I love it, I finally hit a nerve with people. Check out the first post Working Together In Trust
The first post has stirred up a lot of discussion, I got hit with a bunch of emails this week on this one. So let’s dig a little deeper on this one.
The first post was not talking about out kicking people out of the church, but dealing with break downs within a leadership team.
How important is trust in a leadership team? How important is unity? Can you have a leadership team that is effective and divided at the same time? A house divide cannot stand, right?
When there is a break down in trust in a leadership team it needs to be dealt with. The root reasons need to be understood. Maybe it was just a miscommunication, maybe it was a simple misunderstanding, maybe someone was just having a bad day and blew it. All of those things are easy to deal with. The hope is that we love and respect those that we serve with and that we are striving to love, support, encourage, pray for, and grow our fellow servants. So we can loving deal with issues like these. But if there is a deeper issue, an offense, a divisive attitude, a selfish motivation, a root of bitterness, that is something far more dangerous.
Jesus spells it out in Matthew 18:15-17, We go to the person one on one, if it isn’t resolved, we take another along with us, if there is still no resolution then we bring it to the whole leadership. If at the point things can’t be resolved then they are put out of the church.
Now I have rarely seen it come to this, but unity & trust are so vitally important that when it is broken in the leadership it must be addressed and dealt with. In most cases there is forgiveness and reconciliation, and that is always the goal, but there are times when people dig in their heals and refuse to acknowledge any wrong.
Please understand when I say “breaking trust” I’m not talking about honest questions or normal head butting on issues, that is good and healthy, conflict sometimes produces amazing vision and creativity. I’m talking about people that disagree and become disgruntled and try to build support for their cause. If the bulk of the leadership is on board and agree in a vision, direction, decision, etc and one person can’t get on board and then goes around stirring up trouble in the body, that is a violation of the trust that the team has. I tell my leadership we can disagree in the room (where it is we may be meeting) but when we leave, we leave all that here. The leadership needs to present a united front.
I have witnessed cases in the past where decisions were made by a leadership and members of the team held there opinions in the meetings, never voicing their disagreement, only to then go into congregational meeting and blast the decision of the leadership. That is violation of trust. If you cannot own an opinion in a small group and voice it there and fight for what you believe, then don’t sand bag the rest of the team.
Like I said in the original post, “the stakes are too high” there are people out there that we need to be leading to Jesus, we cannot allow infighting or disunity to distract us from that important mission. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, he show very little tolerance for the religious crowd. If someone in leadership being divisive and that takes away from our ability to impact the world for Christ, we must act quickly and decisively.
Let’s hear your thoughts, I want to know what you are thinking.
