{"id":33766,"date":"2023-10-31T01:23:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T08:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=33766"},"modified":"2023-10-31T01:23:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T08:23:28","slug":"leading-our-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leading-our-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading our Families"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

After a little more than a year of doctoral studies in leadership, I don\u2019t suppose we\u2019re experts yet, but I do think we can draw a few solid conclusions. Can we all agree that a good approach to God-honoring leadership might be:
1. Leading by means of compelling vision
2. Maintaining an unimpeachable character
3. Influencing rather than leading by tyrannical control

Jules Glanzer certainly thinks so. He calls them the three \u201cfrequencies\u201d of Kingdom leadership.
1. \u201cKingdom leaders seek God\u2019s kingdom rather than build their own empire.\u201d [1] (A vision doesn\u2019t get much more compelling than God\u2019s kingdom.)
2. \u201cKingdom leaders influence rather than control.\u201d [2]\u00a0
3. \u201cKingdom leaders work from inside out rather than outside in.\u201d [3] (Does that remind anyone else of Simon Walker\u2019s Leading Out of Who You Are? Glanzer elsewhere calls it leading \u201cwithout a note of hypocrisy.\u201d [4])

Glanzer\u2019s book very well may be my favorite leadership book we\u2019ve read thus far. Its principles were clear and linear and easily applicable. It\u2019s also true that its principles, each and every one, were equally applicable to my NPO and area of research \u2013 parenting. This book connected the dots between leadership and parenting in a new way for me. From here on out, I will quote Glanzer\u2019s book replacing the word \u201cleader\u201d with \u201cparent\u201d, \u201cleadership\u201d with \u201cparenting\u201d, etc.

\u201c[Parenting] is being that results in doing.\u201d [5] In my journey as a young parent I was quickly confronted with my own sin as I found myself overwhelmed with impatience, resentment, and anger. Up until becoming a parent, I could pretty much manage all that ugliness and keep it hidden from others. But the sleep deprivation and the 24-7 nature of parenting meant I had nowhere left to hide and no internal resources to even try. This experience of seeing my own sin and not liking what I saw set me on a journey of transformation made possible only by the Holy Spirit. My \u201cbeing\u201d had to change first so that my \u201cdoing\u201d could then change.

This calls to mind Simon Walker\u2019s analogy of the front stage and the backstage. [6] While I could maybe keep my inner ugliness hidden on the backstage, thus invisible to anyone in my \u201cpublic life,\u201d there\u2019s no hiding the backstage from our families. There is no more down-and-dirty venue in which to work out your theology and all the Fruit which the Spirit has (hopefully) worked in your life than in the context of family.

I am by no means the first to connect these ideas to parenting. Kara Powell at the Fuller Youth Institute emphasizes the need to open up and show our children how genuine our faith is and how it affects our life. She goes so far as to say that this is one of the most important factors determining whether a young adult sticks with his or her faith. [7]

\u201cGiven this relationship between who we are and how we lead, tending to matters of the heart is the [parent\u2019s] first priority. The song you are composing requires you understand yourself, cultivate good character, and identify the values that are important to you.\u201d [8] The farther I go down the rabbit hole of this NPO research the more obvious it becomes. Parenting is modeling. Our attitudes and actions shape our children\u2019s worldview and become their \u201cnormal\u201d. Every parent needs to ask themselves, \u201cAm I modeling the attitudes, behaviors, etc. that I want my children to adopt?\u201d The answer is likely no to some extent, but we need not be overwhelmed by guilt. We need only to \u201ctend to matters of the heart\u201d and \u201ccultivate good character\u201d and \u201cidentify the values that are important to you.\u201d In this way we can parent by influence rather than parent by controlling our children.

In the interest of discussion, I will finish with a few more adapted Glanzer quotes and perhaps you all could comment if they speak to your journey as parents.

\u201cAn effective [parent] can hear and discern the many voices while at the same time call other voices into a harmonious sound of imagining and creating the future.\u201d [9]\u00a0

\u201cListen, See, Learn, Do, Love. These five words are the scale from which all [parenting] happens.\u201d [10]

\u201cThe actions taken may or may not be popular. The truth is, if you want to make everyone happy, sell ice cream. If you want to participate in what God is doing in the world, then respond to the call by taking action to fill God\u2019s world with his music.\u201d [11]\u00a0

__________________________
1 Jules Glanzer, The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune <\/em>Your Life and Influence <\/em>(Invite Press, 2023) Kindle location 1642.<\/p>\r\n

2 Ibid., Kindle location 1666.<\/p>\r\n

3 Ibid., Kindle location 1682.<\/p>\r\n

4 Ibid., Kindle location 962.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

5 Ibid., Kindle location 903.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

6 Simon P. Walker, Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em>, (Piquant, 2007).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

7 \u201cThe Holy Post\u202f: Episode 171: \u2018Sticky Faith\u2019 with Guest Kara Powell!,\u201d accessed November 15, 2022, https:\/\/thephilvischerpodcast.libsyn.com\/episode-171-sticky-faith-with-guest-kara-powell<\/a><\/p>\r\n

8 Jules Glanzer, The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune <\/em>Your Life and Influence <\/em>(Invite Press, 2023) Kindle location 950.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

9 Ibid. Kindle location 249.<\/p>\r\n

10 Ibid., Kindle location 316.<\/p>\r\n

11 Ibid., Kindle location 364.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a little more than a year of doctoral studies in leadership, I don\u2019t suppose we\u2019re experts yet, but I do think we can draw a few solid conclusions. Can we all agree that a good approach to God-honoring leadership might be:1. Leading by means of compelling vision2. Maintaining an unimpeachable character 3. Influencing rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"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":[2310],"tags":[2489,2844],"class_list":["post-33766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-glanzer","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766","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\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33769,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions\/33769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}