On Leading Well

Year: 2008

  • Two Quick Thoughts on Life-giving Reproduction

    “Better to give a year or so to one or two men who learn what it means to conquer for Christ than to spend a lifetime with a congregation just keeping the program going.”
    – Robert Coleman in Master Plan of Evangelism

    “A man’s greatest talents are not in how much he has been able to do alone, but in how effective he has been in getting others to work with him. A good leader leads men; a great leader trains leaders.“
    – Henrietta Mears, mentor to Bill Bright

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  • Student-led Movements Everywhere

    “Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth!” – God, Psalm 46:10

    We are currently witnessing a resurgence of spiritually motivated student activism around the world. “God will accomplish His purposes,” our former pastor used to say, “with us if He may, without us if He must.” The longer Ann and I are involved in God’s global harvest, the easier it is to believe we are on the brink of seeing His Great Commission fulfilled.

    One of my many lame excuses for few recent blog posts has been extensive travel over the past two months. From Cape Town to Cairo, from LA to Canada, and from Hungary to Thailand, dozens of conversations with field staff and student leaders confirm that God is accomplishing His work at a seemingly accelerated rate.

    • Kristoff, a German student who attended the CM2007 missions conference in Korea last July, was convicted by those students sitting in the “no photos” section because they came from countries where they faced persecution. “We’re not risking anything,” he said. He has mobilized a prayer movement, calling fellow students to believe God together for gospel-resistant German campuses.

    • I recently attended a gathering in Hungary of about 500 Christians who minister throughout 19 countries in Eastern Europe and Russia. A majority of these teams saw between 5-20 students indicate decisions to follow Jesus Christ just last semester. Several of these locations have been notoriously hard soil.

    • In “closed” East Asia, one multinational team comprised of 4 staff members and 5 volunteers has seen God open up student-led ministries on 30 campuses in 4 cities. Please read that again and let it soak in. I asked Andy, the team leader, what his secret was. “Asking students to be in a prayer group or join a Bible study is not a challenge,” he replied. “We show them God’s big heart for the nations from day 1, then invite them to change their world. We’ve discovered that this way the students don’t think ‘Hey wait, I need a staff member to help me,’ or ‘I need permission to….’ They just go for it and start leading.”

    Lesson for us: History is moving toward a very clear end which culminates in the God of the Bible being glorified in every nation. Students have always been the lever that moves the world. Let’s get everyone we can think of out of the bleachers and onto the field.

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  • The Art and Science of Dela-gation

    A small handful of leadership behaviors disproportionately affect and accelerate rapid movement growth. Without question, one of the most crucial qualities of effective leaders lies in their willingness and ability to delegate well. Delegation requires those of us who lead others to constantly release key aspects of our work to the next generation of volunteers, employees, or family members.
    My friend Dela Adadevoh distills delegation down into a continuum. At one end is Eyes On-Hands On delegation. Better known as micromanaging, this lame substitute isn’t delegation at all. With rare exceptions (such as the first few days of orienting a new employee), this path usually leads to the cul-de-sac of frustration (for the leader) and deflated confidence (for the worker). Michael Scott, the Dilbert-esque branch manager on the American hit The Office personifies this approach.
    At the other end of the continuum we find Eyes Off-Hands Off delegation. In my experience this results in a sense of abandonment. Most of us say we enjoy having complete freedom to do our jobs. At the same time, if a job is really crucial and thus worth our best effort, our heart longs for someone who’s in charge to take notice. I’ve rarely met a volunteer or employee that will just keep on giving her best month after month with no feedback. Work builds up, motivation sags, and people feel overwhelmed but bored.
    Between these extremes lies a wide swath of Eyes On-Hands Off delegation. Good leaders know how to tread lightly in others’ rose gardens while still stopping to smell – and inspect – the roses. Learning to let go of control while offering constructive feedback, affirmation and correction is an art and science. True delegation begins with the leader’s heart. Bill Lawrence, a friend and long-time mentor, says, “I can teach you everything you need to know about delegating in 45 minutes. But those are just skills. True delegation is a heart issue – a question of the will. Will you delegate?“
    The long-term impact of our leadership may ultimately be determined by a few key factors. John Mott’s counsel on delegation echoes from my last post: “He who does the work is not so profitably employed as he who multiplies the doers. Count the day lost that you do not do something, either directly or indirectly, to multiply the number of unselfish workers.”
    Question for aspiring leaders: How am I doing at multiplying the number of unselfish workers?