Followership Styles and Mission

Sitting in a coffee house in the northwest I was commiserating with a pastor friend about how neither of us had the sort of “big personality” so often identified with leadership.

He described himself as “leading from the middle,” that is, bringing people together around the congregation’s mission in a way that produced results but not heroes.

Talking about this issue brought up the criticism that both of us have taken over the years for not being more dominant, criticism that has always come from believers and virtually never from those who make no claim to follow Jesus.

We began to speculate about whether church folks and unchurched folks have different followership styles. Do they respond to completely different approaches to leadership, at least in the northwest Anglo context in which the observations were made?

This hypothesis (and that’s all it is) draws a distinction between two primary followership styles. I am deliberately exaggerating the difference for the purposes of clarity and discussion:

1. The churchly followership style: Serving for many years as an audience for platform-driven ministry, lots of church folks seem to equate leadership with a dynamic individual standing at the front of a large room casting vision the way a major league pitcher hurls fastballs. The ability of this lone entrepreneur to sway a large group of people with the quality of his/her strategy and the force of his/her personality is considered the very definition of leadership. This kind of attender is not shy about pressuring less dominant leaders to fit into this mold. And the temptation for leaders is to spin the ministry’s ethos in a direction that will appeal to this follower type because they likely control most of the financial assets in the house.

This is not to say that the less forceful leader loses his/her integrity, but that important nuances of the group’s culture are gradually shaped to please the churchly. If you don’t think this is possible, ask yourself what your ministry would look like if the majority of your financial support came from people under 25, or an ethnic group other than your own? If you don’t feel these pressures, we speculated that the reason may be that this battle was lost so long ago that it’s no longer a fight. Followership for the churchly, then, is a response to greatness—the kind of leadership I deserve.

2. The unchurchly followership style: My friend has noticed that the people coming to faith in Jesus in his congregation have an unswerving distaste for “big personality” leaders. These new Christians are likely to regard the celebrity model as an exercise in narcissism that is more about control and ego than servanthood. Their resistance takes many forms, but mainly is expressed by their relative absence from churches directed by the leaders of a more heroic stature. That way of leading feels to them like working for “the man” in the corporate world. They reason that, if Sunday morning demonstrates essentially authoritarian values, then the rest of this religion is probably not worth checking out. However, this person is more likely to be receptive to the “small personality” leader who, like my friend, brings people together in a faith community that responds in love to the mission of Jesus for the world.

Imagine what would happen if this leader began to spin the ethos of the ministry in this direction so that more and more unchurchly folk began to show up? Perhaps this explains research by Barna and others finding that effective evangelistic churches, in all their diversity, have the common feature of a missional culture. Followership for the unchurchly, then, is a response to humility—the kind of leadership that could change me.

Our embryonic idea concludes with the suggestion that these followership dynamics become cyclical, moving the ministry in either a less or more missional direction over time.

That’s the hypothesis. So test it.

The Demise of Illusions

A famous historian once said the most dangerous form of ignorance is the illusion of knowledge. This maxim has become very real to us as we prepare for our campus church project in Berkeley. On our journey, Janet and I have stumbled over three kinds of "knowledge" (so far) that have all proven to be illusion in their own way.

1. The Google Illusion: During the very anxious season when we were considering becoming planters, we comforted ourselves by doing research about the campus and community at Berkeley. Along with millions of others, we turned to Google to discern the answers to life's questions. What we found was a huge quantity of information about our potential plant site. We learned, for example, that the median adult age is 31, that this adult is likely a single professional, and that Cal is one of the top- ranked universities in the world. Armed with more demographics than the Census Bureau, we headed to the Bay area for our first visit feeling that we understood some things.

2. The Sidewalk Illusion: About ten minutes after we arrived on campus, the statistics that had given us confidence in our own understanding suddenly seemed like pale abstractions. To be honest, we had expected to see a 21st century version of Woodstock reenacted on the campus. What we actually saw were extremely serious students walking by in silence on their way to the next class. Our Google illusions experienced something like a hard drive crash, only to be overwritten by the kind of shallow assumptions that are developed in a first visit. So, maybe the numbers didn't tell the whole story, but now we had actual field experience, meaning that we had walked around for a few hours, eaten Indian food, and sipped Peet's Coffee. Certainly experience couldn't mislead us?

3. The Relationship Illusion: Talking with people about the planting project after a couple of visits was a lot more fun than just reciting the statistics. Now we could tell stories about the "look and feel" of the campus and city, including the homeless guy smashing bottles against a wall and life on the street after dark on homecoming weekend. We also collected sound bites about Berkeley that helped us tell the story of our emerging mission. For example, I will quote William Gibson's comment that, "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed" to make the point that Cal is one of the recipients of that uneven dispersal. All of that was fine, until I realized that telling stories about coffee houses and repeating clever quotes was not the same as actually knowing anyone in the community.

There is no "Berkeley Barbara," a perfectly representative 31-year old single professional, or "Berkeley Ben," a prototypical 20 year old engineering student. Our new community is the home of cultural creatives (some in training and some at work) who highly value the atypical.

While numbers and experiences help, only relationship is going to crush the last of our illusions so we can actually discern what God is already up to our community. Berkeley is not the "site" for a "project," it is a community that is home to individuals whom God loves more than I ever will.

How have your illusions met their demise? 

Free Fall

Leaving the conference room at the end of our last church plant screening interview, I felt like a parachutist taking that first big stride out the airplane door. Up until that moment, my resignation from our Seminary and the sale of our house had still seemed sort of hypothetical.

But this committee's affirmative vote completed a long approval process that finally made our transition into church planting concrete. In our system, we raise personal and project budgets for as long as it takes before the plant actually begins. In other words, we are self employed with a capital "S," a radical departure from the institutional cocoon of higher education.

It feels like free fall. One step and you're hurtling downward through empty space with nothing tangible to grasp for support. But there are some things that happen during the free fall of risk-taking that weren't as likely when we were just passengers on the plane:

1. When I look down, the view is great: Now I understand why skydivers do what they do. After that long first step it takes a moment to gain the courage to open your eyes. But once you do, the world looks completely new, taking on a perspective that is just not available from the plane. Could this be something like the God's eye view? For me, free fall has made it possible to see Berkeley (the location of our plant) as part of a network of smaller post-Christian cities dominated by "cultural creatives" who invent the future the rest of us will live. An effective ministry in Berkeley might help us learn how to reach these enclaves and even produce some of the people to do it.

2. When I look around, the company is grand: At first free fall felt very lonely, as if we were flying straight down by ourselves. However, looking downward eventually yields to looking around and the realization that we are actually doing something like formation skydiving. Our planting journey has connected us to some of the most amazing people, including other planters like Trinity Jordanin Layton, Utah, Curt and Kelly Harlow of West Coast Chi Alpha, and Craig and Dana Mathison, global missionaries with the AoG. We knew most of these folks before, but nothing bonds like skydiving together. They are our mentors, our friends, and our family.

3. When I look up, I see God's face in a new way: It's not like the movies; there are limits to what the other skydivers can do for you. In the silence, as the air rips past your face, you can hear things that were drowned out by background noise when riding as a passenger. Our Church Planting Director, Steve Pike, told me once that God may have sent him to plant just to teach him to pray. I thought I knew what he meant, but now I am learning it in a new way. The heart of Christian ministry is a person in love with God in a way others would notice and want to emulate.

With one big step transition becomes a lifestyle and a state of mind, rather than an event. There are seasons for riding in the plane (that's good for in its own way) and seasons for jumping out.

If we gave more attention to the benefits of free fall, would more of us would jump?

The New Bohemians

Not long ago, Janet and I had a long talk with a twentysomething man I'll call Zeke, who manages a local coffee house during the days.

At night he assumes another identity as a musician in an AltCountry band (a genre that he says fuses country music with an alternative rock vibe to create a new sound). I've heard his band in a show (and liked their music) so we started asking Zeke questions about culture, music, and spirituality.

The motivation to ask the first question is the difference between mind-blowing learning experiences and just another jolt of caffeine.

What we heard described "Bohemia," a distributed nation with representatives in most major US cities, but with concentrations in places like the Bay area, Madison Wisconsin, and Austin, Texas. Richard Florida describes bohemian traits in his brilliant book, Cities and the Creative Class.

While no human (especially an altcountry guy) can be reduced to a list, here are a few things that Zeke might want to say to all of us mainstreamers about his "nation," the tribe of the midtown brick loft dweller:

1. "I love media, but I trust my friends": A lot of our conversation had to do with music, a natural subject for Zeke. We compared notes on some bands, asking him what he liked (e.g., a group called Welco) and what he did not (anything mainstream). So I asked him how he found out about the latest developments on the music scene. He mentioned websites like Pandora and social networking on MySpace, but confessed that "I ask my friends." He finds the front edge by relationship more than by research. Zeke's opinion is consistent with a new survey that finds the younger people assume that if information is important it will reach them, so they are less inclined to pursue it in conventional ways.

2. "I am aware of broadcasting, but I trust narrowcasting": We joked with Zeke about the importance of what were called "transistor radios" in our adolescence. They made music portable and private preventing our parents from catching us worshiping the Rolling Stones. But Zeke disdains radio, regarding it as pitifully trailing edge, more of a monument to what used to be new than anything else. Moreover, he describes its music as corrupt, over-produced, and fake. Zeke prefers the homegrown music available live in local clubs and online at obscure MySpace sites. Best of all is the music you make yourself.

3. "I spend money, but I trust art": We learned that anything done just for the money is not to be trusted. In fact, the worst slur that can be applied to music is to call it "commercial." Authentic things are done for the joy of it, and if the money comes that's fine. In fact, Zeke went as far as to say that, while he would love his band to become prominent, if it does not, he is content knowing that he had a good time playing local gigs. The rest just has to take care of itself at some point. Art merits trust because it is performed for its own sake, offering a kind of purity that for bohemians has a meaning something like holiness.

4. "I respect excellence, but I trust authenticity": We discussed the trend among younger adults to have no one musical taste. In other words, the 1000 songs on an iPod play list may feature the two best tunes by 500 groups. Zeke laughed about this "highlight reel" approach and we reminisced about the days when teenagers liked rock or folk, but not both. Zeke pointed out that what holds together the best of the music is its honesty. He is much more concerned that a song be authentic to the artist's convictions and talent, than a computer-massaged mass market product. He feels that people care much more about this quality than about production values. 

5. "I resist church, but I trust Jesus": To Zeke, the average worship service sounds just like radio: homogenized, over-produced, shallow, and obsolete. Raised in a conservative denomination, he has no desire to be part of this kind of experience. Moreover, he cited the fact that Christian leaders (including those in my fellowship) are his most demanding and complaining customers. "They walk around like they know something you don't know. But the way they are, I don't want to know what they know." Ouch. Zeke finds Jesus very compelling, but cannot imagine finding a spiritual home in the average congregation.

For Zeke, music is a metaphor for so much else in life. What we found refreshing about him was his self-awareness. He knows that millions of people listen to the radio, and that millions attend conventional congregations. But after our talk, I was pretty sure that this altcountry guy and his friends would only fit into an altchurch that meets them on their own terms.

I wonder what that would look like?

We receive US Missions approval!