DanSheffield

There's more to the story

Some excellent reflections here in this video clip from Doctors Without Borders. 

This is such an important issue for international charitable organizations. The difference between the marketing story and the real story. Us/Them, Here/There, is no longer sustainable. 

This was one of my great disillusionments over my 20+ years of global charitable engagement. To raise funds for international development work, you had to tell a story that appealed to the donors - what their interests were - not the reality, the concerns, the perspectives, of the people we walked with, worked with. But this was also the space where I listened to, and learned from, the stories of friends and colleagues whose worldviews and perspectives were profoundly different from my own. 

 

Complicated and Complex require different management approaches

This discussion is very important for large organizations or communities of people, where cultural and social factors add complexity.

Short, clear article here, by Will Allen. 

Research into complex systems demonstrates that they cannot be understood solely by simple or complicated approaches to evidence, policy, planning and management.

Complicated systems are all fully predictable. These systems are often engineered. We can understand these systems by taking them apart and analyzing the details. From a management point of view we can create these systems by first designing the parts, and then putting them together. However, we cannot build a complex adaptive system (CAS) from scratch and expect it to turn out exactly in the way that we intended. CAS are made up of multiple interconnected elements, and are adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience - their history is important. 

Getting people to work collectively in a coordinated fashion in areas such as poverty alleviation or catchment management is therefore better seen by agencies as a complex, rather than a complicated problem – a fact many managers are happy to acknowledge .... but somehow this acknowledgement often does not translate  into different management and leadership practice. 

Complicated systems

• Role defining – setting job and task descriptions
• Decision making – find the ‘best’ choice
• Tight structuring – use chain of command and prioritise or limit simple actions
• Knowing – decide and tell others what to do
• Staying the course – align and maintain focus 
  

Complex adaptive systems

• Relationship building – working with patterns of interaction
• Sense making – collective interpretation
• Loose coupling – support communities of practice and add more degrees of freedom
• Learning – act/learn/plan at the same time
• Notice emergent directions – building on what works

These approaches to influencing complex systems require changing our thinking and our practices. The challenge is that by the time we learn this, our ways of thinking and practising are largely entrenched and very difficult to adjust.

when thinking is disagreeable and even nasty...

morning reflections from Wittgenstein (I've been reading his biography the last couple months).... these comments relate to a lot of stuff that is going on in the public forum/world stage these days...

Thinking is sometimes easy, often difficult but at the same time thrilling. But when it's most important it's just disagreeable, that is when it threatens to rob one of one's pet notions and to leave one all bewildered and with a feeling of worthlessness. In these cases I and others shrink from thinking or can only get ourselves to think after a long sort of struggle. I believe that you too know this situation and I wish you lots of courage! though I haven't got it myself. We are all sick people.

...what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious...

You see, I know its difficult to think well about 'certainty', 'probability', 'perception', etc. But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think, or try to think, really honestly about your life and other people's lives. And the trouble is that thinking about these things is not thrilling, but often downright nasty. And when it's nasty then it's most important.

 

making disciples the Wesleyan Way

Last week I had the opportunity to spend 5 days and 4 nights living in community with a small group of pastoral leaders wrestling with understanding intentional disciple-making through a Wesleyan lens. We read some books in advance of gathering together (Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland and Making Disciples by Sondra Higgins Matthaei). We wrestled with statements like this: "when holiness is your goal, you do evangelism differently" (Richard Heitzenrater). And this one from John Wesley himself:

That part of our method, the private weekly meetings for prayer, examination and particular exhortation, has been the greatest means of deepening and confirming every blessing that was received by the word preached, and of diffusing it to others, who could not attend the public ministry; whereas without this religious connection and conversation, the most ardent attempts by mere preaching have proved of no lasting value. (Works, VIII:252)

We talked about the de-toxification/de-construction that is required of our first formation in the patterns of our culture (consumerism), before we can be formed by the new patterns, habits and practices of the life in Jesus. This is where Wesley's "method" is particularly helpful, the means of grace (acts of piety and mercy) are habits and practices that open us up to the ongoing formation of the Holy Spirit -- a rival formation to the patterns we have already been shaped by. We liked this video clip from Alan Hirsch.

 

We recognized that all the various "discipleship" resources are not solve-all plans, but just helpful tools if we already have an understanding of what it means to grow up in Jesus, following the Jesus Way, which we suggested is a journey, a path, rather than a particular destination, or set of beliefs. A key insight was to recognize that much of our ministry activities lead to mushy, anemic Jesus followers (the kind who struggle with Luke 14:25-27) rather than active, surrendered, Jesus-centred, others-oriented, disciples. The goal of the experience was that participants would discern a way forward for their own intentional disciple-making within their own ministry contexts.

This is the fourth group of pastors that we have entered into this kind of learning experience with. It's not a "course with students," but a multi-dimensional learning experience with co-labourers/learners.

New book on John Wesley Haley

John Wesley Haley (1878-1951) was/is a relatively unknown Canadian Free Methodist missionary who served as a church-planter and pastor in Saskatchewan and Ontario as well as in Mozambique and South Africa (1902-1934), finally initiating new ministry in Burundi and Rwanda (1935-1946).

A new book, John Wesley Haley and Building the Indigenous Church, has recently been published edited by John McCready, Haley's grandson. McCready came across a manuscript that Haley was writing at the time of his death in 1951. He decided to bring the manuscript to life with some fresh reflection on Haley's life and ministry.

Haley has intrigued me for decades because of the attention he paid to the work of mission strategist Roland Allen. McCready knew of my interest and asked me to write a chapter for the book reflecting on Haley's influences and the significance of his work in light of present missiological thinking.

My chapter is, "The Mission Temporary, The Church Permanent," from a phrase Haley wrote emphasizing that the role of the missionary is only temporary, for proclamation and initial catechism, giving free reign for the Holy Spirit to direct the development of indigenous methods and structures, while the missionary moves on to a new, unreached, location. 

When Haley wrote or taught about his approach in the 1930s and 40s he was seen as unusual, but respected. This manuscript may have been prompted by his invitation to speak at the EFMA/NAE conference in 1949 about his method in light of colonial tensions at the time particularly in East Asia, with the removal of all missionaries from China in the wake of Mao's revolution.

Dr Howard A Snyder writes a foreword where he states that Haley "is timely and prophetic today because of the way he conjoined theory and practice in pioneering deep church planting in Central Africa -- and reflected on this in his writings."

Discipling the few

Pete Scazzero shared this helpful graphic and a few thoughts on disciplemaking in a recent newsletter. 

Jesus focused a disproportionate amount of time discipling the Twelve -- and one of them didn't even work out. This was His upside down strategy to reach the world with the love of the Father.

Yet we have programs to run, meetings to lead, people to pray for, money concerns, attendance to monitor, administration to be done, messages to prepare, strategies to execute, visions to cast, and crises that won't wait till tomorrow.

We live in the great tension of the big and the small -- a tension I carry with me each week as I set priorities. How do I focus on the few, my Twelve, when modern culture demands the big! and now?

It helps me to remember that so much in and around me resists focusing on the few. Why?

• Discipling the few is slow. The kingdom of God is a mustard seed and always will be.

• Discipling the few is hard. People are complex and formation is messy.

• Discipling the few is limiting. Limits and rebellion are closely related. We have been resisting limits since the Garden of Eden.

• Discipling the few demands a lot from me. I cannot give what I do not possess, and cannot help but give what I do possess.  It requires I keep growing and learning.

 

The Multicultural Leader - 2nd edition

JUST RELEASED: Second edition of The Multicultural Leader.

(Only available in Kindle at the moment).

The first edition came out in 2005, but I had basically written all the content in 2001-2003. That makes the content definitely more than a decade old -- but we've all been learning so much since then! Hence the reason for this second edition.

The book is still being used as a text in a variety of institutions in Canada and the USA, so an update was necessary to do justice to the burst of new material in this field. Interestingly there is still very little written in a substantial way about leadership in multicultural churches for the Canadian context. Most of what has been published over the last decade or so is all couched in American context.

Additions have been made to Section 1 on A Christian View of Multiculturalism, updating current thought from Canadian author Will Kymlicka and American writers Branson and Martinez.

Section 2, Defining the Multicultural Leader is largely untouched with just the additions of a few more illustrative stories.

Section 3, Becoming a Multicultural Leader, has the most substantial updates, adding another 20 pages to the book. In the original I briefly touched on Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity; in the update I go much deeper in the relevant applications of this model and assessment framework, now with a decade of experience using this tool in leadership development contexts. I add specific insights from the work of Darla Deardorff on processes for developing intercultural competence. Most of the charts have also been updated and some new ones added.

I think the main reason that I have gone to the effort of updating the book, is that there is still very little written on the specific leadership attitudes, knowledge and skills required for pastoring multi-ethnic faith communities, particularly in the Canadian context.

from effectiveness to faithfulness

Parker Palmer, one of my favourite authors/reflective practitioners, comments on the differences between effectiveness and faithfulness. In the midst of technique, methods, models, tools, there is a need for something deeper

From Effectiveness to Faithfulness from Center for Courage & Renewal on Vimeo.

the unreasonable man

George Bernard Shaw:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I guess that's why I always end up at the Shaw Festival, rather than Stratford & Shakespeare.

leading via understanding direction, distance and anxiety

a bit more reflecting from my reading of Edwin Friedman:

communication is itself an emotional phenomenon, rather than a matter of the intellect that is influenced by feelings or the emotions...

TED Talks are a great example of this... the number one rule for doing a TED Talk is "make them care"  -- people need to connect emotionally before our minds open up to the idea being presented.

Others can only hear you when they are moving toward you, no matter how eloquently you phrase the message. In other words, as long as you are in the pursuing, rescuing, or coercive position, your message, no matter how eloquently broadcast, will never catch up. And as for anxiety, it is the static in any communication system and can distort or scramble any message. Messages in families, in the consultation process, or in organizational directives come through less because of the quality of their content than because of the emotional enveloped in which they are delivered...

If people aren't really moving in the direction we are moving, they aren't going to hear us anyway. If we have to turn around to pursue, rescue, persuade or coerce, we have halted our own forward movement. If we have to pause over our own anxiety to figure out if people "like" us, or our message, we lose momentum. If we communicate anxiety about "the situation," we have just passed anxiety on to those around -- "oh, it must be bad if she's anxious."

Roxburgh talks about this in The Missional Leader -- being out front, "being and doing" in confidence that God is at work -- the apostle, the prophet, the poet -- faith-filled with the God of mission, plotting a path rooted in the intentions of God, communicating the vision in deeply emotive, connecting, language and story.