Challenge Two of Congregational Leadership Today: Introducing leisure-loving people to a 'losing oneself' lifestyle.
Jesus Christ by virtue of His headship over the church, His example for the church and His challenge to the church, calls His people to cross-carrying commitment to His cause. This means a lifestyle of ‘losing one’s life in order to find it.’ This becomes a struggle when a congregation is formed out of a society that sets a high premium on leisure and self-fulfillment. It has been said of North Americans that we tend to ‘worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship.’ Our congregations are assemblies of volunteers whom we desire to serve Christ. “I always want more people, from more diverse functions and places” is not just the cry of those outside the church says Margaret Wheatley. Working with volunteers has dynamics that are different than working with those who are paid to perform. Moving volunteers from being only consumers to also being contributors is a basic challenge of congregational leadership today. Rolf Jensen suggests a key to volunteer engagement when he says “people adopt or retain an idea because they have some motive for doing it.”
Introducing believers to increasingly sacrificial lifestyles is further complicated by the complexity of people’s needs and wants. Congregations are made up of both families and individuals who are often very demanding because of needs that have arisen within their home environments and work stations. Beyond the needs of a somewhat broken society, there are the ‘wants’ of people who have affluence and leisure time that was known only to a few in past generations. It seems that the solution to transitioning people from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness is to assist them in tracking healthy spiritual development together, within the context of Christian community. Again quoting Margaret Wheatley, a “fundamental work of this time (is) to discover new ways of being together.” Most believers desire to make progress along their Christian journey and therefore may be taught to live disciplined interconnected lives that include a sense of fulfillment. Rolf Jensen, author of ‘The Dream Society’ book, writes “love and togetherness (are) two pivotal marketing definitions in the dream society.”
It is also a challenge to bring correction to bear on wayward members of congregations who resent being told to amend their ways in order to maintain a wholesome testimony for the Christ they claim to know. At times, consumerism and impending correction means that there is an increase of church-hoppers. There are those who take flight instead of get right! Mary Beth O’Neill in her book “Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart” muses that “individual responses (include) fight, flight, save the day, placate – the list is endless.” Leaders need to assess how to identify a congregational ‘ethos’ in which the back door is much narrower than the front door of the church. Ownership is a key to retaining persons. “Ownership describes personal connections to the organization, the powerful emotions of belonging that inspire people to contribute” writes Margaret Wheatley in her book entitled “Leadership and the New Science.”