There’s a well known business phrase that gets thrown around churches a lot: “What business are we in?  How’s business?”  The idea is that we should know what the goal of church is, and we should know how well we are doing towards that goal.  In particular, in the 70s and 80s the church growth movement developed the idea of churches setting goals for Sunday attendance.

Since then, the idea has been sharpened.  Perhaps churches shouldn’t measure strictly numerical growth, but rather conversion growth (as opposed to “transfer growth”, when people come to one church from another). Various other measurements of success have been devised- percentage of attenders involved in a small group, financial giving per person per week, number of people involved in service.  Demographic measurements have also been the object of goals setting- how does the church reflect the ethnic makeup of its community, what is the age range of the congregation, is there socioeconomic diversity?

In the last couple decades, in some thinking about churches, there has been a fairly strong reaction against this, from varying quarters. Some groups (emergent, neo-reformed) have argued that this kind of quantitative measurement is a sellout to the consumeristic mentality of the modern west. Others, more extreme, have suggested that numerical success is almost inherently evil, that true faithfulness to the gospel involves a kind of detachment from the potentially corrupting influence of institutionalization more broadly (house church, organic church, new monasticism).

Oddly, I tend to find myself agreeing with every one of these arguments.  Yes, we should have a sense of purpose. Yes, we should find a way to measure it and be held accountable. Yes, we must beware the temptations of consumerism.  Yes, we must beware of the corrupting influences of institutionalization itself.

I think holding the balance boils down to three important, difficult questions.

First, how do we find ways to assess how things are going in ministry (or other enterprise) without being controlled by the sins of pride and ambition?

Second, if our assessment process indicates we are not doing well, how do we (or do we?) make adjustments towards doing better, without falling prey to mere marketing techniques.  (I think this applies outside ministry- if a business enterprise is losing money, merely to adjust marketing seems potentially unethical, if the reality is that the business process itself is failing to add value to society.)

Third, how do we value and nourish the aspects of ministry (or a business) that simply aren’t measurable?  Say, the depth of people’s worship, the ethical standards of employees, the biblical faithfulness of preaching, or the selfless engagement with the needs of the socially marginalized?

No one said it was easy!  Any thoughts?

Know thyself!  If there was ever a cliched piece of leadership advice, there it is.  But cliches are sometimes cliches for a reason.  My old boss always said “if there is a problem in the church, it starts with me.”  Takes courage to really believe and act on that.  Our strengths and weaknesses will have remarkable influence over the people and institutions we lead.  I heard a snatch of an MPR story this morning that amplified this idea significantly.

But how do we come to know ourselves?  If you think it’s easy, you haven’t yet come to terms with the universal human trait of self-deception.  Nearly everyone is different than they perceive themselves to be (for both better and worse).  In fact, several of the personality profiles I will discuss momentarily suggest that they aren’t even worth taking until the age of 25 or 30, to some degree for this very reason.

I want to suggest three ways you might try to get to know more about yourself, but first offer a warning.  When I talk about “getting to know yourself”, I don’t mainly mean thinking about yourself.  Most of us do this just fine, and it mainly serves to reinforce our existing delusions.  I mean, actually collecting new data about who you are.

The easiest way, and it has some value, is to take personality tests.  The two most common are the MBTI and the DiSC.  They exist in dozens of versions- I have found that paying a bit for an extended version can be worth it.  Many of the free online tests are pretty thin.  Once you’ve taken one of these with a few friends, you can have a lot of fun pondering the differences between you, and usually gaining some good insight.  The two drawbacks are (1) you’ll run out of things to talk about after a few months and (2) they are morally neutral, and usually don’t give you much in the way of criticism.

There is another tool, similar to a personality test, but much deeper, called the Enneagram.  I’ll be honest- I’ve been aware of the Enneagram for about three weeks.  And I still can’t stop talking about it.  What I love about it is (1) it is ancient and much deeper than a personality type and (2) it isn’t morally neutral, it is mainly concerned with identifying your root sin.  When I read the description of my type, the reaction wasn’t insight, it was deep shame, of the good variety that leads to (hopefully) to transformation.

All that said, Rohr suggests the Enneagram might not be of much use until the age of 30, and I think he may be right.  But if you’re interested, get the book and let me know what you think.  Quick warning: there are a bunch of online enneagram tests, which generally suffer from the same flaws as online MBTI or DiSC tests.

There is a third way to find out who you really are, and it is by far the hardest and least used.  It is to be in a relationship where another person has the permission to tell you the truth about you.  In my experience thus far, these relationships are not common.  Sometimes a certain friendship can fade in and out of this realm, as do marriages.  It is likely for the best- I’m not sure how much truth we can handle at a time.  But my advice is- when the truth if offered, especially if it hurts, take it fast.

One other note about truth that hurts.  It isn’t just condemnation.  Condemnation is not transformative, and we generally don’t need any help feeling condemned.  Neither is the truth that hurts about other people, except insofar as they have caused us to become a certain way.  But until the truth that hurts is internalized deeply as being mainly about ME, it won’t cause change.

How have you found out more about who you are?  When was it fun?  When did it hurt?

We are launching a season of prayer and fasting at our church during Lent. Among other things, we are encouraging people to pray for a dream that they have for themselves.

Interestingly, I talked to a number of people who felt a little uncomfortable articulating something that they themselves wanted from God.  They felt more comfortable with other parts of our season of prayer- praying for others, serving others, giving away money.  But it seemed to them perhaps selfish to ask God for something they themselves really wanted.

I’ve found this tendency to be fairly common, and have struggled with it myself.  I remember growing up in church and being regularly instructed that God was not some cosmic vending machine from whom we could simply expect everything we wanted.  In fact, we were instructed that it was much more important to thank God than to ask him for things.

Another group I found myself part of seemed more comfortable with asking God for good things.  But at the end of the day, the main thing it seemed we were supposed to ask God for was a sense of his presence.  This was a step forward- I found that a sense of God’s presence was incredibly powerful.  But I still wondered if we could ask God for other things we wanted.

Fast forward to this season of prayer.  As I thought about what I wanted to pray for, the two things that came immediately to mind seemed incredibly selfish.  They were basically things that would make my life a little more convenient and pleasant that I don’t currently have money for.  But as I chatted with God and thought about it, they really seemed like the things I wanted to pray for.

Of course, there are lots more things I’m praying for than those two things.  I pray for others, I pray for God’s presence.  And as I was encouraged, I spend a lot of time thanking and praising God- which turns out to be more powerful than you might initially think.  But I also think that there is a God who loves me, and doesn’t mind if I ask for a couple things I just plain old want.  And if he says no- I’ll be perfectly content to enjoy his presence.

I do want to encourage you that there is power in asking God directly for the things we want.  It is not uncommon that he will give them to us.  And here’s what I’ve learned: People who have received blessings from God do not generally become selfish, narrow, inward people.  They generally become grateful, humble, generous people.

What do you ask God for?  Do you expect him to answer?

On one hand…

Thom Rainer wrote an unevenly helpful book called Surprising Insights from the Unchurched. Probably the most interesting statistic was not about the unchurched, but about pastors, though I am fairly sure the insight has a much broader application to people in general.  He found that one of the most accurate predictors of the success of a church along a number of lines was the number of hours worked by the senior pastor.

This wasn’t the surprising part.  He drilled deeper, asking the less-hard-working pastors why they worked less hours.  The answer was predictable- they wanted to spend more time with their families.  But here’s the thing- when they actually tracked their hours, the longer-working, more successful pastors actually spent more time with their families, and the less-working pastors actually spent less time with their families.  What did they do with the extra time?  In general, they slept significantly more and watched more TV than the longer-working pastors.

This resonated with my observation that people who consistently back out of obligations for the sake of family often seem to have more marriage trouble and a rougher time with their kids than folks who seem to be serial shower-uppers.  Similarly, people who back away from activities for the sake of having time with friends, often seem to complain more often about being lonely than people who have calendars full of organized activities.

But on the other hand…

This idea nearly killed me.  Every personality test my wife and I have ever taken results in dire warnings that our marriage is doomed toward success driven perfectionistic workaholism (we are both NTs, we are both high D’s, we are a type 1 married to a type 3, we are both oldests, etc.)  And gosh darn it if they aren’t right.  We spent the first nine and half years of our marriage working ourselves into a tizzy, launching a young adult ministry, a new church, three building projects, two kids,  leading a national task force, taking over a magazine, and getting at least six other people launched into full time ministry.

But sometime early last year, the wheels started coming off.  We were anxious, angry, burned out, and totally out of motivation.  I remember at one point my friend Harvey asking me when I was going to go home on a Sunday.  I had a meeting that night, and so my answer was that I couldn’t go home, because if I went home I’d be tempted to lay down on a couch, and if I laid down on the couch, I would fall asleep and almost certainly miss the meeting. Harvey later pointed out that this might indicate a deeper brokenness than a tendency towards compulsive napping.

But, we got some healing, we got some space in our lives, took some time off, and we are getting close to as healthy and happy as ever.  And, honestly, though we don’t want our old compulsiveness back, we aren’t going to stay slow forever.  We like to run hard- it’s who God made us to be.  We just need friends in our lives who will tell us when we are looking a bit too gaunt.

The takeaway here is, I think, that the title of the post is a false dichotomy, or at least can be.  But it is a danger- a danger on both sides.  It’s easy to choose one or the other.  It makes life simpler.  You can use your kids or your friends as a trump card to get out of any leadership opportunity you want.  But you can also use ministry and success as a coping mechanism to unhealthily check out of relationships.

I really want to hear your thoughts on this, but I have two more quick thoughts.

One from the fun book Better Off by Eric Brende.  He spent some time living on an Amish farm.  At first he was completely overwhelmed by the constant work it took to keep up with the farm.  He wondered how these people had any time for relationship at all.  Then he noticed that the relationship happened while they worked.  They didn’t need recreation or sports bars to connect with each other- people made friends while milking cows and met their spouses at barn raisings.

The second from my old boss Pat Nizzi.  He said when you need money the best thing to do is give it away, when you need energy the best thing to do is serve others, and when you need time, the best thing to do is give it away.  I know it’s oversimplified, but there’s something there.

All that said- how do you balance these priorities?

I know so many young leaders who say things like “I would do anything God wants, if I could just know what it was!” Oftentimes they are feeling the tension between two good options, wondering what is best. Sometimes they are feeling pulls from two different groups of people as to what is best for their lives- maybe their parents want them to get a career and make money, and their old youth pastor really thinks they have a future in working with teens.

Over the years, I’ve discovered two contrary truths: this question is the most important question in the world, and this question matters very little. On one hand- learning to answer this question turns out to be what the whole life of faith and leadership hinges on. What could be more important than doing what God wants us to?

On the other hand, very often, the question that is immediately in front of us is often significantly less important. There are two much more important questions. First, whatever God ends up directing you to do- will you do it? The choice to obey is more important than the exact knowledge of the next step. Second, are we willing to rejoice in God regardless of the outcome of the decision?

You might make a mistake. Or you might have heard God perfectly well and things still may not go well. It turns out, in the long run, that God is very interested in using hearts that (first) are always hungry to know and do his stuff and (second) can handle difficult, disappointments, and failure without giving up.

The heroes of the Bible are not people who never make mistakes and miss God. They are the people, who, having made a mistake or missed God, keep on after him (see Psalm 51 or John 22).

So what questions are you struggling with? What have you learned about finding God’s will? How have your mistakes been turned into growth?

I have been interested for years in the first 9 chapters of the book of Proverbs. The main theme is a king’s advice to his son who will take his throne. What better biblical help could a young leader look for? The advice goes a bit differently than you might expect. The chapters are very repetitive, and can be summed up in four themes.

1. Seek out wisdom.
2. Don’t be an idiot.
3. Don’t commit adultery.
4. Don’t join a ring of thieves.

In particular, the third theme- don’t commit adultery, gets quite a lot of ink. The motivation is somewhat unexpected.  Certainly, in the Bible, there are lots of reasons not to commit adultery- “it’s wrong”, “God doesn’t like it”, “it is unloving both to your spouse and the person you commit adultery with.”

But in this case, the motivations are almost entirely selfish.  Basically, “if you commit adultery you will screw up your life and regret it.”  And, I can tell you, all the people I’ve ever known who committed adultery would say the same. In particular- leaders who get caught in some kind of sexual sin really mess things up for themselves AND the people who are trying to follow them.

But here’s the thing: leaders still do stupid stuff.  Adultery- and beyond.  They steal money, they become violent, they gossip, lie, deceive.  And I don’t mean the every day run of the mill version.  I mean some leaders steal millions of dollars, beat up their kids, sleep with the secretary.  And it ruins everything, not just for them, but for lots of people.

That’s why Proverbs 1-9 is so repetitive.  It isn’t that people lack information about what is stupid and evil to do.  They just do it anyway.

I had a chance to be in a small roundtable with Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Minnesota, and author of a lot of helpful books including Leadership That Works.  The meeting took place right after he had re-assumed the presidency of the NAE after the Ted Haggard sex scandal.  I asked him at the meeting “The people who fall sexually- they’re never the ones you think will.  They seem like good, smart, godly people.  What’s the deal?  And how do we keep ourselves from going there?”

His answer was profound.  He said, basically, you can have all the accountability you want.  You can have all the rules you want about who you can and can’t be alone with.  You can put all the software on your computer you want.  And all those things are good!  (For the record, I use SafeEyes and therefore can’t watch the YouTube link you sent me).

But, he said, at the end of the day- if you decide you want to sin, you are going to sin.  He said it again- if you decide you want to sin, you’re going to sin. So, whatever else you do to try to control yourself, you still have to wake up everyday, and decide that today is another day you’re not going to be an idiot.

And at the end of the day, this is one of the biggest deals to really making it in the long term in leadership.  Some people who are smart make it.  Some people who aren’t smart make it.  There are leaders with scads of talent, and leaders with just a few gifts.  But if you can keep doing this thing, day after day, year after year, and do the Proverbs 1-9 thing of not being an idiot- in the long term, you can get pretty far.

Do you buy this?  What is it going to take for you to not be an idiot?

Great comments on the post about friendship- let’s go back to that topic soon- maybe with a guest post?  Also, I promised a post about the power of not judging.  But here’s another thought, about feelings.

I was talking to one older leader, Steve, about another older leader- both of them people I trusted deeply. But in this case, I needed advice from Steve on how to handle a mildly sticky situation with the other. Nothing scandalous, just a situation that needed some nuance.

Steve said to me about the other leader, “I figured him out when I realized he was incredibly emotional.” This struck me as true about that person in particular, but also struck a deeper cord in that it is partially true of everyone. And that in any situation where people are involved, emotion is involved.

In the very helpful book Difficult Conversations, the authors identify layers of conversations, and the second layer is always the “emotional conversation”. People are deeply emotional beings- more than you think. As helpful as the Myers-Briggs test is, it would be a misreading to think that someone who scores a “Thinker” rather than a “Feeler” is therefore not influenced by emotions. In fact, they may be more so precisely because they are less aware of them.

Before I enter a significant meeting, or preach a sermon, or even go to pray- I often ask myself, “What am I feeling right now?” and “Why am I feeling it?” I don’t mean to ask this in some obsessive way, I simply mean dialing up awareness. Am I angry? Hurt? Disappointed? And, given that I have to go into this situation- what should I do with this feeling?

And, equally importantly- how are the other people here feeling?  How is this going to influence their feelings?

For those of you more emotionally aware than I am, this may seem obvious. But it is my experience that even very sensitive people can miss this one sometimes.

How has this played out in your life and leadership?

One of the tensions almost every young leader feels early on is the conundrum of leading ones friends.  Typically, friendship is based on peer-relationship.  That is, it is not a power or authority relationship, such as parent-child, boss-employee, or teacher-student.  However, as young leaders begin to spread their wings, they find that the groups where they are exercising leadership include their friends.  They feel unsure about how to relate on a leadership level with people who are their peers.

In Christian leadership, one false solution is to punt to ’servant leadership’.  Don’t get me wrong- I am deeply committed to servant leadership.  One of Jesus most powerful sayings is in Matthew 20, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

But servant leadership does not keep us from exercising authority.  In fact, what it means to serve people often means that we do the unpopular thing, that we choose to press towards God’s vision instead of simply giving in the the winds of the moment.  In fact, the way that Jesus ultimately provided servant leadership was to be alienated from all his friends as he fulfilled the perfect will of God on the cross.

Here’s what I know 14 years in.  Leaders can have friends- in fact, healthy leaders must have friends.  Often, those friends will be people we are leading. This tension will never go away.  It is tempting to make things easier by either refusing to take the responsibility of leadership, or simply isolating ourselves.  Neither is a true act of love.  There is a kind of loneliness that leaders must at times embrace. But we must never let that loneliness become isolation, nor can we allow ourselves self-pity.  Self-pity and isolation are a renunciation of leadership, not an expression of it.

A tip from my friend Barnabas- someone I count on spiritually and relationally, and someone I also lead and pastor.  We often have lunch and are very explicit about which “hat” we are wearing.  Phrases like, “Is this just a friend lunch?”, or “I need you to be my pastor today”, or “Can we do some church work now?” are healthy and life-giving for us.

Does this strike you as true?  How have you navigated these tensions?

Last January, I invited some young leaders to a meeting at our church, and I also invited an older couple who have decades of experience and fruitfulness, not just in ministry, but in marriage and parenting. I wanted them to speak to us, pray for us, and to let us ask them questions about how to make it in the long term, and how to deal with the issues that will confront young leaders in the next 50 years.

I set one particular ground rule for the event that proved surprisingly effective. It was “no complaining”. I had been at too many events for young leaders that quickly degenerated into complaining about the older generation, or Christian media, or not feeling empowered or mentored, etc., etc. It’s not that there aren’t some valid critiques there- I just wanted to move in a more constructive direction.

Well, it turned out that the move from complaining to construction was remarkably powerful. As I have reflected on this experience, here is the conclusion I’ve come to- complaining is one of the most powerful forces to prevent good things from happening. And, conversely, not complaining turns out to be an incredibly powerful strategy.

The reason is that complaining takes both mental, social, and spiritual energy. You have to think about reasons to hate something, communicate them to others, therefore reinforcing the problem itself. Furthermore, there is clearly a negative spiritual power attached to such words.

But the strategy of not complaining completely reverses this energy. Rather than talk about what we hate, we do the harder mental work of imagining solutions, and then communicating them to others, and quite possibly inspiring prayer and effort towards a solution.

Does this strike you as true in your situation? Have you experienced the problem of complaint or the power of not complaining?

This blog is predicated on one idea. The idea is that people often forget things after 10 years. I am 32 years old and I’ve been leading for the last 14 years. On one hand, you should definitely distrust leadership advice from someone in his early 30s. At the same time- I wonder if there are a few things that I’ve learned that I will forget in 10 years, because I will have learned so many new things.

So that’s the main justification for the blog. Besides that, I have a lot of friends who are young leaders, and I’d love to take a few minutes a day just to chat about what we are learning in leadership, what we are working through, and the like. I’ll post 1-2 times/week, and would love to put up guest posts from other young leaders.

What is a young leader? I think I can stretch the definition to include just about anyone. It’s a leader who is young, or a leader who is young in leadership, or a leader who wants to lead young people, or a leader who wants insight into the minds of young leaders. There- I think that can include anyone who’s interested.

It might be worth giving a little context to where I’m at in leadership. We planted this church five years ago with 10 of our friends. We are committed members of this movement and we are profoundly influenced by some friends in Boston. Our church is in the heart of Minneapolis in a funky warehouse-like arts building, and we average somewhere around 600 attenders on a good Sunday. The average age of the church is probably something like 27. I have a brilliant Chinese-American wife named Le Que and two beautiful kids named Briana Li (7) and Raina Li (2).

I’ll throw out one provocative thought from Bobby Clinton’s The Making of a Leader book to kick this off. Clinton asserts that until our mid-40s, most of the things we do are not mainly about accomplishing results- they are mainly about being formed by God. The most important question is not- how are things going? The most important question is- what am I learning and how am I trusting God in this?

Thoughts?