00;00;00;00 - 00;00;41;27
Unknown
So we are welcome to the Ordinary Discipleship podcast with Jesse Cruikshank, where we're helping churches create healthy discipleship cultures. And we are here today. We're going to be talking about shared leadership and how challenging that is. And I know we were talking a little bit a while ago before we got started, and I was just thinking back to my youth ministry days, how I took on a youth ministry at 20 years old going, what were they thinking and how much, how Most of the time that I lived in that space, I was doing so without really without a clue and wondering how what what is this leadership thing?

00;00;41;27 - 00;01;00;07
Unknown
And then as I've grown up in churches, I've realized that I that often in leadership, we seem to not have a clue. And we talk about it. If there's more resources about leadership than any of us could possibly imagine. And yet it is one of those spaces where it can be very lonely and it can be very challenging for us.

00;01;00;07 - 00;01;24;15
Unknown
And as often as someone who's not always in that first chair, especially, you have to lead up, lay down, lead sideways, lead all around, and often be following someone else who is doing their thing and not necessarily inviting you into polycentric leadership. And so today we're going to be talking about leadership and what it means in all of those spaces to lead when when you don't have a plan to lead, when you don't when you're leading up, leading down, lead all directions.

00;01;24;18 - 00;01;56;24
Unknown
And we're here with Jesse and Jacob from our who ology team. And as we get started today, let's talk about this shared leadership. So, Jesse, talk about shared leadership. Yeah, I first, I've actually almost only led and shared leadership because where it hasn't existed, I've tried to build it because when I started leading a ministry at the age of 22, which is also insane because it was the the Wilderness Ministry, people can die like you have permits with government agencies.

00;01;56;26 - 00;02;20;00
Unknown
We're doing, you know, technical snow, mountaineering, technical rock climbing, you know, river cross, like for 40 days. Okay. So so we're not talking now like a weekend. It a campground. We're talking about a legitimate, you know, legitimate expeditions. And I'm training guides. You know, we're responsible to, you know, parents and they're adults, students. But, you know, their parents don't care, right?

00;02;20;01 - 00;02;58;22
Unknown
Because that matters. And I started leading in this ministry with other people who were my age. So Josh and Andrew, well. Andrew for three years. And then we needed more help. And so we talked Josh into it, doing it as well. And we shared leadership because we were so young and we didn't know what we were doing. And, and like I was just reflecting with Andrew about this a few weeks ago, kind of now that we're in our mid-forties and we're looking back on who we were and what we knew and what we didn't know and what was part of our reality and all the things that for whatever reason, the Lord kept us from

00;02;58;22 - 00;03;24;14
Unknown
being aware of. And we were like, we were idiots. And yet, like people didn't die and we built a ministry and people had radical encounters with God. And I had this reflection that maybe it was because we were so incompetent. We weren't technically incompetent, you guys. We could we could actually lead people in the technical like rock climbing skills and backpacking skills.

00;03;24;16 - 00;03;55;13
Unknown
But as leaders, because we were so limited and incompetent, we knew that and we were desperate for help. We were desperate for the Holy Spirit. We asked everybody how to do things while we we looked for best practices. We were hungry because we were in over our head. And I think that there was something that somehow in that great gap that the Holy Spirit filled, we saw so many miracles.

00;03;55;15 - 00;04;15;04
Unknown
And I think the like is like the provision in the grace of the Lord was tremendous. We saw healing miracles. We saw whether miracles we had miracles of finances all the time. Like miracles were so constant. They weren't even something that you put in a newsletter because they were just every day like, we had a really good meal.

00;04;15;06 - 00;04;43;29
Unknown
somebody's got their back healed, like it was as commonplace. And so the shared leadership, I think, made that work. And I don't think it would have worked if we didn't have the shared leadership. Well, I think what you're what you're bringing up is something that Julia mentioned earlier, which is like at the on the one hand, we can look at incompetent leaders or young leaders or underdeveloped leaders and be like, well, gosh, these people aren't ready.

00;04;44;01 - 00;05;16;20
Unknown
But when you look at great spiritual awakenings of the past or great moves of God in the past, they're often led by amateurs. Like like I was reading a book by Pete Greig the other day, and he talked about when he years ago, right. That wrote that book, Red Moon Rising that cataloged the 24 seven prayer movement. And he's like, We were just some people who went in a room to pray, and all of a sudden a worldwide movement happened, you know, or like you even think about, like the Methodist church began in a great awakening that was like some college kids going, Hey, how might we grow in the faith together?

00;05;16;20 - 00;05;31;06
Unknown
And all of a sudden there's a move of God. And so, like, I think there is that thing and you're pointing to to shared leadership. But I think like we can sit there scratching our heads as church leaders because we can say, well, gosh, I don't have enough people ready to lead. All these folks are I have enough ready.

00;05;31;07 - 00;05;57;24
Unknown
I don't have enough leaders ready to disciple people when really like communities of people coming together around the word of God seem to disciple each other pretty well. Right? Because I think part of what makes it work is you don't know it shouldn't be. Right. Right. And then now, with all these leadership resources we actually like, we try to analyze that, say, how can I manufacture that out of my own strength or talent or competency?

00;05;57;27 - 00;06;26;21
Unknown
And we forget that it's actually the Holy Spirit that does all of that, right? We've tried to be more competent and we've made less space for the Holy Spirit, which sounds actually terrifying to say out loud. And maybe it's going to upset some people because we don't like incompetent leaders. And yet, I don't know, like there's something amazing about not knowing you shouldn't be able to do it and something amazing about the hubris of being in your early twenties that of course it should be this way.

00;06;26;21 - 00;06;44;10
Unknown
Let's just do it like, we need a why don't we just pray? Yeah, right. Suggests we're not in our early 20 years. We're not we're, we're, you know, Are you think Jacob's a millennial, you know? Yeah, he's. I told him I don't make me a Gen X. Yeah, you're not a Gen X, but I have to. I have to own it.

00;06;44;10 - 00;07;00;05
Unknown
I'm the low end of Gen X, but I definitely have to own it. And so one of the things that that I've seen, it's like in my twenties, it's like, yes, let's go for it. There's a faith portion of that where it's like, I don't know what I don't know, so I'm not afraid. But then fire sets in because I do know what I do know.

00;07;00;05 - 00;07;15;25
Unknown
And now it's like, now I'm going to hit up against walls. People that don't want me to to lead in that space. Or maybe I don't feel like I have imposter syndrome. I don't feel like I can actually do it in that space. And so over time, you just kind of I found that I've just pulled back quite a bit.

00;07;16;02 - 00;07;37;18
Unknown
Right. And part of that, I believe, is the Holy Spirit wanting to do something in me and wanting to do something new. But part of that is fear. And so as we're we step into these different stages of our leadership, right? Like where even we create leadership tools, right? So why would people want to use our leadership tools if we're saying it's just the Holy Spirit?

00;07;37;20 - 00;08;09;17
Unknown
The Spirit? Well, I think that's what like like when so so we're identifying this dynamic that often great moves of God can be led by people who have underdeveloped leadership skills. And I think it's easy to say like, yeah, it's because they just trust the Holy Spirit, right? But I think what we're really saying there is it's more about a posture than it is about a proficiency.

00;08;09;24 - 00;08;37;01
Unknown
Yes. And so, like as we gain skills and we trust in our skills and we trust in our proficiency, we start to think like, well, I can train and do anything. If there's a challenge, I'll just train into fixing it. And it's like, I was telling you all this story earlier, like when I was in my early twenties, I led a mission trip to multiple countries over multiple months, and we had a group of 50 young adults aged 21 to 35.

00;08;37;03 - 00;08;53;17
Unknown
And at one point I was leading this group of 50. I was in one city, one of the teams in another city, and I got a phone call that one of the people on the trip started having seizures. We were in Kenya and so first I tell the team leader like, Well, yeah, she's already at the hospital by this point.

00;08;53;20 - 00;09;18;27
Unknown
And so I travel from the one city to the next to to confer with what's going on. It was days of these of these doctors trying to figure out why this girl was having seizures. And they couldn't figure it out. Couldn't figure it out. Finally, we decided to take her a five hour drive to Nairobi, to the capital where there's American doctors, and they figure out that the reason she's having seizures was all just, you know, the word I'm looking for.

00;09;18;28 - 00;09;37;01
Unknown
But it was like psychological, psychiatric. psychosomatic. Okay. So she's under so much stress on this trip that her brain is just telling her, get out of here. Ooh. And it's and it's that's a rough day. And so we found that out because we had thought her friends who were helping her thought like, well, she can't walk across the room.

00;09;37;04 - 00;09;50;22
Unknown
We would try to have her walk across the room. She would, she wouldn't be able to do it. So we go see the American doctor and he says, Well, walk to me. And we got No, no, you don't understand. She can't do that. And he's like, Yeah, she can. And he's just like, tough, loves her into it. And I was like, amazed.

00;09;50;24 - 00;10;11;04
Unknown
And then finally he has conversations with her where we're not in the room and he's uncovering like, okay, yeah, this is an issue where she just needs to get out of here. And so now I'm talking with that doctor and I'm a I'm a staff member in this program. We're sending hundreds of kids around the world. I mean, kids 18 to 35 year olds around the 21 to 35 year olds around the U.S., around the world, and kids our age doing it.

00;10;11;04 - 00;10;27;27
Unknown
And I say to her, I say, like once we get a handle on what's actually happening here, that we put a young person in a situation that was so stressful for her that she started having seizures, I say, Well, doctor, how can we make sure this doesn't happen again? And he said, Well, tell me how many people you're sending out.

00;10;27;29 - 00;10;48;22
Unknown
It's like, well, you know, like 200 in the fall and 200 in the spring. And then we do one trip in the summer and he's like, Yeah, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. And I think about me now because he's like, like just probability dictates that shouldn't happen to somebody. All right. Yeah. And, and I think about me now, like that knowledge would keep me from doing the thing.

00;10;48;23 - 00;11;20;01
Unknown
Yeah, right. But like, at the time, like you're saying, not having that knowledge, I just jumped right in and a lot of good things happened and we were in that risky situation. So what we're trying to capture out of that is not to be foolish, but to be open. Right. And I think that the temptation of leadership is I've walked my journey and I've been in leadership roles and executive roles for over 20 years now, is at some point I actually believed that at some point I should be competent enough to do it right.

00;11;20;01 - 00;11;47;03
Unknown
That spiritual maturity looked like competency. That spiritual maturity look like, okay, no, I've got this handled because I'm ready now. And I disdained that younger version of myself and said, Wow, you know, like I thought God's grace was filling the gap because I was so the way that God was reticent to do that. Let me say that, you know, like, you know, God was like, Well, if you had been more competent, I wouldn't have had to do so much to cover your butt.

00;11;47;03 - 00;12;09;19
Unknown
There's something wrong with me. Right? Exactly right. So, so for me, the spiritual leadership in my maturity, I thought was, okay, I'm going to gain competence so God doesn't have to cover my butt as much. And so I can do more, right? I can be more self-sufficient because in my brains, maturity and self-sufficiency were the same. Because I'm a Gen Xer and we believe in competence.

00;12;09;19 - 00;12;29;04
Unknown
And so spiritual maturity is, I might say, you're a human symbol of incompetent. Well, no, it's a generational thing, right? It's it's it's a generational cohort. Like, yes, we care don't have the job just because you've been there 50 years, have the job because you're good at it. So then I began to realize that that actually wasn't God's goal for me.

00;12;29;07 - 00;12;51;05
Unknown
And that was a really hard thing to do because God kept actually putting me in positions where even though the that I was my margin of competency compared to the actual role continued to remain under 50%. And every time I got good at something, then God would move me into a different sphere where I was inadequate. Again. And I thought that God just was setting me up for failure.

00;12;51;05 - 00;13;10;24
Unknown
And so this is all part of like my own deep journey of whether or not God is good and setting me up for failure that I've had to wrestle through and God shown me tremendous things in there. And it was actually through that that I learned the Lord actually likes me a little under able because he wants to do more than I'm able to do.

00;13;10;26 - 00;13;28;22
Unknown
Because if we are if I am leading at the edge of my competency and I'm like set up the organization around that or the group around that or the family or whatever it is that I'm leading, if it is at the edge of my competency, then I'm the ceiling, I'm the limit. And God doesn't want me to be the limit.

00;13;28;22 - 00;13;53;22
Unknown
He wants to be the limit because he's unlimited, which is why to me, then we come back to shared leadership, because if we are a point leader, any time you have a point leader, that leader is the ceiling. And so when we do shared leadership, it changes it. Yes. You're saying that if I if I as a leader say, let's do the thing that I know how to lead.

00;13;53;24 - 00;14;20;02
Unknown
Right. We will never go as far as God can take us. Right. Or the things you can lead successfully. Yes. And so when you're saying when I at the edge of my competency, you're saying let's go, is I want to go as far as I know how to take us, right. When actually God could take us ten times farther if we're willing to if we're willing to allow ourselves to appear insufficient and embrace that terrifying feeling.

00;14;20;05 - 00;14;37;24
Unknown
Yeah. Of insufficiency. Yes. And that to me is faith. Yet when I grew up believing with faith because I would hear like, well, you just have more faith. Just have more faith. And so for me, it was a deficiency in my faith. And if only I had more faith, I would be able to accomplish all that God has called me to be or do.

00;14;37;27 - 00;14;56;03
Unknown
Right. But if because of my lack of faith, I'm not able to pursue to fulfill that. And so for me, one of the biggest, I'll say, revelations I've had just in the last year or two was that, you know, I know that in the in the Greek faith and trust are the same word, right? Like I rationally understand that.

00;14;56;05 - 00;15;16;19
Unknown
But one of the but it is translated credo in the Latin. And so what we what credo is is you know, think of like the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, it's about what I believe. So then I've, you know, I realized that I've made it about what I believe in Jesus. I believe in all these things. So if I believe that to be true, then okay, then that's my faith.

00;15;16;19 - 00;15;41;29
Unknown
But it's actually based upon relationship fidelity in in the original, you know, it was always based on who I believe in, not what I believe. So it's not information. It's actually relational. It's like my faith is not based upon, again, I believe God. And what that he died and rose, you know, Jesus Christ died and rose again. But it's do I believe that this God, what you said earlier is good?

00;15;42;01 - 00;16;07;09
Unknown
Do I really believe that he's good? And if he if I don't. Okay. Is that a deficiency on my part or is that a revelation that God wants to give me in revealing himself that he is good? And so in hitting up against those walls of fear and incompetence in my leadership. But what I've seen is that God be is an opportunity for God to reveal himself, that He is good, that he is trustworthy.

00;16;07;09 - 00;16;43;16
Unknown
And so it's God's not playing games with me and just dangling out there trying to hope that maybe I can take that next level of leadership. But it's actually an invitation into deeper, deeper relationship with him. And that has that for me has changed everything because that's an identity formation, which I think has been the key to actually polycentric or leadership because so let's define polycentric leadership for for those who don't know it, it's it's the shared leadership where you don't have one person who's the top now in, I think, an effective, polycentric leadership.

00;16;43;16 - 00;17;09;12
Unknown
You have lanes and and differentiated responsibilities. Right? So you can have well, I'm in charge of this aspect of things and somebody else is in charge. And it's not a committee that is in charge of everything because that actually breaks down and doesn't work. So but you share power, you defer to one another, you submit to one another, even though while you're in execution, you have differentiated responsibilities, different responsibilities.

00;17;09;14 - 00;17;39;24
Unknown
But when I've seen polycentric leadership be just transactional, where it's just department heads that like report to one another and it's around ideas, it doesn't work because it's actually supposed to be about relationship, because that trust in God always is calibrated to our trust to one another. We actually can't trust each other more than we trust God, and we can't actually trust God more than we trust the other people in our life.

00;17;39;27 - 00;18;10;17
Unknown
And so we, for whatever reason, have reduced deep relationship to only my significant other. I'm only my spouse. When in Scripture, God calls us to actually have that level of trust where I'm not can say intimacy, but that level of trust with brothers and sisters, with other people, and to share and do stuff with them. So kind of a risky question to kind of ask this live on, Mike, is why do you guys trust our group?

00;18;10;17 - 00;18;37;29
Unknown
Like, why are you sharing leadership here? Why are you why are you doing this? Well, go ahead. Thank you for taking the risk. My mind was already going there because that's why we're friends. Well, yeah, same page. And because the way you talk about brothers and sisters was like a breath of fresh air to me because I think, like, why I don't have to go into intense personal history.

00;18;37;29 - 00;19;04;11
Unknown
But as far as it relates to this team, I yeah, I can be completely unguarded with in particular with the three of us. And I think even with our extended team, there's about three or four other people who work with us. And I can be unguarded and I don't have fear of retribution. I don't have fear that when I reveal my weaknesses to you, you're going to use it against me for your own aims later on.

00;19;04;18 - 00;19;38;24
Unknown
Like and, you know, the three of us went through a community formation cohort that you taught. We went through it together. So sometimes I've tried to attribute it to that experience, but I think somehow it must also be bigger than that. But I think the principles of that kind of community formation stuff undergirds what we're building, but it is that it's the freedom to be honest and not fear retribution or weaponizing and to believe that you all see what I do best and you want to help me do what I do best.

00;19;38;27 - 00;20;06;04
Unknown
And you're not going to let me overextend myself to try to do things. I won't do that you'll go ahead and take the ball at that point. So, yeah, I think I think that answers your question. Yeah, I think for me it's been it's been the similar experience is I feel trust and so I feel that I am I am trusted, but I also feel like I can instill trust in the two of you that I know that you're going to do what you say you're going to do.

00;20;06;07 - 00;20;22;04
Unknown
And that's not just about doing, but it's actually about being like, I feel like you are transparent in who you are. And so I feel like I can walk in my lane because I'm going to be the best, you know? And it it also invigorates me to say, okay, it's like I don't have to be something I'm not.

00;20;22;07 - 00;20;41;16
Unknown
And so how can I continue to grow and adapt and realizing that I don't have it all figured out? And that is there's freedom in that. There's freedom in knowing that I don't have to be like like Jacob is the most systematic thinker that I've ever met, and you can build more tools. And that's, that's, that's the beauty of who God has made you to be.

00;20;41;16 - 00;20;58;14
Unknown
And I love seeing you operate in that lane, and yet you receive feedback in such a way because we see the world from such different perspectives and you go, Okay, well then let's make it better and you're not offended by it, you know? And I'm like, I hope I can say that. Yeah, yeah. You know, and that that's beautiful.

00;20;58;14 - 00;21;20;21
Unknown
Like, that is a beautiful thing. And I and I have appreciated that about you, Jesse. I mean, we've known each other a short time, and it feels like we've known each other a lifetime, right? Because there's a kinship there that brothers and sisters. And that's really what the body of Christ is, right? Ultimately, we're family. That's one of the pictures that we're given, is that as a family And what does it mean to really get along as brothers and sisters to accomplish what God has called us, to accomplish?

00;21;20;24 - 00;21;42;06
Unknown
And our vision is to see every person making disciples. And in order to do that, honestly, we're going to wear the pastors out. If every single you know, if they feel the responsibility to disciple everybody, disciple, everybody. I want to retrace our steps real quick because I think we just said like four things. Yeah. So we started at Julius saying like, yeah, when I reached the end of like Jesse, actually.

00;21;42;06 - 00;22;03;26
Unknown
Well, I'll go one step further back. Jesse was saying, like, if I, if I only lead my team or my family, my organization at the edge of my own competency will never go as far as God can take us. And Julia was saying that there's a faith component to that, that believe it. Like, I think what keeps us from going beyond our competency is believing that God's going to let us drown out there, Right?

00;22;03;29 - 00;22;30;27
Unknown
We don't actually trust him. That's right. And Julia saying that that that if I really believe that God is good, then God won't let me drown. And if God calls me out into deeper water, he's not going to leave me there by myself. And then Jesse was saying, Well, that's why polycentric leadership is so helpful, because actually in a healthy community, we stand in like we help each other develop more trust in each other, and that helps us to develop more trust in God.

00;22;31;00 - 00;22;53;04
Unknown
And I think that's what we're saying here. It's like what we love about the team that we're developing is we're able to do things we never thought we could do because we're willing to lean on each other, call each other in two different places, tell each other when to stop. And it allows us to accept the challenge that God is offering without having to rely only on our own competency.

00;22;53;06 - 00;23;17;26
Unknown
Right. Because you're because we can't actually do it alone. I mean, in the expedition world, no one person can execute an expedition, right? No one person by themself can actually get up Everest. And if you're going to get a team up Everest, it takes the whole team to get the whole team up Everest. So like, I think our adventures with God are the same and he actually created it to be that way.

00;23;17;29 - 00;23;43;27
Unknown
And so for me, I always lead with the posture of trust. Now, if if you, you know, violate that, then we're going to have a chat and you might see my more like Enneagram eight side, you know, So I might actually stab you with a fork. But like, I lead with trust, it's the opportunity first because I actually believe that God puts people together for a reason.

00;23;43;27 - 00;24;06;15
Unknown
And he has he has something there. But it having always worked and polycentric leadership, are built that whenever I hear these things that other leaders worry about, it kind of hurts my heart rate because you hear how lonely it is, how big the burden is. You know, people who are in leadership roles talk about how nobody knows what it's like.

00;24;06;17 - 00;24;23;18
Unknown
And it's not that they're lying, Right. I, I, I believe that I felt that. But my answer in my own life when I felt that burden, when I felt that loneliness was not to try harder or to read another book, although they should all read our book when it comes out. That's right. So for our book, right, that's all.

00;24;23;18 - 00;24;44;09
Unknown
That's the best one. My answer wasn't to try harder, but it was actually to share the burden because my brain went back to expedition mentality, which is, Wow, I'm really struggling on this lead climb where I'm going first and I have to like I have the sharp end of the rope. I'm putting the rope up. I can't seem to make this move.

00;24;44;11 - 00;25;07;10
Unknown
The answer isn't to just keep trying harder. The answer is to come down and another person on the team try and see if whatever the reason, their body type, their strength, whatever that moment, that day, they could move. They could make that move because then everybody else will be able to get up through it. Right. So when you hit that ceiling, when you hit that wall, you just trade it out.

00;25;07;13 - 00;25;30;07
Unknown
Right? If you're breaking trail through the snow and you get tired, you just trade out. And and so that paradigm I grew up in and I didn't even know to even question until I was in a job assignment after the Wilderness Ministry where there was solo leadership and everybody's like, Well, just figure it out. Like it like you're accountable for everything and it either succeeds or fails based on you.

00;25;30;07 - 00;25;49;29
Unknown
And I'm like, This is dumb. I'm not doing this. I'm creating a team. And if I need to be the person who's accountable only to the next level of the organization, I can understand that. I just think of that as a project manager. Right? But I'm going to share the burden because if it's God's idea, then God will help us.

00;25;50;01 - 00;26;10;17
Unknown
But if it's my idea, well, then I don't know if that will work out, and it probably won't. So this loneliness, this weight, I don't think we're actually supposed to carry by ourselves. I think that lack of grace is a sign that we're missing something, because I really, really, really believe scripture where Jesus says his yoke is easy, His burden is light.

00;26;10;19 - 00;26;33;17
Unknown
So if we're not feeling that, then we need to evaluate and ask God why? What are we missing? What is it that he wants to tell us about that? And in my experience, it's mostly been I'm trying to do it by myself and I'm not supposed to. So I see two sides to that. Right? So as a leader, inviting shared leadership means that I'm going to have to open myself up and scary.

00;26;33;17 - 00;26;55;23
Unknown
And that is scary, right? Super says. I realized that I have to admit my weakness. But then on the flip side of that, as someone who's followers, we already know the weaknesses of our leaders, right? And we sometimes call that toxic leadership because our leaders aren't willing to, you know, and being a leader, you realize that once you've sat in that seat, you go, there's so much that I'm thinking about.

00;26;55;26 - 00;27;21;24
Unknown
I'm not intentionally trying to harm my sheep or anybody. That's fine. But that's just the reality of there's so much on my plate right? And so my instinct is not naturally to share the burdens, right. Because that's vulnerable, but it's also just sometimes a gap thing. Right. So what would you what would you speak to in terms of toxic leadership, you know, which is the opposite of shared leadership?

00;27;21;26 - 00;27;46;28
Unknown
Well, so I'll I'll go on Jacob's thinking because he's he needs time to process because he's he's an internal processor in that is one of the things in this conversation that I had with my brother Andrew from the Wilderness Ministry just recently was one of the things that we didn't realize existed when we were doing our shared leadership in our toes because we we didn't realize that repair was an option.

00;27;47;01 - 00;28;13;09
Unknown
And by repair, I mean like if you have conflict, if you know, personal or or even we disagreed about the way a decision was made for the organization. And we also had personal conflict because we have some slightly different values. And we would argue about those like brother and sister, to the annoyance of everyone who was around us, was that I didn't know that you didn't have the that you had the option to not, like, figure it out.

00;28;13;11 - 00;28;45;20
Unknown
I mean, we lived in the same small town. We essentially did so much life together that of course we had to figure it out a course we had to repair. And I didn't realize until I was in denominational leadership that repair was an option that you could actually choose to not mend that relationship. And so for me, part of the thing that makes leadership toxic is not only the inability in the unwillingness to face blind, let's not say blind spots, because sometimes those are can be weaponized, but let's say limitations, right?

00;28;45;22 - 00;29;16;25
Unknown
My not an unwillingness to face my own limitations, but then also an unwillingness to repair and to say, you know what, I'm the boss. Just do it and never say you're sorry and never actually figure out how to like meet that person relationally. So to me, that kind of is what creates toxic leadership while in polycentric leadership, of course, you have to repair their your brother and sister and you're doing this together and you're equals in that power dynamic.

00;29;16;25 - 00;29;40;07
Unknown
One of and if there is high trust, there is transparency. Yeah and and because what I heard you saying there and like in answer to Julia's question is like what we might call toxic leadership, I think is produced when a leader just continues to wall themselves off into the tiny corner of things they're willing to do or talk about.

00;29;40;10 - 00;30;01;26
Unknown
Because when there's no repair, what I'm doing is I'm walling off a part of relationship and I'm going, okay, that part of our relationship, we're not going there anymore. That that that thing you just poked on, we're not going there anymore. And I'm creating this tinier and tinier box that I'm going to live in. I think about a conversation I had with my dad, who is was my pastor and mentor my whole life.

00;30;01;29 - 00;30;30;06
Unknown
And I like personality assessments. I think they're so helpful and they provide clarity. And my dad was such an intuitive leader and he would say, like, he didn't like them. He's like, I've heard too many people say, Well, that's not my gifting, so I don't do it. And it was like it was like because they're using that assessment as a label to hide behind and to to actually eliminate transparency rather than to reveal themselves to the people around them.

00;30;30;09 - 00;30;56;20
Unknown
And there's that sense of hiding that creates that toxic leadership. And I think there's and there's also like advice out there. There's a lot of bad leadership advice out there. And one of them is where you can actually share yourself with your people because they're going to use it against you or they're not mature enough. And there's like a like, there's like six major excuses that people fill in the blank with to say, well, you can't do that vulnerability, you can't expose yourself in that way.

00;30;56;26 - 00;31;28;03
Unknown
You can't share burden because they're because of them. And that part of the weight of the justification of leadership is to carry that extra burden as oppose. And that's not status thing that drives me crazy, like I'm a better Christian because I'm willing to carry more burden for people. Okay, Well, I don't see that anywhere in scripture. But we we have a lot of ways that we justify that closed ness, that guarded ness, and I don't find that that has good fruit.

00;31;28;03 - 00;31;50;16
Unknown
But I'm interested. What do you guys I mean, what do you see? What would you I respond to that. I was going to ask if you could share this story just have kind of where you're at just recently, you know, about you're pastoring a church. Yeah. And you were talking about that that transition of of your leadership right now because you are tool based and you have all of those you have all of the resources at you and this is what you do.

00;31;50;16 - 00;32;15;02
Unknown
Like you help churches. Yes. Yeah. So where we've been the last few years is we're casting a bit like we cast a vision to launch a particular multiplication model using a form of missional communities. And so essentially, like if you asked me privately, I'd say, Well, yeah, it's a church planting vision, right? But if you tell your people it's church planting, they get scared.

00;32;15;02 - 00;32;52;20
Unknown
So I just call it missional community and but like we kind of have taken a run at it over a couple of years and we kept pressing, kept training, and we've kind of reached this inflection point where what's actually helpful about the planning process we did is it's creating a a pinch point with the time based goal. And we got into the last year and we were like our leadership team of five, who I trust and they trust me like was was actually saying like, okay, if we're going to hit this in the next year, then we've got to really hit on the gas and like, we're not going to double our effort, we're going

00;32;52;20 - 00;33;15;22
Unknown
to triple our efforts, we're going to push people even harder. And as we started to unpack this, it started to not feel right and but I didn't know what else to do other than just like train for the goal, Train for the goal, push for the goal. And but yeah, it was a conversation with another pastor friend of mine because I was saying I really we've got to push these people to do this thing.

00;33;15;24 - 00;33;37;10
Unknown
And she's like, Well, tell me more about that. So I'm telling her about certain situations in our church. And I was telling her one thing and I said, Well, you know, like, these people tell me that my leadership has changed their life. Why would they trust me to know what their next step is? And she she said to me, Well, I think the real question is, why don't you trust God to tell them what their next step is?

00;33;37;12 - 00;33;54;09
Unknown
And that kind of like hit me like a ton of bricks and it was just because of our work schedules. I didn't talk to that friend for another like two weeks and that just like just because it work schedules and so. Right. You feel but we got on the gym again two weeks later. She's like, How are you doing?

00;33;54;11 - 00;34;16;02
Unknown
I'm doing great because but again, for me, like I do love when I can see it. Yeah. And it was like for me, what was so helpful about that conversation when she pointed that issue out to me was, my gosh, now I now I see what our problem is. I thought the problem was I wasn't leading hard enough, I wasn't training hard enough.

00;34;16;09 - 00;34;37;18
Unknown
I wasn't getting I wasn't connecting with people enough to get them to trust me enough when really, like the next thing to do isn't really mine to do, right. It's theirs to do. And and if I can just slow down and listen, they might actually know the next step. If I stop trying to control them and direct them and lead them.

00;34;37;21 - 00;35;00;10
Unknown
If I can just share leadership with my people, they might actually know where we need to go next. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing when the organization turns way, by the way. Yeah. Because then your leadership changes from directing them to holding on for dear life, well, they just get inspired by the Holy Spirit and like, just start doing stuff is a completely different posture and has a different type of stress.

00;35;00;10 - 00;35;23;14
Unknown
Yeah, it is beautiful. Yeah. And that's the beautiful thing of what we're trying to do here at who ology is. We want to help organizations want to help churches that are beginning to shift that, that are shift in that transition phase to create communities that are able to mature, to create communities that are filled with trust and bravery, and to begin to take those next steps of faith together, because that's really what God is doing.

00;35;23;14 - 00;35;35;25
Unknown
He's help. He's inviting us into a lifelong adventure following him. So thanks for joining us on this episode of The Ordinary Discipleship Podcast. We'll see you next week.