Healthy Leaders | Issue 17
Failing small, gentle correction, and playing the blame-game. Also: destroy your culture in 10 easy steps.
Happy New Year, friends! Welcome to Issue 17 of Healthy Leaders.
In this issue ‒ a chronological Bible reading plan, failing small, gentle correction, and playing the blame-game. Also: a bunch of ways you can thoroughly ruin the culture in your organization in 2024. Let’s dive in.
Read the Bible with LeaderSource in 2024!
This year, our LeaderSource team will be reading through the entire Bible chronologically, with this plan from Bible.com, and we’d love for you to join us. The plan includes opportunities to talk over what you’re reading with our team. We’re only two days in, so jump on now! Note: If you have trouble accessing the plan, try opening it on mobile in your Bible app.
Distinguishing Judgment from Godly Reproof
Fight of Faith unpacks the difference between using the Word of God as a weapon, or offering it as gentle correction. The first does more damage than good. The second requires us to apply it to ourselves first.
“There are a few different ways people might try to rebuke someone with the word of God. Only one of them is correct. First, we could act as if all standards of conduct are relative and not correct anyone except those who try to correct others. This self-refuting judgment, of course, is hypocrisy at its finest. Second, we could act as if the moral law does not apply to us and condemn anyone who violates it, but this type of condemnation is the actual definition of judging. Or, finally, we could look at our shortcomings under the moral law and approach the one who is erring by saying there is a standard God wants us to follow because of His love for us, and neither of us is above that standard. Along with both of us being under the same moral requirements, we both fall short, so let us work on our shortcomings together. After all, His standards are an expression of His love.”
Seven Things That Happen When Pastors Blame Others
Chuck Lawless is at it again, warning us about what will happen if we don’t accept responsibility for our actions as leaders.
We stop growing personally. That happens when the problems we face are always somebody else’s issues. We have little need to grow if the issues aren’t ours in the first place.
We risk living with bitterness. We give our lives for a church, but they don’t listen, follow, or sacrifice. It’s still our job, though, so we still show up – but we’re hurting and bitter at the same time.
We miss God’s hand in the difficulties. God often teaches us about Himself and about ourselves in our deepest struggles. If, however, we don’t see a need to grow—and all the problems are really others’—we miss this opportunity. …
If you’d like to get a handle on this particular issue, we have a design for you.
Fail Small, Fail Early
Admired Leadership offers a reminder that failure is a vital training ground for emerging leaders — and that permission to do so, in a limited environment where the repercussions aren’t devastating, is not only exactly what your leaders need to grow. It also helps top leaders test their plans before committing to them fully.
“Once confronted with a failure, good leaders do their best to make the best of the insights and learnings that only failure can highlight, but the goal is always to prevent as much damage as possible from failing in the first place.
Leaders who try new and risky initiatives or strategies often attempt to limit the downside of potential failure by starting small. Instead of an all-encompassing introduction of a new idea or strategy, they apply it in a smaller test case to see what happens. If the new initiative is unsuccessful, the damage is contained.
The learning from the failure can be used to debug the strategy before it is introduced again in another limited case. If wildly successful, leaders can scale the idea quickly and still benefit from the power of the idea. But by failing small, the enterprise is protected from significant harm.”
If you’re looking for ways to grow in learning from your failures, we’ve got a design for that too.
10 Ways to Destroy the Culture of Your Ministry
Malcolm Webber proposes a different path for all those ambitious leaders and followers out there tired of doing it the hard way. Seriously! Why would you try to build leaders and nurture culture when you could just actively destroy it?
Number 1 is, of course, the most important and compelling way forward:
“Be so busy with your great vision and your amazing ministry work for God that you have no time for God Himself.”
But number 4 is an equal-opportunity doozy:
“Be sure to continually point out the flaws of whomever it is that has the joy of being your leader. Don’t only focus on the major things; you’ll be amazed at the power of criticizing very small things. In fact, the smaller the better. Refreshingly easy to do well, this method works perfectly in any culture or context. Don’t limit it to your ministry work; try it at home!”
And number 8 cuts right to the heart:
“Rely more on positive human examples than on those namby-pamby people who apparently enjoy suffering…. That “cross” stuff is for losers!”
How to Develop a Culture of Bible Study in Your Church
If you’d rather not destroy the culture of your ministry, Peter Krol at Logos offers a way to develop it instead:
“There is one question I receive more than any other when Christians discover I’m involved in a collegiate discipleship ministry: What materials or resources do you use?
I appreciate the eagerness behind the question, as folks generally aim to improve their own efforts to make disciples of Christ. But sadly, my answer doesn’t usually satisfy the inquirer.
The Bible. We use the Bible to make disciples.
Now I concede that we have found a variety of extra-biblical books to help with a variety of topics, and we may put such resources to use in particular situations. But we have no overarching, pre-written curriculum we follow to help us make disciples of college students. By conviction, we sit down with students, open God’s Word, read it, and discuss it.
But more importantly: We teach our people how to study it for themselves. Do you believe that you can, too?”
That’s all for this one, friends. If you found something encouraging in this letter, share it with a friend. If you’ve found something encouraging outside of this letter, send it our way. We love to share what our leaders love.
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
For all of us at LeaderSource