I'm a student of leadership, and I found this article by Sally Morgenthaler to be a great read.What is leadership in an age of unprecedented connectedness? When information is as accessible as the iPhone in your back pocket? When the world no longer needs data brokers, when the word “authority” inspires only suspicion and revolt, and when business, political, and religious icons are deconstructed at the click of a mouse button – what does it really mean to be in charge of anything?
Nothing. Because, in the new and increasingly flattened world, being in charge is an illusion. Being in charge only worked (and marginally so) in a world of slow change; in a predictable universe where information (and thus, power) is ensconced in the hands of a few. But that world is gone. With the rise of the individual (the power of one) and the rise of the tribe (the power of one connected), all bets are off.
Still, we hang on to our illusions. We retreat into the old story: leadership as domination and control. We try to deny that human beings are simply wired to push back. And now, we have an unprecedented ability to do so. Now, eighty-year old Uncle Harold can post his very own book review on Amazon.com. Twelve-year-old Jessica can organize a local rally for her favorite presidential candidate. It’s a YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, blogging world. We have broken the anonymity barrier.
But the new world is more than just about push-back. It’s about connection. Yes, we may still crave cocoon time, but the Starbucks “third place” concept – whether real or virtual - has literally revived what it is to have a public life. From village-concept malls to Internet cafes, list-serves, chat rooms, match sites, video gaming events, Texas Hold-em parties, and neighborhood 12-step groups, we’re talking to each other more than ever before. It may not all be mature, healthy exchange, but the volume of dialogue says something: at our deepest levels, we want to know and be known. We want to put a stamp on life, to be noticed, to make a difference.
In summary, our expectation of influence is at an all-time high. Whether at work, in school, online, on our IPODs, or at the Home Depot do-it-yourself design center, we want our stories, our passions, preferences, and opinions to matter. And the most successful companies and innovations of the past fifteen years have figured this out. Creating interactive, personalized experiences for their customers is primary. But valuing each person’s significance and pressing for engagement doesn't stop with the marketplace. Cutting-edge companies take participation to new levels within their organizational structures as well. Reason? When employees are released from bureaucracy to actually create, profits increase.
Significance, influence, interaction, collective intelligence – all of these values describe an essential shift from passivity to reflexivity. We are no longer content to travel in lock-step fashion through life like faceless, isolated units performing our one little job in an assembly line. It is a new day. We want to help solve the problems of the world.
Inside the church, however, it’s a different story. Despite all our posturing about cultural relevance and our haranguing about the average church-goer’s lack of engagement, we continue to vision, staff, and build for passivity. In the fabric of change, we adopt yet another campaign. Another trendy look. A new slogan. New staff. We produce sound-bites that make it look like we’re listening, collaborating, releasing, but we’re not. It’s a top-down, in-charge world, and the people in the pews increasingly feel like pawns to leadership's latest whim.
We can do better. If we really want to see God’s work explode, let’s encourage our church's leaders to release their strangle-hold on ministry. Let’s challenge them to be the leaders they were meant to be, not power-mongers--but catalysts, guides, midwives, and ship-rudders. Let’s call our leaders to stop trying to convince us they are open, adaptive, and permission-giving, and encourage them to really become all those things... leaders who release people to be the best they can be for God’s kingdom.
In our current context of radical engagement, the leaders of Jesus' church have an incredible opportunity to change how they lead. Let's encourage them to make the change. A new world awaits!
