irrevocable

By Andy Stanley

So exactly how can you exercise your instinct to challenge, yet stay out of trouble with your superiors and those that God has placed in authority over you?  As a Christian leader committed to seeing the local church advance and make progress, what exactly should you do with all this?

1.  When an instruction is given, follow through now; debrief later.

When the discussion’s over and somebody looks at you and they’re clearly the authority that God has placed over you and they say, “This is what we’re gonna do,” then you do it.  Follow through first, and debrief later.  Your words and actions need to express, “I am clearly and squarely on your team and under your authority.”  It doesn’t mean you can’t ask, “Why?”  But you do so in the clear context of serving the organization at large and observing the chain-of-command perpetually.  And in your own style and your own way, you must learn to communicate both: “I am under your authority.  Can we talk about it?”

2. Never verbalize your frustration with the process in front of other team members.

There’s an incredible principle behind this suggestion:  “Loyalty publicly results in leverage privately.”  If you want to have leverage one-on-one with your authorities, then show support for his or her ideas and strategies in front of the team – even if you think they’re absolutely off the wall.  Likewise, if you want to lose leverage with your boss, then disrupt and ask challenging questions and foster division among the ranks publicly.  Support publicly; challenge privately.  Reverse those two things and you surrender your authority as a leader within your organization.  Again, it’s okay to think different, and it’s okay to challenge.  But the method you use, and the place you choose is critical.  Everybody who has authority is also under authority.

3.    Don’t confuse your insights with moral imperatives.

Even if you’re sure you’ve been given a superior view of the world, that doesn’t mean it’s a moral imperative that everyone executes your plan.  In other words, if you don’t do it your way, you haven’t sinned.  Believe it or not, there’s actually something more important than doing ministry the most relevant, cool, and effective way.  All that is important too.  But first, God is interested in seeing us learn to live and lead under the authority that God has placed over us.  Your awesome ideas that you are sure will work are not moral imperatives.  You have not sinned by doing ministry ineffectively.  You have not sinned by simply taking the marching orders from somebody who’s not as smart as you and doing things that aren’t as effective as you would like to have done them.

Sometimes when leaders are geared up and passionate about an area of ministry, there’s a temptation to justify flat-out rebellion for the sake of the mission and the cause.  God has you where He has you for a purpose.  Because God is using you not only to do your current ministry, but also to prepare you for whatever else He has for you.  Even if you never see your ideas implemented, you’ve had a good day as a leader when you’ve done everything you can to challenge while staying under the authority that God has placed over you.

4.    If you don’t learn to lead under, you won’t have as many opportunities to lead over.

Your ability to lead others is directly related to your ability to follow others.  Since God is the giver and the head of all authority, all people in an organization’s chain of command – leaders and followers – must ultimately answer to God.  So when you sign up to participate in authority, you automatically ascribe to the concept of following.  As a result, your ability to lead will never far exceed your ability to follow.

One of my favorite stories in the life of Jesus is His encounter with a Centurion whose servant was sick.  The Centurion had been watching Jesus and seen Him perform miracles and heal people.  So like many others who approached Jesus for help, he knew Jesus had the power to heal.  However, as a member of the Roman army, he brought an amazing perspective to the situation.  The Centurion didn’t approach Jesus saying, “Jesus, clearly You’re in charge, clearly You are an authority — therefore, would You come heal my servant who’s sick?”  Instead, He notices that Jesus is, “A man under authority.”  And based on that observation, He considers Jesus qualified to invoke healing power on His sick servant.

Every authority is under authority.  As leaders, we must challenge the process; but we must also work with the authorities that God has placed over us.  And we dare not upset His plan for us by rebelling against the ones God has placed over us – whether intentionally or unintentionally.

By Andy Stanley

I think there’s something in every leader that yearns to try new things in new ways, to test the status quo – to challenge the process. If you’re a leader, you’ve probably had similar experiences all your life. Leaders are constantly evaluating and critiquing the world around us. When most people enjoy a great conference, we’re fixated on the methods that made it successful. There’s something in every leader that seeks to understand – to celebrate and to improve – the process at work behind the scenes.

The rest of the world is quite the opposite.  In fact, it’s human nature to gravitate toward the familiar.  And left to themselves, virtually every person and organization is in a subconscious pursuit of a status quo.  Eventually they will find it.  And they will work very, very hard to stay there.

In a changing world, familiar is no measure of effectiveness.  And the status quo is no benchmark for long-term achievement.  That’s why the world needs leaders to venture boldly into the unfamiliar and to embrace the uncomfortable – because the best solutions are often found in unfamiliar, uncomfortable places.

The instinct to challenge the process is a fundamental quality of every leader.  When God created leaders, he equipped them with an unsettling urge to unpack, undo, and unearth methods.  This explains your tendency to question everything around you.  It’s the reason you have such strong opinions – and such a strong desire to share them.  God wired you that way.  Deep in your heart you may feel that if you were in charge, things would not only be different, they’d be better.  This is not a problem of arrogance or pride.  It’s simply the way God wired you.  It’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, your zeal for improvement isn’t always appreciated out in the real world.  As a matter of fact, your natural bent for leadership sets you up for resistance from virtually all sides – including other leaders.  And unless you understand the nature of these dynamics, the very instincts that qualify you for greatness can also lead you to disqualify yourself and sabotage your opportunities.  Effective leadership means learning to challenge the process without challenging the organization.  There’s a fine line between the two.  But it’s a crucial line.

The first line of resistance the leader faces is the organization itself.  As we’ve already mentioned, organizations don’t like new ideas.  It’s enough of a challenge just figuring out the old ones.  So the last thing an organization wants is someone suggesting that we need to start all over again with a different process.  Your supervisors, advisors, elders, deacons, and staff all feel pretty much the same way.  Since human nature is to seek a place of equilibrium, change is seen as a disruption of progress.

The second line of resistance you face is from other leaders.  You might think you’d find an advocate in this group.  But by nature, when you challenge a concept, you challenge the conceiver.  You don’t mean it that way, but that can be how it’s often perceived.  Many talented leaders have “led” themselves right out of a job because their desire to challenge the process was misunderstood, or perhaps even threatening, to those in charge.  While on the other side of the spectrum, many skilled leaders have resigned themselves to conform to the status quo, squelching and squashing their natural instincts because there’s no obvious opportunity to be who God made them to be.

As leaders, we must keep a sense of diplomacy without shrinking from our scrutinizing nature.  When you stop challenging the process, you cease to be a leader and you become a manager.  Not that there’s anything wrong with managers.  The world needs those too.  But it’s a different job description from the leader’s.  And if you cease to challenge, then you have abdicated your true calling and giftedness in the world.

Successful leaders must learn how to alienate a process without alienating the people who created it, or the people who work it faithfully every day.

So exactly how can you exercise your instinct to challenge, yet stay out of trouble with your superiors and those that God has placed in authority over you?  As a Christian leader committed to seeing the local church advance and make progress, what exactly should you do with all this?

[Let’s pause and mull it over. More to come in the next post!]