{"id":9876,"date":"2016-10-27T10:35:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T17:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9876"},"modified":"2016-10-27T10:35:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T17:35:31","slug":"the-priesthood-of-all-beleaders-see-what-i-did-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-priesthood-of-all-beleaders-see-what-i-did-there\/","title":{"rendered":"The Priesthood of all beleaders (see what I did there?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com\/736x\/94\/71\/3b\/94713b58712fbba856e68147e81342e2.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wooden was so much more than a good basketball coach<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This wonderful book,\u00a0<em>Heroic Leadership,\u00a0<\/em>by Chris Lowney is a great insight\u00a0into the history and inner workings of the Jesuit order and as well as being an appealing alternative to many of the\u00a0clich\u00e9d leadership tracks full of lists of tips and tricks to becoming a fabulous leader.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of these fad inspired tips and tricks, the Jesuits put forth four values and principles that help to create real &#8216;leadership substance&#8217;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Self-awareness<\/li>\n<li>Ingenuity<\/li>\n<li>Love<\/li>\n<li>Heroism(Lowney, kindle location 82)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These principles, Lowney asserts, lie at the heart of what has made the Jesuits examples of positive leadership, but also go a long way to explaining the impressive longevity of the Jesuit order. \u00a0Another key component of the Jesuit ethos that makes it particularly applicable to our current culture and world &#8211; it was born into a world of chaotic change and upheaval that was happening at an as yet unprecedented rate.<\/p>\n<p>Lowney \u00a0says:\u00a0<em>Because the Jesuit company was cast into this increasingly complex plex and constantly changing world, it&#8217;s no great surprise that its organizational architects prized the same mindset and behaviors that modern companies value in today&#8217;s similarly tumultuous environments: the abilities to innovate, to remain flexible and adapt constantly, to set ambitious tious goals, to think globally, to move quickly, to take risks. (Lowney, kindle location 32-34)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is a poignant insight and a good reminder to all of us that, although the &#8216;times they are a changin&#8221; and the world is different than it has ever been, in some ways, it has always been thus. \u00a0And our human experience of change, community, organization and leadership is not so different than it was, even 450 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>So many things stood out to me in this book, \u00a0but the most important to me was an insight about the nature of leadership and who might be expected to be a leader.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Jesuits&#8217; principles made the company better because they made individual Jesuits better. Their principles are rooted in the notions that we&#8217;re all leaders and that our whole lives are filled with leadership opportunities. Leadership is not reserved for a few Pooh-Bahs sitting atop large companies, nor do leadership opportunities arise only &#8220;on stage&#8221; at work. We can be leaders in everything we do-in our work and in our daily\u00a0lives, when teaching others or learning from others. And most of us do all those things in the course of any given day. (lowney, kindle location 48)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For me this idea conjures up the biblical idea of the &#8216;Priesthood of all believers&#8217;. \u00a0My first job out of college was as an interim youth minister (1 of 2) for a 3,000 member church in a wealthy Pittsburgh suburb. \u00a0 At that church I was first introduced to the term, &#8216;professional Christian&#8217;. \u00a0It was used by a parent to describe his perception of my role in his child&#8217;s life. \u00a0I was, in essence, the &#8216;Christian tutor&#8217;, it was my job to handle and shape that part of his child&#8217;s life.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, this parent wasn&#8217;t alone in this understanding &#8211; to understand that all you had to do was watch the church parking lot around 9:30am on a Sunday morning: a line of cars &#8211; sometimes 20 or more &#8211; reaching back to the road, of parents dropping their kids off for Sunday school, while they went out to grab breakfast, or get a coffee or go grocery shopping. \u00a0These parents had completely abdicated their role as spiritual leaders for their children and, unintentionally to be sure, communicated a very clear message about the importance of faith in their lives.<\/p>\n<p>If we are all leaders, Lowney argues, then leadership is less about what leaders do and more about &#8216;who leaders are&#8217; &#8211; and this is true for our faith as well. \u00a0If we believe that we are all called to be &#8216;Priests&#8217; &#8211; administering the sacraments of our daily lives as a witness of God&#8217;s love for the world &#8211; then this priesthood has much less to do with saying the right things or even believing the &#8216;right&#8217; things. \u00a0The quality and efficacy of our leadership\/priesthood is located not in those things, but instead in who we are.<\/p>\n<p>This is a lofty &#8211; and, to be honest &#8211; sobering call to those of us seeking to be &#8216;leaders&#8217; in the church and for all of us called to be priests of the Most High God in and for this world. \u00a0And it is certainly a calling that will not be effectively met by quick fix tips and tricks, but rather by steadily applying core guiding principles for our journey.<\/p>\n<p>Lowney says, &#8216;<em>A leader&#8217;s most compelling leadership tool is who he or she is: a person who understands what he or she values and wants, who is anchored by certain principles, and who faces the world with\u00a0a consistent outlook. Leadership behavior develops naturally once this internal foundation has been laid. If it hasn&#8217;t been, mere technique can never compensate.&#8217;\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0(Lowney, Kindle Locations 163-164).<\/p>\n<p>This point was driven home for me while I served at a small Episcopal church in Connecticut. \u00a0Having been called there to create a youth ministry program and being the only other full time staff person, I worked very closely with the Rector (priest) of the church.<\/p>\n<p>When I began my time there, Father Tom had been rector for 14 years. \u00a0He is a wonderful, kind and faithful man, but he is not what many leadership books would lift up as a prototypical leader. \u00a0He was disorganized, always late (we operated on what the congregation called &#8216;St. Tim&#8217;s time, which was about 5-10 minutes late), often forgetful and he was a procrastinator &#8211; often beginning his sermons with the phrase, &#8216;Last night as I writing&#8230;.&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Yet in the 16 years he ended up serving that church, he took what had been a very small and fractured church with very limited resources and grew it into a dynamic, vibrant and growing community of trust, support and service. \u00a0It was a truly amazing feat &#8211; the work of the Holy Spirit, to be sure &#8211; but also the result of Tom&#8217;s faith and faithfulness.<\/p>\n<p>Realizing that he had, in his own words, &#8216;taken the church as far as he was equipped to lead it&#8217;, he moved on. \u00a0The pastoral search that followed resulted in St. Tim&#8217;s hiring a gem of a candidate: young, dynamic, highly motivated and visionary, the new rector came to St. Tim&#8217;s after turning down multiple other offers &#8211; the church felt genuinely blessed. \u00a0The new rector had all of the\u00a0<em>leadership skills<\/em> that everyone recognized, as much as we loved Father Tom, that he didn&#8217;t possess.<\/p>\n<p>However, just a few months into his appointment, problems began to surface: reports of erratic behavior, paranoia, jealousy and even anger management issues began to demonstrate themselves and this vibrant, wonderful community quickly began to fall apart. \u00a0In less than two years almost 40% of the church had left, every staff member (except for the rector) was gone and the church was a shell of it&#8217;s former self. \u00a0This rector with all the\u00a0<em>skills\u00a0<\/em>needed to lead the church to new heights, instead steered it directly into it&#8217;s demise for one simple reason,\u00a0all of the skills he possessed were insignificant next to that which he was lacking, the <em>internal foundation of a leader. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As Lowney says, &#8216;<em>Leadership is not an act. \u00a0It is my life, a way of living. \u00a0(Lowney, Kindle Location 123).<\/em> \u00a0Let us all strive to a way of living that is worthy of the call that has been placed on us: to be leaders and priests.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter \" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRiFQ3Jl6hgHLkB1ITFp-6bmK1xnc2UseSDqyDaB-OBgFSeKCPs\" alt=\"\" width=\"697\" height=\"253\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This wonderful book,\u00a0Heroic Leadership,\u00a0by Chris Lowney is a great insight\u00a0into the history and inner workings of the Jesuit order and as well as being an appealing alternative to many of the\u00a0clich\u00e9d leadership tracks full of lists of tips and tricks to becoming a fabulous leader. Instead of these fad inspired tips and tricks, the Jesuits [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"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":[933],"class_list":["post-9876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lowney","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876","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\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}