that the brutal truth is welcomed, people are heard, and the facts are recognised by all, yet faith in what God can do does not diminish. Then from a process of critical examination of central questions a vision (Hedgehog Concept) rises that becomes the heart and soul of the ministry.
3. Taking disciplined action in the light of this vision so that ministry is focused, some good options are ignored, and specialisation with excellence occurs.
DEVELOPING MOMENTUM
According to Collins, while good-to-great transformations often looked like dramatic, revolutionary events, they were actually organic, cumulative processes.