By Beth Birmingham
Leadership Is All About Relationship, First and Foremost to the One Who Calls Us
As James MacGregor Burns wrote in his book Transforming Leadership, relationship is at the core of any good definition of leadership. Leadership is all about relationship.
A Christian leader’s most important relationship is with the One who calls us. This relationship influences all others, including your relationships with those you have been called to serve alongside and with those you have been entrusted to steward.
What does spiritual formation have to do with your leadership program?
While this may seem odd to some, history and the Bible remind us, time and time again, that the quality of someone’s leadership has more to do with their spiritual condition than any skills or experience they may have developed along the way.
As a leader, getting your relationship with the Lord right, healthy and whole will have a far greater impact on your leadership than mastering the latest agile techniques or becoming an expert in strategic planning models. While these skills are certainly important, they are not at the core of successful leadership.
How does a healthy and whole relationship with God change how we lead?
When we have a strong relationship with God, we lead others differently:
When we see ourselves as God’s beloved, we also treat the people with whom we serve as His beloveds.
When we recognize the unique strengths God has given us to serve the ministry in this season, we empower others to use the fullness of their own God-given talents and skills, too.
When we understand how unconditionally God loves us, flaws and all, we accept others, flaws and all. We set others free to make mistakes and learn from them. (After all, Jesus lived agile principles long before Compassion began to apply them.)
What happens when our relationship with God is weak?
The Enemy is actively opposing our relationship with God. When this relationship is weak, our leadership suffers in several ways:
An unhealthy work/life balance — If we are constantly trying to earn favor with God through what we do for this ministry, we can become addicted to work and expect the same behavior from our co-laborers in Christ. We can find that we are always trying to “do enough,” as though the ministry will fail without our contributions.
Critical spirit and micromanagement — When we feel God is monitoring, measuring and judging us for every mistake we make, we may be more inclined to judge our co-workers harshly for their mistakes. We can also become micro-managers, thinking that heavy oversight is necessary to prevent our staff from making mistakes that could reflect poorly on us as leaders.
Hierarchy/relational distance —The idea that leaders must keep their distance from staff to maintain respect is completely inconsistent with what Jesus modeled for us. He called his followers friends (John 15:15) and bent to wash their feet. But when we feel insecure in our identity in Christ, we may be hesitant to choose “real” connections and avoid being appropriately vulnerable with those we lead.
We all bring negative past experiences or long-held ideas to our leadership roles, and we need to lay these down at the altar of the Lord. Our Savior wants to heal us in these areas.
Recommended Reading If you’d like to explore this “identity” concept further, check out the Bible study Distorted Images of God by Dale and Juanita Ryan.