{"id":9883,"date":"2016-10-27T12:11:30","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T19:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9883"},"modified":"2016-10-27T12:11:30","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T19:11:30","slug":"of-heroes-and-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/of-heroes-and-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Heroes and Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"statue\"<\/a>

Tourist in Macao takes a picture with the statue of Ricci<\/p><\/div>\n

Most leadership books that flood bookstores are focused on one of two organizations:\u00a0 successful businesses or successful sports teams.\u00a0 The book\u00a0Heroic Leadership\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Chris Lowney invites the reader to develop leadership skills from an unlikely source:\u00a0 The 450-year-old monastic order known as the Jesuits.<\/p>\n

The book outlines the history of The Society of Jesus, beginning with their founder, Ignatius Loyola, in 1534.\u00a0 Several examples were given of remarkable men who lived heroically.\u00a0 As I read through the book, I was excited to see two names that have been heroes of mine for many years:\u00a0 Francis Xavier and Mateo Ricci.\u00a0 \u00a0These men are rock stars<\/em> to missiologists.\u00a0 If Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, and David Livingstone are \u201cThe Beatles\u201d of missionary history, Xavier and Ricci were \u201cLittle Richard\u201d and \u201cElvis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only does Xavier have a rock star name, his boldness is the stuff of legend.\u00a0 When one Jesuit dropped out who was selected for a dangerous assignment (possibly a suicide mission) to take the gospel to India, Xavier was asked to be the replacement.\u00a0 Francis Xavier replied “\u2019Splendid. I’m your man,\u2018 as later Jesuit generations often rendered it. Within forty-eight hours he had patched up his extra pair of pants, visited the pope for a blessing, packed up his life, and departed.\u201d (Kindle Loc 1227)<\/p>\n

Xavier reached an unfathomable goal, to begin a healthy Christian work in India.\u00a0 He could have rested on his success.\u00a0 Instead, he set his sights on all of Asia.\u00a0 Xavier died on the way to China after a less than fruitful mission to Japan.\u00a0 His legendary vision can inspire us all when we are tempted to think small.<\/em><\/p>\n

Matteo Ricci has been one of my heroes for decades.\u00a0 To this day, evangelical missionaries and atheist Chinese scholars hold this Jesuit pioneer in high esteem.\u00a0 I have personally seen the statue of Ricci that stands next to the ruins of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral in Macau.\u00a0 Tourists from mainland China line up to get their picture taken with this 17th<\/sup> century priest.<\/p>\n

Matteo Ricci built upon the foundation that Xavier laid.\u00a0 He lived in the Portuguese settlement of Macau where he became proficient in the Chinese language.\u00a0 Making it all the way to the capital of Beijing, \u00a0Ricci pioneered the \u00a0\u201cradical strategy of \u2018inculturation,\u2019 a term coined by later Jesuits to describe their strategy of assimilating themselves to their host cultures.\u201d (Kindle Loc 724).\u00a0 \u00a0By adopting the dress of a Confucian scholar, he presented himself in a way that the Chinese could understand.\u00a0 By sharing new Western technologies with the Chinese elite, he gained favor in their eyes.\u00a0 Not only did he translate some of the Bible into Chinese, Ricci was also a scholar of Confusion thought.\u00a0 To this day, many missionaries who examine ways to contextualize the gospel without losing its essence, look to Ricci as an example.<\/p>\n

More than a history book, Heroic Leadership<\/em> gives us a collection of guidelines from the Jesuits that can inspire us all as we seek to become better leaders.<\/p>\n

I was amazed at the number of axioms that stood out to me.\u00a0 It would take more space than I am allowed to be able to delve into them, but I will list some of my favorites:<\/p>\n

“Work as if success depended on your own efforts-but trust as if all depended on God.\u201d \u2013 Ignatius Loyola (Kindle Loc 56)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026the leader figures out where we need to go, points us in the right direction, gets us to agree that we need to get there, and rallies us through the inevitable obstacles that separate us from the promised land.\u201d (Kindle Loc 110)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re all leaders, and we’re leading all the time, well or poorly. Leadership springs from within. It’s about who I am as much as what I do. Leadership is not an act. It is my life, a way of living. I never complete the task of becoming a leader. It’s an ongoing process. (Kindle Loc 125)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job of Jesuit managers was not to persuade recruits what to do but to equip them with the skills to discern on their own what needed to be done.\u201d\u00a0 (Kindle Loc 128)<\/p>\n

\u201cThose labeled followers will inevitably act like followers, sapped of the energy and drive to seize their own leadership chances.\u201d\u00a0 (Kindle Loc 159)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur defining “moment” is a pattern slowly etched through a lifetime studded with ordinary opportunities to make subtle differences.\u201d (Kindle Loc 881)<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone leads, and everyone can lead all the time. On rare occasions those leadership moments are dramatic and obvious; more often they are subtle, easily overlooked opportunities that, taken together, can form a lifetime of positive leadership influence.\u201d (Kindle Loc 889)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe paradox is that the energizing power lies precisely in the combination of nonnegotiable core beliefs and a willing embrace of change.\u201d (Kindle Loc 2424)<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want your team to perform heroically, be a hero yourself. If you want your employees to support one another, support them with the encouragement, loyalty, and honest coaching that helps each \u2018run at full speed towards perfection.\u2019” (Kindle Loc 2786)<\/p>\n

These axioms, combined with the many true stories of bravery, paint a picture of a style of leadership that is needed today.\u00a0 Instead of using people to gain results, we are challenged to develop people who will, in turn, do quality work.\u00a0 The classic hypocrite-leader who presents a \u201cdo as I say but not as I do\u201d mantra has no place in this leadership model.\u00a0 In Heroic Leadership<\/em>, our value is not placed on our results or the results of our team.\u00a0 Our value is intrinsic.\u00a0 Our success is not based on a scoreboard, but on the character of the individual.<\/p>\n

This is brilliantly illustrated in the account of Bento De Goes, the Jesuit pioneer who attempted the impossible:\u00a0 to travel by land across the Himalayas from India to China.\u00a0 De Goes died along the way.\u00a0 Some would account him as a failure, yet the book lifts De Goes up\u00a0as a success.\u00a0 This is the essence of Lowney\u2019s view of Heroic Leadership.<\/em>\u00a0 Leadership measured by the character, the vision, and the actions of an individual, not the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most leadership books that flood bookstores are focused on one of two organizations:\u00a0 successful businesses or successful sports teams.\u00a0 The book\u00a0Heroic Leadership\u00a0by Chris Lowney invites the reader to develop leadership skills from an unlikely source:\u00a0 The 450-year-old monastic order known as the Jesuits. The book outlines the history of The Society of Jesus, beginning with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"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":[747,944,938,35],"class_list":["post-9883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cocanougher","tag-heroic","tag-jesuits","tag-leadership","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883","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\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}