Growing as a Leader

Two weeks ago, I was in Lima, Peru for a week of “leadership training“. In most organizations, this would teach concepts such as managing people, strategy formulation, budget planning, and corporate culture. I was both pleased and blessed to discover that for us, leadership training helped us explore four pillars at the heart of our work.

So I spent these days with a very diverse and multi-cultural group of people as we learned from presenters and one another about these four pillars:

1. Leadership Understanding. Rather than skills to orchestrate and control, this focused on leadership that asks questions and listens; that involves others in decision-making conversations; that seeks to discern the heart of people as well as God; that can live and function when the world is confusing; and that can shape the future more than preserve the status quo.
2. Missiological Alignment. This seeks to understand foremost the mission of God, to reflect on that mission;and then to seek how our organizational mission can serve as an effective part of God’s purposes. It also looks beyond the western church to learn also from the global church of the east and south.
3. Organizational Awareness. This explored the changing style of Wycliffe leadership over the decades, and sought to discern the style of leadership needed most today.  We learn from the past even as we look to the present and future.
4. Spiritual Formation. This pursues the reality that good Christian leaders must first and foremost be deeply rooted in a living relationship with God. It looks at the daily rhythms or patterns of spiritual vitality–things like reflection, silence, listening, reading and meditating on the Word–as the activities that allow us to embrace and serve God’s work. It seeks to build a life that is shaped by God, rather than the world.

So this was a very powerful week. And to practice what was being taught, every day began with reflection and prayer–and these patterns were repeated at midday and in the evening. 

My biggest personal discovery through times of reflection was that while I have spent my entire adult life in ministry and missions, I do a better job working for God than working with God. I am at risk of running ahead and planning and doing mission work for God but by my own strength; instead of letting God first shape my heart and plans and then letting me do this work in the strength and presence of the God that I serve. So I am trusting that God can teach this old dog some new and better ways of living and serving.