A Leader's God - Part 1

In your mind, leave behind the events of the last few years (yes, please, right?).

Leave your city, your work context, and your relationships, just for a moment.

Let your mind start to wonder about how leadership and faith might be connected.

In your imagination, go back to the time, however old or recent it might be, when you first remember believing God was real.

When you think of your first picture of God that you remember, who did you believe him to be?

How did your personality or experiences influence your picture of God?

How did your picture of God shape your early walk with him, and how you interacted with others?

How has your picture of God affected your leadership?

I’ll give you an example.

For as far back as I can remember, I have tended to have a structured and scientific mind (I go to sciencenews.org for fun), so I have typically seen God through that lens as well. 

In the beginning, my primary picture of God was as Creator.

The one who brought order out of chaos, the Brilliant Designer behind all aspects of the universe.

I tended to worship God through the order and beauty that I saw everywhere in nature.

So how did that impact how I saw myself, how I interacted with others, and what I believed my purpose to be?

Well, I expected that I and everyone else would always think and act logically, consistently, and would make unbiased decisions because the facts were, well, obvious.  God was a God of order, and therefore my life and everyone else’s should be ordered and consistent as well.

As you can imagine, sometimes reality matched my expectations and other times, well, you can probably figure out how that went!

The primary “picture of God” that each of us uniquely believes to be true impacts almost every area of our lives, including our leadership.

In terms of leadership, who we believe God to be influences how we see ourselves, how we interact with our team, and what we think our mission is.

So, with all of that in mind, let me ask you a question.

What is your picture of God right now?  Who do you believe him to be?

I am not asking for a theologically correct answer.  This is not a question on a test.

I am also not asking for a list of good pictures of God versus bad pictures of God, and which one you would choose (that might be interesting, but it is not what we are doing here).

Instead, I am asking for a genuine answer. An authentic answer.

In other words, when you stop and think about yourself and have a thoughtful look inside, what picture of God appears?

Specifically, there are four questions we need to ask:

1. What is my picture of God?
2. How does my picture of God impact self, team, and mission?
3. How does my picture of God fit with scripture?
4. In terms of my picture of God, what is my next step toward life-giving leadership?

Let’s look at three examples together (one this week, and two next week).

1.  Perhaps you and I see God as someone who is never quite satisfied with who we are or what we are doing.

Whether we look through the lens of holiness and guilt, or honour and shame, or some other lens, the result is the same.  For some of us, the big picture of God we have in our minds is that he is not satisfied with us.  We do not measure up or meet the standard, whatever we think that standard might be.

Now it is true that God is perfect, and we are not, and there is a gap between us.  But are we aware of how the picture of an unpleasable God might influence how we see ourselves, our team, and our mission?

(Remember that our goal at this point is not to wrestle with the theological accuracy of our picture of God, but first, to become aware of the impact that our picture of God has on what we expect of ourselves, our team, and our mission).

How might my leadership be affected if my dominant picture of God is that he is not quite satisfied with me?  It could play out in several ways.

• For example, a performance mentality might slip in.  Goals and standards might become overly important.  There might be too much of a focus on the shortfalls of the team.  Annual reviews may have too much emphasis on mistakes that have been made or on problems to be solved.  I might not spend enough time celebrating success or assessing what went right (rather than wrong) and why.
• On the upside, though, having this kind of picture of God might be a motivator not to accept the status quo, to work hard, to set goals and pursue them, to push the team to perform well.  And those are good things.

If you or I have a primary picture of God that is like this, what do we need to pay attention to in terms of our own leadership development?

• You may need to allow yourself and your team to just “be” once in a while.  Take the foot off the gas pedal (for yourself and those you lead), and embrace the value of catching your breath, and being with God (rather than performing for God).  Maybe you need to take a look at self-care or team-care.  Maybe you need to have someone come in and help assess how your team is really doing, personally, emotionally, and spiritually.

🌟 Ok, it feels like we are just getting started, right?

Well, we are going to pause for now and then finish up next week.

Take this week and think through everything we talked about so far.

Who do you think God is, and how does that impact your leadership?

Stay tuned for next Monday when we look at the final two pictures of God!

Mark