And now for something a little different by Stewart Perry
Every job I had since graduating my Commerce degree has been in some sort of leadership position. I had a baptism of fire with my first job, employed by a failing Motor Vehicle dealer as their Company Accountant and within 6 months was thrust into the Business Manager role after the previous guy wisely jumped off the sinking ship.
I only lasted another 6 months before I found myself, without any notice or preparation, representing the company in local court because the owner had not paid a number of ex-employees their entitlements when he made them redundant (years earlier). At that point, 12 months out of university I decided that I didn’t want to ruin my reputation and quickly started looking for jobs and was fortunate to quickly find one in a manufacturing company with an owner who was much more ethical in his business practices and caring of his staff. The irony was that it was the owner of the Motor Vehicle Dealership was the one who publicly professed he was a Christian…
While I only had a very small team in that first job and I didn’t feel like I was able to do a lot of leading, I felt like I learnt a lot about leadership that year. A lot of what I learnt was what not to do. At the heart of this failing business were external factors beyond their control but it was how they dealt with those factors that crippled this business. At one point this company was the biggest spare parts dealer in the southern hemisphere but when car manufacturers changed their business model to bring spare parts into individual dealerships, all of a sudden this company’s position in the motor vehicle industry was compromised. While this was the most significant catalyst it was by no means the reason the business was still struggling and eventually folded.
By the time I’d joined the company, they’d hung on too long to an “old way of doing things”, so much so that it had compromised the other parts of their business. They’d tried to diversify into insurance which had failed badly but the underlying problem was the leadership style of the owner. It was command and control, he was always right… even when he was obviously wrong, he had a way of convincing himself that he was, in fact… right. Nobody was empowered to make decisions, very little was delegated and to get a decision was like pulling teeth. At times it was difficult to tell that their core business was buying and selling cars so much else was entangled within this business.
Unfortunately in my time in the church I’ve seen this command and control leadership style too many times, often in churches experiencing sharp decline in a changing world. It often is the minister/pastor/priest but it’s also often the “gatekeepers” of a church that exercise this type of “leadership”. In my experience it works, at best for a time, but almost always ends in a steaming mess. This happens across all denominations but I sadly see it within our own… at times I despair that it’s hard to recognise that our core business is bringing people closer to Jesus.
Command and control leadership, in my reading of the gospels, is almost the polar opposite of the servant leadership, empowerment leadership and collaborative leadership style of Jesus. Jesus encouraged his disciples telling them that they would do greater things than he would, and they did. We are still called to do these greater things.
One of the greatest joys over the last few years has been to develop a collaborative leadership mindset with Eron (Burleigh Heads) and Mary-Anne (Palm Beach and Robina). We recognise that we lead 3 very different church communities, however there is much we can do better together. We all share a similar perspective on command and control leadership and we are all aware that hanging on to the “old way of doing things” is not the only strategy we need to implement. Even though we recognise there are external factors beyond our and our local churches control, we are all passionate about trying to lead well as we look for ways of being the church in this time that is both respectful to our traditions and values the unique charisms of each of the 3 church communities.
Eron launched a new monthly Saturday morning service last week at Burleigh, Mary-Anne is championing new ideas and opportunities at Palm Beach and although we already have a strong culture of trying new things at Robina, we are not going to rest on what currently works so you’ll see a few new ventures pop up before the end of the year and at the start of next.
Over the next 3 weeks we’re going to try something a little different… it’s an experiment with no plans to do anything more until we get a sense of how this goes. Each of our 3 churches has been talking about Deep Care for the last few months. So Mary-Anne, Eron and I are going to write a sermon each on an element of Deep Care. We’ll then lead the services and preach those sermons in a rotation over the next 3 weeks.
We’d love to hear your feedback on how this goes or on any ideas you might have on what we could do next or different or keep the same. The best thing about collaborative leadership is that it’s adaptable and flexible and very little is locked in.
As we model this type of leadership I also hope it might help those within our communities recognise that every baptised member of the church is called to leadership… but not the command and control version… the Christ like version we see in scripture and should see in all relationships within the body of Christ – the Church. Who could you collaborate with next?
Our core business is still bringing people closer to Jesus but to do that we will need to work together and try things that might be a little different from time to time.
Blessings
Stewart