13 Leading vs Managing

So there's a very good reason why we call people community leaders and not community managers. Because there's a significant difference between leading and managing. Often people end up just managing when they're busy, when they're feeling low on capacity, when they're lacking vision. Managers just maintain and react.

A Leadership Example: Acting Before Problems Escalate

Leaders envisage and are proactive. There's many examples I could give to illustrate this point. One of them would be when I was asked to go and lead a particular congregation. As I arrived, I realized there were a few issues that needed dealing with.

One of which was, a lady in the congregation who decided to marry a guy and neither of them were free to remarry. Both of them were divorced and in their particular circumstances, weren't free to remarry. But I had no relationship there because I'd just arrived.

I had to ask one of the other elders to deal with that situation. But as we discussed it as an eldership team, it became aware to me that what had happened is people were now reacting to a problem. They were now reacting to a situation where somebody wanted to get remarried.

But these two people, this young guy and this young girl, had actually been in a relationship for six months. My question to the elders was, "Why did nobody have this conversation six months ago? When somebody first saw them sitting next to each other in church?"

Now, of course, sitting next to each other in church is not a sin. But a leader can scope forward and say, "I can see where this is going." A manager waits until there's a problem and then reacts. The difficulty is, of course, once somebody's in love, you're not going to persuade them to do something else.

If somebody had scoped and dealt with that on day one, before our hearts had been given away, we probably would have been more successful in leading both of those people into what Jesus wanted them to do. So leading rather than managing has many components.

Leading From Vision, Not Reaction

One of them is we lead from our values, not from necessity. We lead with vision, not with reaction. The scripture tells us that for lack of vision, people perish. Or for lack of vision, people cast off restraint. That's Proverbs. But the words there are very informative.

The concept of lack of vision basically means without a prophetic revelation. Without this vision of Christ. Without a vision of the pearl of great price. Without an idea of the destination. And without this idea of eternal reward people perish or cast off restraint.

And that word for casting off restraint is the same word used when Moses is coming down the mountain after receiving the Ten Commandments. And the Israelites have made the golden calf and they're just in this mass activity of pagan worship. That's the word used there.

They've cast off restraint. They've cast off the yoke of the Lord to do their own thing. And that is what will happen if we just try and manage people rather than lead people. The leader Himself needs to have a prophetic revelation. Needs to have a vision for the group and needs to have a vision for the people within that group.

Now, of course, because we're a team, we need to have one vision. Not everybody having their own vision. As Andrew often says, the word division means two visions. So two visions brings division. We need to have a vision for the people, but it needs to be one common vision as a church.

And each community is an expression of that. So, we need to lead out of our values. We need to be leading people with a vision of how they fit into those values. And we need to be scoping forward. We need to be anticipating.

A leader figures out where the fires are gonna start. A manager tries to put out fires. A leader sees what somebody can become. A manager complains that you're not becoming it. We need leaders in the Kingdom of God. We don't need managers. We need guys who are able to take people forward.

And there's an old saying, "If you think you're a leader and nobody's following, you're simply going for a walk." And we don't want people who are simply going for a walk. We want leaders. We want influencers. We want you as community leaders to be those who influence others.

Three Modes of Influence: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos

Interestingly, thousands of years ago, Aristotle, the famous philosopher, talked about three means of persuasion, or three modes of influence. He said if we want to influence other people, there's three aspects to doing that, three facets of it. He called them logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos meaning word. And in the Greek concept, or within Greek philosophy, logos wasn't just word, it was logic, it was discourse, it was engagement. And so he said, one way we influence people is with logical discourse, with debate, with discussion, with facts, with figures, with truth.

Logos: Truth, Scripture, and Conviction

Now for us, within the Kingdom, certainly in a post-truth culture, where everybody's encouraged to speak your truth. Oprah says, "Oh, it's so powerful when somebody speaks their truth." No, it's powerful when somebody speaks THE TRUTH. And so we've got to teach people THE TRUTH.

We've got to rely on scripture. As a leader, I would encourage you to often hide behind scripture to show the power of what Jesus wants rather than what you want. The truth is, sometimes you will influence people and they'll do what you want them to do because they want to please you.

But unless that becomes an internal conviction, because it's based on the power of the Word, then it won't last. When the rubber hits the road, when stress comes, that external conviction fails. And you'll be meeting them again. And that's why often we are meeting people and having coffees with people and dealing with cycles of behavior.

Ethos: Character and Credibility

Because we don't actually deal with a conviction through truth that is internalized and set in place. So logos is important. Truth and persuasion and all of that, that can influence people. The next thing is ethos, and that is basically your credibility, your character, and that influences people.

We often quote Bob Mumford who said that, if I have mumps and tell people I've got measles, when I come in contact with them, they're not going to catch measles. They're going to catch mumps. People are going to catch what I have, not what I say.

And as a leader, if you want to be a true leader of influence, you need to be somebody who is what you say you want people to be. They need to imitate you. Just as Paul said, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." So it's not about what you say.

Pathos: Emotional Connection Without Manipulation

It's about your credibility and it's about your character as a person. Your degree of influence will be on how credible you are as a person. And then the third one is pathos. Aristotle was ahead of his time. He understood that people generally make decisions, not for logical reasons, but for emotional reasons.

We are very emotional beings. Yes, even me. Happy face. But, people generally make decisions for emotional reasons. And then justify it through logic. Think of guys who buy a fancy car. They've bought the car that gives them an emotional feeling, but then they tell everybody else all the logical reasons why they bought it.

We justify our behavior with logic, but we make our decisions often emotionally. Think about it, for example, a charity. They can either try and get money out of you by giving you a statistic of how many millions of children are going hungry in Africa.

Or they can show you a picture of a starving child and give him a name and say, "this is Thabo. Thabo won't have anything to eat today unless you help." Which impacts you most? It's the personal picture of a child. There's an emotional connection.

Even Stalin knew this. He said, "A million deaths is a statistic. One death is a tragedy." And so we need to engage people on an emotional level. Now, overdoing that is manipulation. If people feel they're being manipulated, it's counterproductive and people don't want to be manipulated.

But people will follow you. People will be influenced by you. Not only if you love them, but if they feel loved. That is two distinct things. Loving people is one thing. Knowing how to let them feel loved by you is another. That's personally one of my weaknesses.

I do love people. My challenge is, I'm not always very good at people understanding that I love them. But as community leaders, I want to encourage you to be people of influence. Taking people forward. And doing so, through the Word of God, through your character and through loving people.