The Leadership Ellipse E-Book

Robert A. Fryling

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 319

Beschreibung

Everyone in a position of responsibility knows the tension of leadership. It may be between tasks or people, money or mission, the present or the future. One often neglected tension is between our inner spiritual longings and the outward needs of the group we lead.But we need not feel forced to choose between the two. Leadership has more in common with an ellipse with two focal points than a bull's-eye with a single target. The Leadership Ellipse is designed to help Christian leaders embrace both halves of the tension--our internal relationship with God and our external relationship with others--to find a truly authentic, integrated way to lead.If you find yourself in a lonely, isolated place of leadership, this book can be your companion. If you find yourself longing to lead in a way that is truly Christian, this book can be your guide. And if you are simply exhausted, then this book can offer you a new way to find refreshment. There is life beyond the bull's-eye.

Leseprobe

Shaping How We Lead by Who We Are

Robert A. Fryling

Foreword by Eugene H. Peterson

www.ivpress.com/books

Formatio books from InterVarsity Press follow the rich tradition of the church in the journey of spiritual formation. These books are not merely about being informed, but about being transformed by Christ and conformed to his image. Formatio stands in InterVarsity Press’s evangelical publishing tradition by integrating God’s Word with spiritual practice and by prompting readers to move from inward change to outward witness. InterVarsity Press uses the chambered nautilus for Formatio, a symbol of spiritual formation because of its continual spiral journey outward as it moves from its center. We believe that each of us is made with a deep desire to be in God’s presence. Formatio books help us to fulfill our deepest desires and to become our true selves in light of God’s grace.

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2010 by Robert A. Fryling

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“The Peacock” is taken from The Creatures’ Choir, trans. Rumer Godden. Copyright ©1976. Used by permission of Penguin.

“God, All Nature Sings Thy Glory” is taken from Hymns II edited by Paul Beckwith. Words by David Clowney. Copyright(c) 1976 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the USA. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515.

Design: Cindy Kiple Images: Marsh Wren singing: Stephen Schwartz/iStockphoto Peacock: iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-7927-4 (digital)

To the memory of my loving parents,

Herb and Roberta Fryling,

who taught me to love God and neighbor

and to love doing my work as “unto the Lord”

The Peacock

By Carmen Bernos de Gasztold,The Creature’s Choir, trans. Rumer Godden

A royal train,

Lord,

more scintillating

than jewelled enamel.

Look,

now I spread it in a wheel.

I must say I derive

some satisfaction

from my good looks.

My feathers

are sown with eyes

admiring themselves.

True,

my discordant cry

shames me a little—

and it is humiliating

to make me remember

my meager heart.

Your world is badly made,

if I may say so:

the nightingale’s voice

in me

would be properly attired—

and soothe my soul.

Lord,

let a day come,

a heavenly day,

when my inner and outer selves

will be reconciled

in perfect harmony.

Amen.

Contents

Foreword by Eugene Peterson

Introduction

Part One: Shaping our Inner World

1: A Weaned Soul

2: A Growing Strength

3: A Renewed Mind

4: A Dancing Heart

Part Two: Shaping our Outer World

5: In a Frenzied World

6: In a Lonely World

7: In a Fragmented World

Part Three: Shaping our Leadership

8: As More Than a Grasshopper

9: As an Organizational Ecologist

10: As a Grateful Creature

Epilogue

Appendix: InterVarsity Press Purpose and Values Statement

For Contemplation and Action

Recommended Reading

Acknowledgments

Notes

About the Author

Endorsements

Foreword

We have a lot of books written on leadership—how to make things happen in the world. Matching them, book for book, we have books written on how to nurture our souls, how to grow in prayer and attentiveness to God. If we aren’t alert, the books cancel one another out, activists taking counsel from those who get things done, contemplatives looking for direction on how to be quiet before God. Christians are well represented in both camps.

Robert Fryling, publisher of InterVarsity Press, has written a different kind of book, a book that keeps both concerns together. Not just side by side but integrated—a serious God-obedient life and a committed society-responsible life. His message is two-pronged: you can’t be a Christian activist without being contemplative; you can’t be a Christian contemplative without being an activist. With winsome accuracy he has joined two ways of life that are often “put asunder.” It strikes me as a remarkable achievement.

Leading people is a demanding responsibility. Following Jesus requires total commitment. When we agree to live what we read in Scripture in our working and praying lives, we soon realize that the leading and following are the right foot and left foot of the Christian life. Omitting either amounts to amputation. We might still manage to walk with a crutch or a prosthetic, but there is no getting around it—we are crippled. When we both lead people and follow Jesus, we quickly discover that the leading and following have a way of getting in the way of each other. We need help.

This is not a book of advice on how to do it; it is more like a personal journal of a Christian leader who has spent his life being a competent leader and a thoughtful Christian. This is not easy. Anyone who has lived this Christian way for very long has come across companions who specialize, some in following Jesus, others in leading in Jesus’ name. More often than not, they do one or the other very well. Occasionally, we find a man or a woman who is walking beside us who has both a left and a right foot, and we realize that it can, in fact, be done.

But here’s the thing: our Scriptures are authoritative that it must be done and also clear about the nature of what must be done in order to live a coherent life of leading and following. This is nonnegotiable. But we also soon realize that there are no detailed instructions in how to do it. Every generation faces a changed culture, different social problems and challenges, new patterns of work, evolving economic and political conditions. Much of what a Christian community in each generation does is learn together how this is done in its particular circumstances. Instructed by our Scriptures, we need Christian companions to avoid seductive temptations, recognize the “wiles of the devil” and assess our particular place in this great, complex kingdom economy of salvation. Proverbs provides no instruction on a proper use of technology. Most of the detailed rules given in Deuteronomy to a nomadic people guided them in navigating a holy life through the Baal- and Asherah-infested hills of Canaan. But those rules aren’t much help in the secular world of multinational corporations and working single mothers with preschool children in which we are immersed.

So what do we do? We keep both feet, the foot that leads and the foot that follows, solidly planted in Scripture and Jesus and world, and listen to our brothers and sisters as they write and talk about keeping this left-foot-right-foot life upright. We read what they teach and what they write, books like this one by Bob Fryling (one of the best in my experience) for wisdom and encouragement and companionship in the way of Jesus.

Eugene H. Peterson

Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology

Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

Introduction

In her book The Creatures’ Choir, Carmen Bernos de Gasztold wrote a delightful collection of poems putting prayers in the mouths of animals and birds. These prayers express many deep human longings even when associated with the dominant physical attributes of the creatures she chose. She has a poem on the lion and its noble strength, and another one on the swallow and its delight in flight. Though whimsical in style, she is profound in her insights.

My favorite of these poems is “The Peacock,” in which this regal bird is debating its own identity. It is proud of its external beauty and presence, but is humbled by its “discordant cry” and “meager heart.” The peacock ends its lament with the request “Lord, / let a day come, / a heavenly day, / when my inner and outer selves / will be reconciled in perfect harmony.”

The yearning this prayer conveys is consciously or unconsciously at the core of every Christian who seeks to lead others with greater spiritual integrity. But it also highlights the dissonance between our inner and outer worlds. This discord often is experienced in the clash between our outward leadership responsibilities and our inward spiritual lives.

Currently, there is an abundance of excellent books on business leadership, church leadership and organizational leadership that are well authenticated by success stories of size, growth and bottom-line profitability. Many of these books have helped me better understand and practice good leadership principles.

There are also many other valuable books written for how to develop the interior spiritual life. In recent years there has been a wonderful rediscovery of classical spiritual disciplines and the value of feeding and caring for the soul. I have been tremendously helped by many of these books as well. They continue to be a regular part of my reading and contemplative diet.

Unfortunately, much of my experience is that these two worlds—external organizational success principles and internal spiritual disciplines—don’t readily intersect or necessarily inform each other. As a leader I have sometimes felt forced or have chosen to live in a dichotomized world that segments my internal spiritual life from my external life of leadership.

Even trying to evaluate these two worlds seems to create irreconcilable differences. Much of my external world is measured by my accomplishments according to planned objectives and goals. In contrast, I tend to evaluate my internal world by a sense of spiritual peace, which is often more a factor of sufficient rest than that of being closer to God.

In fact the very practice of measurement, which is a foundational principle of organizational life, seems suspect in the realm of spirituality. The spiritual virtue of “letting go” seems like leadership suicide. Because of this, I have often felt like the proverbial person whose head was in the oven and feet in the freezer but on the average felt okay!

I necessarily asked myself, Is the world of success so different from the world of the soul that I simply have to live with this split personality and hope that God is okay with this kind of “average” life? I alternatively have struggled with the opposite temptation to retreat from organizational leadership because it is too hard, or conversely to reject the interior life because it seems so irrelevant. I needed another way of thinking and living.

A New Mental Image

Throughout my struggles in cultivating a more integrated spiritual life, I became aware that part of my difficulty was that I had the wrong mental and spiritual image of what a life of integrity should look like. I had a neat Western culture’s bull’s-eye mentality that wanted to reduce everything to a clear point of focus without any ambiguity. My task as leader was to be an organizational sharpshooter that hit the bull’s-eye every time.

But that way of thinking and living was limiting and unsatisfying because there are ambiguities and tensions in life that cannot be reduced to a bull’s-eye. For instance in orthodox Christian teaching, it is fundamental to believe in both the full divinity and complete humanity of Christ at the same time. It is heresy to believe that Jesus was not fully divine or to believe that he was not fully human. Two seemingly contradictory truths are brought together into the much grander unified truth of Jesus as the incarnate Son of God.

Another example is the classic tension of form and freedom. My experience in organizational life suggests that most of us want structures for others but freedom for ourselves! But without honoring both needs at the same time, organizations can easily become imbalanced or schizophrenic. They become too dependent on structures and control, or conversely too flexible and chaotic. Like the human body with its bone structure and muscles, organizations and leaders need a definite structure to give them strength and stability while also having the capacity to be flexible and create movement.

These kinds of observations helped me realize that I needed a different mental image than the bull’s-eye to help me not only understand theology and healthy organizational life but to better understand the seemingly unsolvable conflict between my inner and outer worlds. The mental image that best describes my tension comes from my interest in math: the ellipse.

One of my favorite topics in high school was geometry. I loved doing proofs and solving problems. There is a wonderful clarity and a certain precision in geometry that ironically helps explain ambiguity as well. For instance, an ellipse, which looks like an elongated circle, is defined by two distinctly different focal points that are of equal importance. One point is not inferior to the other, and both are needed if there is to be an ellipse.

The Leadership Ellipse

Spiritual leadership can be understood as an ellipse. One focal point is our inner spiritual life, our longings, our affections and our allegiance to God. The other focal point is our outer world and organizational life, what we do and how we do it. Together these focal points define an ellipse that circumscribes our true spiritual leadership. It represents the dynamic tension between our soul and our actions, and gives us a mental image for personal, spiritual and professional integrity in who we are and how we lead.

Historically, God’s people have emphasized different focal points of their inner and outer lives. For instance, the desert fathers and mothers in the early church practiced their spirituality by retreating to a desert and experiencing extended times of isolation. They wanted to nurture their inner life of the soul away from the temptations of the outer world. Their dedicated example of prayer and solitude is part of our Christian heritage and understanding of spiritual formation.

Many centuries later the Jesuits practiced a far more active involvement in the world of business and education, which was the external focal point of their spiritual calling. Their spirituality can be characterized as “contemplatives in action” and “seeing God in all things.” Faithfulness to God was reflected by their advances into the world rather than by their retreat from it.

Jesus’ life was characterized by these contrasting practices of piety and activity. He spent time alone in the desert praying, but he also got exhausted in feeding and healing the multitudes. His life was not limited to a singular way of spiritual behavior, yet he always exhibited a consistency or integrity. His teachings and his life were shaped by his relationship to God the Father.

Inner and Outer Worlds

Christian leaders today need to embrace and embody both spiritual focal points of our internal relationship with God and our external relationship with others. We cannot successfully separate or isolate our interior life from our exterior life. Both are part of who we truly are. The more there is harmony and integrity between who we are in the deepest recesses of our being and in the most visible expressions of our lives, the more we will be authentic to both ourselves and others.

But there is even a deeper spiritual dynamic at work in both of our inner and outer lives. It is not sufficient to just be authentic, no matter how attractive that might be at a certain level. Even a criminal or a racist can be authentic if their attitudes of hate manifest themselves in acts of hatred. The flippant criticism to “get real” may be a necessary exhortation to someone who denies what is truly happening, but just blurting whatever we think or feel is not sufficient for personal spiritual maturity or effective Christian leadership.

The Bible eloquently describes and illustrates that we are in the midst of a spiritual battle—the battle between “the flesh and the spirit,” the battle between our compulsions to sin and our commitments to God. We have this struggle both internally and externally. We wrestle with what we think and what we say, in what we feel and how we act.

So we may communicate authenticity by being vulnerable in what we say, but we may be using our vulnerability for soliciting the affections of others. Or we may develop our piety in solitude but then control others for our own purposes through our aura of spirituality. The temptation for self-promotion is never far from anyone in leadership.

In other words, our interior lives not only have to align with our external lives but they need to be aligned with the call of God’s Spirit in our lives. Authentic spirituality means that we are living with a harmony of our inner and outer lives that together are in harmony with God and his purposes in us and in the world. This book reflects the practical pursuit of living out these convictions.

Part one addresses the focal point of shaping our inner world. One of the main reasons we struggle to live with external integrity is that we are not living with internal integrity. Our mind fights with our heart, and our will may be pulling us in a different way altogether. We then lead with mixed signals on the outside because the signals inside are confused or in conflict. These first four chapters draw from the Great Commandment to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.

Part two moves to the focal point of engagement with our busy, fractured and surprisingly lonely outside world. The teachings and prayers of Jesus help us to shape our outer world without succumbing to inappropriate allegiances with our powerful external environment.

Part three applies this need for both internal and external integrity to shape us as leaders. It identifies some of the fears that are prompted by our leadership roles but also suggests some practical ways of fulfilling our roles as people called and gifted by God to lead others.

Each chapter identifies a challenge for our leadership and then suggests a practice for meeting that need with a deeper understanding. My hope is that as you read you will be encouraged in your own spiritual journey and leadership calling.

SHAPING OUR INNER WORLD

1 A Weaned Soul

The Practice of Sabbath

We could avoid most of our problems if we only learned how to sit quietly in our room.

Pascal

I was not content. I was a vice president of a large parachurch collegiate ministry (InterVarsity) responsible for the budgets, training and leadership of 600 staff working with nearly 30,000 students at 650 secular colleges and universities across the country. I wanted to be “on fire for God” but instead I was desperately struggling to find relief from leadership burnout. I felt physically, emotionally and spiritually disheveled with all of the competing external demands of my job, church, community and family. I was also not in touch with much of anything that was happening within my heart and soul.

Furthermore, I had no idea of how my internal and external worlds could be meaningfully connected. I valued both realms of experience independently, but they seemed in competition with each other. I was used to accomplishing many things and was honored for such productive activity. I did not want to lose that cherished status of “being so busy” by retreating from my world of success in order to focus on my soul. But neither did I want to continue my organizational and lifestyle intensity without a genuine deepening of my inner life.

Consequently, I decided to go to summer school for a few weeks at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. I knew this would be a beautiful venue and thought that just getting away for a while and taking some stimulating courses would be a great spiritual boost for me. In choosing my classes I almost took a course on leadership and another on theology. They both looked interesting and valuable. But I was hesitant to make those selections because my deepest need was not for more information but for genuine inner transformation. So I chose a course in contemplative spirituality called “Quiet Heart, Dancing Heart”.

When I entered the classroom for the first time, my heart was pounding. My wife and I and our two teenage daughters had arrived in Vancouver late the previous night after having driven over two thousand long, hot miles from Madison, Wisconsin. I had not slept well, it was raining hard and I couldn’t find the building where my class was meeting. Finally, soaked from the rain, I found my classroom and weakly apologized to the class and instructors for being late. I was embarrassed and already feeling like a failure.

But it got worse. During that first day of class, our instructor asked us to draw a picture describing our spiritual longings. I felt both physically and spiritually awkward. Most of my classmates were women gifted in music, drama or the visual arts. They oozed creativity, while the only thing I was oozing was nervous sweat.

I frantically struggled to visually express what was going on inside of me. Not only was I artistically challenged and felt totally inadequate to draw anything either attractive or even recognizable, I was intellectually blank as well. How do you describe, let alone draw, a void?

I was the last person to finish the assignment, but what I finally drew was a scraggly wind-swept tree with almost no leaves on it. Beneath ground level I sketched a complex, dried-out root system. I labeled the picture with the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.” That was my longing and plea.

During the following weeks, God graciously began to answer that prayer and sent me on a spiritual journey that is still in progress. We read contemplative writers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. We reflected on the art of Van Gogh and did liturgical dance. We spent time in solitude and silence as well as in active festivities. We read the Bible and prayed. My spiritual life began to feel more integrated. My mind was stretched, my heart was warmed and my soul felt alive.

Nevertheless, I still had to go back to work. Taking such a stimulating class (pass-fail, no less!) was a great gift to me. However, I wondered what would translate back into the daily life of demands and conflicts I had been able to mostly avoid for a month in lovely Vancouver.

Actually, nothing much happened in terms of immediate tangible changes. The challenges of my job remained the same, the needs of my family were still there, and the pressures of contemporary life only increased in speed and intensity. The world was still tainted with evil, and I was still prone to the consequences of my own sin. Life on the outside was pretty much the same.

What did change, though, was an awareness that the seeds of spiritual life that had been planted in me were beginning to germinate and grow. I was experiencing a life of greater relational harmony with God, with myself and with others. I was growing in the practice of contentment.

Contentment

“Contented” is usually a wimpy description for a leader. When the head football coach calls for the quarterback to “take a knee” before halftime rather than trying to score again, the fans raucously boo. The commentators say that the coach was content with the score, but the decision feels like weakness rather than strength.

Far beyond football though, we are a culture that likes to “go for it.” We cheer for those who risk new experiences or greater accomplishments. We ignore the past and ridicule the “same old, same old.” We like political candidates who promise change, and we choose pastors and executives who bring a fresh perspective and a vision for growth. This pressure for new and better and bigger is especially true for leaders.

Yet, ironically and deep down, we also aspire to be content. We love the contented feelings we have after eating a fine meal, seeing a great play or having a meaningful conversation. Sometimes contentment comes quickly after a spontaneous hug from a child or a kind word from a coworker. We may also longingly muse on vacation, the empty nest, retirement or ultimately heaven as future times of contentment, when we no longer have to always be on demand.

Unfortunately, such satisfying feelings don’t usually last long. The pressure to succeed is unrelenting and it comes to us through both external role expectations in a consumer culture and through our internal human propensity to grasp beyond our reach.

Leadership Role Expectations

Americans are the champions and beneficiaries of a democratic capitalism based on individual liberties and the pursuit of happiness—which our founding fathers pronounced as our unalienable rights. We have thrived on this melding of commercial success, political freedom and a sense of personal entitlement to have anything we want. Through our tremendous power and success, much of the world has also adopted such a consumer mentality. We have the World Bank, a global economy and multiple international stock markets.

But such a consumer culture is built on discontent. Companies may genuinely seek complete customer satisfaction, but in order to be successful they first have to create dissatisfaction with what we don’t already have. Contentment at the point of purchase doesn’t last very long after a new model or style is introduced. Business growth, like fashion trends, thrives on the continual discontent of the consumer.

This pervasive consumer culture places intense demands on us from two different directions. The first is from our own leaders at the top of the organizational chart. No matter what our job, we are expected to always increase results against expanding forms of measurement and evaluation. Our organizations and churches have consciously or unconsciously bought into the Enlightenment’s philosophical promise of unlimited human progress along with the practical Japanese concept of kaizen or the need for continuous improvement.

This may not be much of a problem on the surface because most of us in leadership are rather competitive. We love the thrill of measurement and successful comparisons. We like to win and beat the competition. We also want to see God’s kingdom grow with more conversions, more churches and greater justice in the world. Boards of trustees, elder boards, presidents and everyone in leadership want to grow and be successful.

But statistical success is not always possible. There are recessions, major personnel changes and unfavorable circumstances beyond our control. Also some of us who are good and strong leaders may not be wired to be motivated by external comparisons or the adrenaline of winning. When under too much pressure to be successful, we can easily become jealous, disgruntled or discouraged. Many gifted pastors and organizational leaders have truncated their spiritual growth and organizational success by succumbing to such negative patterns.

Early in my career one leader candidly told me that leading is like riding a bike. Once you get on you have to keep peddling or you will fall off. This fear of falling off is what keeps many of us going, but without much joy or contentment. We may feel stuck, but we just keep peddling faster so we don’t fall from our leadership positions.

In a consumer culture we also feel pressure from those we lead. No longer is there an automatic loyalty to a company or church. Just as many institutions have forsaken long-term commitments to their employees, so employees have returned the favor and readily leave a company or ministry if the grass looks somewhat greener elsewhere. People not only use a ballot box, but they vote with their feet and their dollars.

This deeply ingrained freedom of choice that encourages people to purchase exactly what they want, in the size and color they want, affects relationships at work, at school and in the church. People want choice, they want involvement, and they want their own needs met.

This is both understandable and not all bad; participation in decision making and ownership of an institution’s values are extremely important. But such an intense negotiable environment can freeze us as leaders. We then forsake true, incisive leadership and succumb to finding out where the proverbial parade is going so we can get out in front!

Feeling squeezed with pressures to succeed from both those we lead and those we follow creates great discontent within us. We feel like the nexus of an hourglass that has to funnel all of the demands from above only to have the hourglass turned over. We then have to perform the same function all over again but now from those we lead and who want us to process their needs and desires.

I assume that we have gotten into our roles of leadership for mostly good reasons. Although our motivations are never completely known or perfect, we probably want to serve others, want to use our leadership gifts and have been encouraged to take on more responsibilities. Leadership is a noble calling, and we have responded to that calling whether from our own sense of vision or from external appointments, or both.

But an unhealthy pressure point for us in our leadership role is created by a classic leader-follower dynamic. In The Frenzy of Renown, Leo Braudy illustrates from ancient history through the present time how leaders and followers in all cultures make certain kinds of social contracts that implicitly if not explicitly keep the whole system going. For instance, in Rome people feared the emperor and his coercive power, but they also worshiped him. The emperor gave them security and an object for worship while the people gave him compliance and adulation.

Although we are not emperors we too have our own social contracts with our followers. At first this is straightforward; our leadership role may be well defined by our company, college, ministry or church. We have a job description and performance appraisals precisely so we don’t become emperors. We are usually given a honeymoon or grace period to establish our leadership style.

However, at various points along the way, all leaders are faced with the temptation of pretense. We want people to like us and to follow us, although there is this nagging fear that our role is more fragile than we wish and we have to be better or more in control than we truly are. This can be a healthy prompting if we are tempted by a complacency or false sense that we are so secure in our job that we don’t have to change or listen to anyone else.

But if our fears lead to overreacting with authority or just pretending to look good, we are like the preening peacock and lose the respect of our followers. We can quickly become a live illustration of the pointy-haired boss in a Dilbert cartoon who is not only incompetent but is embarrassingly self-centered on his leadership image. We may subconsciously believe we are “the world’s best boss” because we have a coffee mug that says so!

However, those we lead are nevertheless willing to grant us certain levels of power—to the degree we are committed to them. As the axiom says, “People want to know how much we care before they care how much we know.” They applaud our successes but are very watchful of our mistakes and don’t forget them easily.

This usually unspoken social contract is real and the pressure can be enormous. We have to be competent and authentic without succumbing to pretense or perks to protect us. I believe this role pressure is one of the foremost reasons many don’t want organizational positions of leadership. They are not sure they can stand the pressure of either having to be perfect or living with the critique of not being so. They may want to have the influence of leadership but are not so sure about the responsibilities of leadership—and when we are honest with ourselves, we can agree. The leadership role can bring satisfaction and fulfillment, but it is not an automatic formula for contentment.

Human Grasping

Much more insidious though are the demands that arise from our own spirit of discontent within ourselves and with our place in the world. Even when we are neither leading nor feeling consumer pressures, we are not easily content. We wish we looked different or felt different or had done something differently. I often wish I knew more or could do more.

This is not a new phenomenon. It was part of the original struggle in the Garden of Eden. There the man and woman, although created in the image of God and in a perfect sinless environmental habitat, were not content with their one limitation of not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted something more. They wanted to be wise like God. Later on in Genesis, those who built the tower of Babel did so in order to reach into the heavens and to make a name for themselves. They were all grasping beyond their God-given human limits.

I believe these early accounts of resistance to limitations illustrate why contentment is so desirable, illusive and demeaned, all at the same time. We want to be content but are not content with contentment! As Henri Nouwen once wrote,

I want to love God but also make a career. I want to be a good Christian but also have my successes as a teacher, preacher or speaker. I want to be a saint but also enjoy the sensations of sinners. I want to be close to Christ but also be popular and liked by people. No wonder that living becomes a tiring enterprise.

Unfortunately, as leaders we can perpetuate and reinforce such unhealthy strivings. We proclaim the good news of the gospel and invite people to come to Jesus so that he will meet their needs. But when they come to Jesus, they find out what their needs are—they need to do this, and they need to do that! In wanting to do better, we seek to know more and to accomplish more. We grasp for the forbidden fruit of living beyond our limits and then impose this grasping on others. All of this grasping, though, only provokes more discontent.

So the roots of our discontent (even when we don’t realize it) are within each of us and cannot be simply blamed on others or on life’s circumstances, however difficult they may be. But in addition we live with the discontent and strivings of everyone around us, which are magnified when we are in positions of leadership and enlarged even more in a dominant consumer culture. How do we resist all of these internal and external pressure points and find true contentment?

A Contented or Weaned Soul

The psalmist, David, gives us a surprising but beautiful picture of spiritual contentment. In Psalm 131 he writes:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up,

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD

from this time on and forevermore.

As a father of two daughters, each with two children, I have been around many discussions about weaning—when to start, how long it will take, when it is best for the child and for the mother. The successful weaning of one of our daughters was affecting whether Alice and I could leave her with her grandparents for a weeklong conference we had been planning on attending for a long time. We didn’t want to rush her but neither did we want to postpone the inevitable. She made it and we did too.

However, as a man, I didn’t have a lot to add to these discussions on weaning. I could listen and ask questions, but there really wasn’t much I could do to either hasten the process or add any great wisdom. Apart from some transitional bottle feedings, I was a rather uninvolved observer. Yet even without my direct involvement, the process of weaning happened. It was at times difficult and unpredictable, but it was nevertheless an amazing partnership between mother and child. At some point both had to agree that weaning was the next proper step in their relationship for the proper growth of the child.

David begins this psalm by both recognizing and choosing his own limitations. He is not feeding what Eugene Peterson translates as David’s “unruly ambition,” nor is he “dreaming the impossible dream.” He is not chasing grand, new ventures or drawing up his personal mission statement. He is neither concerned about his success nor his legacy. Instead he has let go of his compulsions for more and is content to be calm and quiet.

This is not the standard picture of visionary, successful leadership. It may work for retreats of silence, but does it work in a board meeting or in strategic planning? Does it leave room for healthy ambition, entrepreneurial vision and stretching goals? Is it just David’s lapse into melancholy that belies his extraordinary accomplishments as a leader of Israel, or does it help us better understand why David was a leader after God’s own heart?

I confess that I struggle with this image of contentment. I do like to plan ahead and think about what I should do. I want our company to grow, and I want to be personally successful. I like to think of marvelous things. I like motivational speakers who challenge me to think and act more boldly in my leadership. I get a motivational high when I am competing, and especially when I am winning.

However, David’s testimony has a clear ring of truth to it. There is profound satisfaction in just resting. Actually, I really only like motivational speakers for their opening jokes. After a while, their high-energy presentations and exhortations feel more like hype than hope. There is a lack of connection with my soul that is hungry for a deeper relationship with God.

Thus I find it both helpful and hopeful that David ends this psalm with a call to Israel to hope in the Lord. By doing so he is affirming that his personal contentment should not be isolated or divorced from the witness and good of his community.