One of the odd things I am discovering is that often churches get the pastor they deserve and pastors get the church they deserve – even when they don’t like each other!
It’s odd.
This is relational sociology 201.
It is true in life.
We get the relationships we magnetically pull.
This is so true.
We complain about people, about politicians, about other people’s kids, about our neighbors dog – but maybe the relationship we have with them is merely a reflection of our own self’s.
We complain about the shows on television – but we watch them.
We criticize the bad movie – that we’ve just finished going to the cinema to see.
We are a paradox of hypocrisy. We have developed skills of double lives.
We live on two tracks of life.
We stole the cookie out of the cookie jar.
So how do we live this paradoxical life and yet lead transformationally?
Or think about this.
How many times have you heard pastors use language that cannot be delivered on?
How many times have we spoken false promises?
Just a few weeks back I recorded how many times our staff guys used the word ‘awesome’ in describing something going on at our church as they tried to encourage people to participate while they gave announcements in one of our services. While the event or the ministry was a good event, unsure if ‘awesome’ was not going too far. That word is now banned from our announcements – as is ‘brilliant’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘incredible.’ We don’t want to mislead the public.
But there is a bigger reason – apart from shrinking some words, maybe we’ve begun to believe that it actually is ‘awesome’, ‘brilliant’ or ‘incredible’.
This is not so much a paradox of hypocrisy; rather it is a paradox of exaggeration.
Both our hypocrisies and our exaggerations are the enemies to leading transformationally.
Yet we cannot flee such, they are the human factor we are stuck with, we need to lead through them.
Effective, transformational leadership always leads through not around.
I’ve only got two suggestions as to how to deal effectively with our paradoxes:
1. Be fully recognizant of it – just knowing that you have this bias to hypocrisy and exaggeration helps you work through it. Be honest.
2. Listen to your spouse more often – my wife’s antenna to pick up on both hypocrisy and exaggeration is hot!
Anyone got more suggestions?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Leading through paradoxes
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3 comments:
Thank goodness we will no longer use that overused word,I think its really awesome.
There is a quote from the movie V for Vendetta that purports “Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover up truth”. Using lies to tell the truth, now that’s a paradox. Hypocrisy and exaggeration anyone? Don’t know that I’m that great of an artist. I think Jesus was an artist, but then again I don’t think he used lies.
If we are going to accept this human frailty, then may we strive to be artists with a pure heart.
I know the author of this blog to be an artist. However, I tend to exaggerate.
I love the discusion of this subject. I also have to agree that my wife is also a great spotter of exageration, particularily in me. When I was in the military there was a tongue in cheak joke used to expose the exagerator while in the telling, it went something like this..." Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story"
Is it exageration we are guilty of or just an over use of Jargon? We christians lock onto phrases that are irrevelant to the world. So much so that our thoughts are no longer defendable because our words and phrases are void of real meaning. Are the terms in question (and others) merely the jargon of the group that work so closely together. Have these terms therefore, just lost their meaning and value because they are over used and "filler" words when better words cannot be thought of fast enough.
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