Is My Leadership Spiritual?

I received this article in my e-mail box today from Today's Children's Ministry. It is entitled, Is My Leadership Spiritual? by Ruth Haley Barton. Here's it is:

Most Christian leaders sense that there should be something different about our leadership than what is offered in the secular marketplace, but we're not always sure what that is.

Spiritual leadership emerges from the soul of us—that place where God's spirit and my spirit commune. This kind of leadership is not about roles and titles within organizational hierarchies; it has to do with our desire and ability to recognize and respond to the presence of God. It depends on our willingness to lead from a place of communion with him.

Spiritual leadership flows from the leader seeking after God through spiritual disciplines. Solitude and silence are two such disciplines that enable us to experience a place of authenticity and invite God to meet us. In them, we are rescued from relentless human striving so that we can experience the life of the Spirit. We give up control and allow God to be God in our lives rather than being a thought in our heads or an illustration in a sermon. We listen for the still, small voice of God telling us who we really are so that we are not enslaved by the demands and expectations of life in leadership.

There can be no compromise. Those who look to us for leadership need us to be spiritual seekers. They need us to keep searching for the bread of life that feeds our souls so that we can guide them to places of sustenance. Rather than offering the cold stone of past devotionals, regurgitated apologetics, or someone else's musings, we must offer bread that is warm from the oven of our own intimacy with God.

The choice to lead from the soul is a vulnerable approach. It means I am leading from a tender place where I do not have all the answers. It is radical because the wisdom of God is foolishness to this world and we must be ready to stand firm in the midst of skepticism and resistance.
The good news is that if I am willing to lead from here, I finally have something real to offer. The quality of my leadership is different.

Rather than leading from a place of frenetic, ego-driven activity, I am leading from a place of rest where I know what I am called to do and I am confident God will produce it. Rather than manufacturing ministry, I am leading from my own experience with God. Rather than being subject to inner compulsions of the self and outer demands of people's expectations, I am learning to respond to God's call upon my life.

While it may seem dangerous to lead from a part of myself that I am accustomed to keeping hidden, true spiritual leadership hinges upon the capacity to lead from my own transforming center. In the end, strengthening the soul of my own leadership is the best thing I can do to strengthen to the soul of the church.

Urban Sanctuaries by Milbrey McLaughlin

I have been a fan of the work of Milbrey McLaughlin for the past couple of years. I did a posting a while ago of her report called Community Counts, and have occasionally referenced her book writted with Shirley Brice Heath called Identity and Inner-City Youth.

Urban Sanctuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth is a book which she wrote in 1994. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago at a second hand bookshop in NYC. When I began reading it, I discovered a wealth of information incredibly relevant to youthworkers. (I RECOMMEND this book whole-heartedly!)

McLauglin calls successful youth leaders 'wizards':

"They have created environments in which youth from the tough streets of inner-city neighborhoods can imagine a positive future. Accomplishing what conventional wisdom has often held impossible, these wizards have fashioned organizations that capture urban adolescents' attention, time, and loyalty. They are successful with adolescents many in society dismiss as unreachable or unredeemable." (p.37)

McLauglin observed five common characteristics in these type of leaders:

1. Seeing Potential, Not Pathology. "Successful leaders of inner-city youth organizations have a passionate commitment to young people, particularly to undeserved and disadvantaged youth... Wizards have no hesitation in viewing inner-city youth as valuable assets to society..."

When wizards frame their personal and organizational missions they consider inner-city youth as resources and youth organizations as opportunities to develop these resources. They see potential, not pathology; therefore they design settings to guide youth through the mingled violence and indifference of the inner-city environment and to engage them in the types of learning and experiences that will transform these adolescent boys' and girls' sense of their own abilities and expectations so that they can duck the bullet." (p.96)

2. Focusing on Youth. "...They focus on youth before organization, program, or activity. They see youth organization technology and the models that policymakers focus on and try to replicate only as vehicles for turning commitment into practical reality. Wizards personal agendas contrast with those well-intended leaders whose primary passion is their program or institution." (p.98)

3. A Sense of Efficacy. Wizards' commitment to and focus on inner-city youth is reinforced by a strong sense of personal efficacy. While counteless other youth workers or policymakers stress that 'it is too late for teens,' that 'you have to get them when they are young,' these successful leaders have a firm conviction that they can and do make a difference in the lives of teenage youth from even the bleakest urban settings." (p.100)

4. Giving Back. Part of wizards' consuming commitment to youth results from their wanting to give back what others gave them as they grew up... (they) also hope their adolescents, in turn, will develop a commitment to give opportunities and brighter futures back to others...

The salience to the wizards of giving back explains why these talented, energetic individuals choose to work in a field of notiriously low pay, little or no recognition, and limited upward mobility. All of them see their work as a mission and vocation, not simply a job or even a career in the traditional sense... They are not seeking to move up and out of their positions that bring them into regular contact with youth. (p.101)

5. Authenticity. Each wizard manifests different personality and programmatic interests, with the result that each successful organization has some characteristic that is a special draw for youth. Wizards create programs for musicians, thespians, scholars, athletes, artists, and young people who simply want a supportive group to call their own... The moral here appears to be that one-size-fits-all programming misses adolescents' need to do their own thing, to feel they are pursuing interests and goals they themselves have selected.

The wizards we came to know also demonstrated the authenticity of their commitment through becoming part of their inner-city communities' fabric and soul. (pp.102-103)