The Cost of Leadership (Part One)

Normal Costs

Every leader in every field can expect these to be true.

Certainly all of us who are called to lead or shepherd recognize that there are costs involved, hard work, and unselfish sacrifice.

There are also unnecessary costs that we pay sometimes because of our own mistakes.

This week on this blog, may we talk about both kinds of costs and just take a look at our own practices.

Let’s  start with some normal costs for all who lead in any way, in the church, or anywhere else for that matter:

1. Learn to stand alone.

Ask any linebacker or free safety in football.  Ask any point guard in basketball or quarterback too.  Ask the leader of any company downtown.

For that matter, ask any parent.  Sometimes you have to stand alone.  Even your best friends won’t understand.

This is not to say that communication is not important or that you should seek to stand by yourself.  But there are some hard decisions where you get all the input you can, and then must make a move.  There are questions that people ask you and you are the only one that can decide if you are going to give an answer or say that you do not know or point them somewhere in the scriptures.

There are other times when the staff or board are sitting there and they are looking to you as the one who has thought more about this, as the senior leader, and you must make that move.

I can think of several times we were making huge decisions, and I was sitting with advisors or a board and it was obvious that they were waiting for me to lead the way.  There had been a lot of research and prayer.  There had been a long time spent in looking at the options.  One time I can remember thinking so clearly, why is everyone so quiet?  And then I realized that I must say what I said: “Let’s do it.  Let’s build this building!”

Some are more comfortable than others in the lonely job of senior leader.  And all of us can do everything we can to have collegial input, and have people that are very close to us with advice and partnership.  But ultimately we must stand alone at times.

2. Accept criticism.  And, worse, misunderstanding.

Some people love to criticize.  It could be someone’s paying them.  Or they’re among the 15% of people who object to everything, as some books say.

But there are others who even love us who do not feel what we feel in the leadership position, or who have the suggestions and criticisms.

Wasn’t it Harry S. Truman, the former President of the United States, who said that we should not stay in the kitchen if we cannot stand the heat?

Whatever, criticism will come.  And this seems more prevalent today than yesterday, partly because we have developed 24/7 news stations that spend all day criticizing leaders.  “Fill the time with criticism,” somebody must have ordered some of them.  Even on sports games, the analyst watches the play and then tells what the players did wrong.  And many do the same at church.

Misunderstandings are even harder.  You say something and people take it the wrong way.

Coach Mike Singletary, when he was a famous middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears, with his glaring eyes, was once asked on national television after a game, “How do you sometimes get clobbered by two players at once, fall down, and yet make the tackle on the other side of the field?”

His succinct answer:  “I get up.”

And so must we after criticism, or even mistakes.  Or misunderstandings.

3. Believe “Murphy’s Law”!

There is no verse for this and perhaps it’s based on experience only, but there is an enemy and there is the natural failure of human beings and there is a sin nature and there is a Murphy’s Law which says that many things will go wrong.

Often that happens in church life.

Leaders must not get discouraged about the frailties of the human flesh, because it includes us.  And I guess we wouldn’t have the job of shepherd if there were not wolves or if all the sheep knew exactly what to do!