Response to TSL, Strategy, Self Sacrifice, and Christian Ministry//CM1 by Oliver
Hi Oliver,
I enjoyed reading your post and understand the disconnects you mention.
You said, “Though a church may be growing in its numbers it may not be serving its purpose. In some cases, churches may look foolish to others as they cut a program that appears to be thriving, or is bringing in significant revenue, but is not helping lead and grow people into mature disciples of Christ. These are strategic decision churches, or Christian organizations may have to may make as they integrate TSL.”
I think this is the heart of the matter and as you said, combining strategy as it is known in the business world and the Christian ideals of strategy are complicated. Like Jesus said, “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mathew 20.16). This goes against so much of the strategy that is used in business. But the interesting thing you said is that transformational servant leadership seems to bridge this difference and brings the “upside-downness” of Jesus to a “right-side-up” world.
Listening to our “gut” decisions (Ungerer, Ungerer, Herholdt, 2016) connects with TSL in Christian Ministry. Sometimes God speaks to us in intangible ways, and we respond by, as you said, “cut[ing] a program that appears to be thriving, or is bringing in significant revenue, but is not helping lead and grow people into mature disciples of Christ.” What seems to be counter-intuitive, like cutting a lucrative program is not a bad strategy if it is God who told us to do so. Further to this is how businesses look for timelines and countable results, but God’s timing is not ours and some things he does take a long time and other things much quicker than the business world could manage them.
Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwoodie say that the most critical work of a strategic leader is to bring out strategic leadership in others by bringing out the potential of each person towards the organizations’ goals (2014). Interestingly, this is one of the things followers of Jesus work towards as well; when people are changed by Jesus’ love, it makes them want to bring out the same transformation in others. And this is at the heart of the transformational servant leadership we are studying. Servant leadership as explained by Greenlead (Atha et al., 2018) cannot stand alone because it does not go far enough; people can lead in a servant way, but if their leadership ends, there may or may not be any significant change in the group. Transformational servant leadership focuses on the transformation, leaving the situation better than it was found. It could be argued that servant leadership also leaves the situation better than it was found but the change might not be sustainable. If people and organizations are transformed, they will never be the same, regardless of whether the leader is there or not.
Atha, D. L. (Ed.), Castellon, A., George, I., Laird, P., Mitchell, K., Page, D., Peregrym, D., Strong, H., Willaume, D., Wollf, R., Wu, T. (2018) MA leadership and MA in educational leadership monograph 2018. Unpublished manuscript. Trinity Western University: Langley BC.
Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie D. (2014) Becoming a Strategic Leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.
Ungerer, M., Ungerer, G., & Herholdt, J. (2016). Navigating Strategic Possibilities: Strategy Formulation and Execution Practices to Flourish. Randburg: KR Publishing.