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<\/a><\/p>\nOur fellow Elite 8 Cohort member, Dan Kreiss, had a fascinating title for his blog last week. It read, \u201cCorporations or Faith Communities?\u201d I have been thinking about that title, while wondering if I was guilty for the past 15 years of worrying more about keeping the \u201ccorporation\u201d of my local church going, rather than fostering an authentic community of faith. Was I more interested in \u201cbutts in the pew\u201d and \u201cbucks in the plate\u201d at the expense of significantly deeper spiritual issues of people\u2019s faith?<\/p>\n
Once I sat with a gentleman named H.B. London (now deceased, brother-in-law of James Dobson, from Focus on the Family). I asked Pastor London, considered by many to be a pastor to pastors, \u201cHow do I stop focusing so much on the numbers every Sunday?\u201d His simple response has hounded me for years. \u201cThat is the dark side of being a Pastor!\u201d<\/p>\n
It reminded me of the advice from the book we read early on in this program Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership: How to become an Effective Leader by Confronting Potential Failures<\/em>, by McIntosh and Rima,<\/p>\n \u201cSpiritual composting is about allowing the Holy Spirit to transform the less desirable aspects of our personality and then reintegrating them into our life\u2026\u201d [1]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Enter in Dennis Tourish, writing The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective.\u00a0<\/em>Was I guilty of leading my church with good intentions, but also with self-centered personality and false charisma?<\/p>\n I appreciated his admission, \u201cIt is obvious that I take a more critical approach in this book.\u201d [2] No duh, he put the word \u201ccritical\u201d into his title. In our LGP studies, we have been well taught to be critical thinkers, so I find myself thinking critically about my leadership and about the leadership of the church.<\/p>\n It is readily apparent that prior studies of leaders have identified toxic leadership behaviors, narcissistic and destructive tendencies [3], poor decision making, even megalomania on the part of leaders. [4] Some people would simply insert the word \u201cTrump\u201d in there. Ooohh, that was controversial\u2026<\/p>\n Tourish warns, \u201cThere is a chorus of voices that present leaders as saints, commanders, architects, pedagogues and physicians\u2026indispensable for human prosperity.\u201d [5]<\/p>\n It would be tempting to let my mind run away with negative thoughts about so called \u201cmega church\u201d pastors or those darned \u201ctelevision evangelists\u201d who supposedly get rich on the corporation of doing church with self-serving motivations. However, I have rarely if ever truly met such a person.<\/p>\n Therefore, I found myself asking, \u201cWould the greats in our Christian heritage be guilty of possessing the DARK SIDE in their ministries, and would Tourish discount them according to today\u2019s standards? Why not go for the biggest name in my tribe\u2019s history, JOHN WESLEY.<\/p>\n Professor W. Bentley, from the University of South Africa, cites \u201cCritics of John Wesley may argue that the man himself is not a good example of leadership as his personality often proved to have disagreeable aspects. Although he was highly motivated, he was sometimes perceived to come across as being too strong willed (stubborn), dictatorial and domineering These traits led to the nickname \u201cPope John\u201d among some of his followers. [6]<\/p>\n But do we throw the baby out with the bath water because of their flaws? I hope not. In our world today, we might be tempted to do so, quickly. Thankfully, John Wesley tried to build in accountability into his daily life, by doing the following,<\/p>\n \u201cIt must be noted that although Wesley was strong imperfect, he showed an\u00a0approachability to people and was open enough to be called to account for his leadership style at the Methodist Conference of 1766. Here he was answerable to the very people who saw him as their leader. It would be a grave injustice to understand his leadership model and influence through the lens of these personality flaws.\u201d [7]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, in my research of Wesley, I found the antidote to megalomaniac leadership, and to my own struggles with focusing on potentially wrong benchmarks of my leadership. Christianity Today, stated this helpful suggestion in an article titled John Wesley: Methodist Pietist, <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u201cAll actions had to be centered on bringing glory to God, and not the self!\u201d<\/strong> [8] (Bold mine)<\/p>\n Bam!\u00a0 There it is. Wesley organized people into small groups called \u201cclasses\u201d, who would hold each other accountable for worship, fellowship, Christian living, social interaction and the celebration of the sacraments. In fact, class \u201cleaders\u201d asked questions of each other like the following, \u201cWhat known sins have you committed since our last meeting?\u201d or \u201cWhat have you thought, said or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?\u201d [9]<\/p>\n The use of the term leader <\/em>in \u201cclass leader\u201d is deceptive as it suggests an hierarchical structure to which people had to conform. This was not the case. Class leaders were seen as Christians who were themselves on a spiritual journey, but who facilitated accountability. [10]<\/p>\n In conclusion, this week\u2019s reading helped me not go too far with the fascination of leaders, while at the same time, realizing leaders are simply human, with known flaws. May God continue to CALL authentic leaders who are humble servants, who point people often to Jesus, all the while giving glory to God!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] McIntosh, Gary L., and Samuel D. Rima.\u00a0Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership: How to Become an Effective Leader by Confronting Potential Failures<\/em>. New Dehli: Good Times Books, 2010. Kindle Edition. Loc. 2008.<\/p>\n [2] Tourish, Dennis.\u00a0The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective<\/em>. Hove: Routledge, 2013. Kindle Edition. Loc. 233.<\/p>\n [3] Ibid., Loc. 134.<\/p>\n [4] Ibid., Loc. 9.<\/p>\n [5] Ibid., Loc. 134.<\/p>\n [6] Bentley, W. “The Formation of Christian Leaders: A Wesleyan Approach.” SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online. 2004. Accessed February 05, 2019. http:\/\/www.scielo.org\/.<\/p>\n [7] Ibid.<\/p>\n [8] Shellnutt, Kate. “John Wesley: Methodical Pietist.” Christian History | Learn the History of Christianity & the Church. 2018. Accessed February 05, 2019. https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/.<\/p>\n [9]\u00a0 Foxe, John. “Sacred Texts: Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.” Legends of the Gods, The Egyptian Texts: Introduction: Summary: I. The Legend of the God Neb-er-tcher, and the History of Creation. 1848. Accessed February 05, 2019. http:\/\/www.sacred-texts.com\/chr\/martyrs\/fox120.htm.<\/p>\n [10] Bentley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Image by CodeCarvings Piczard # FREE Community Edition # on 2016-02-04. http:\/\/piczard.com) Our fellow Elite 8 Cohort member, Dan Kreiss, had a fascinating title for his blog last week. It read, \u201cCorporations or Faith Communities?\u201d I have been thinking about that title, while wondering if I was guilty for the past 15 years of worrying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1439],"class_list":["post-21220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tourish","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21222,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21220\/revisions\/21222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}