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Becoming an Unhurried Leader
Do you believe—like many others—that busyness equals productivity? Or maybe you’re fueled by the idea that the one who hurries gest the most done for God.
Or do you recognize how slowing down inside is crucial to spiritual health and productive leadership?
Fadling says, “Unhurried leadership operates from a peaceful confidence that God has made me, that God is remaking me, and that God has invited me to live a life of influence from that very place and as that very person. God is making me to be the person of influence I was meant to be.” Rather than allow anxiety to drive them, unhurried leaders learn to depend on a reliable God who invites them to join a good kingdom work already well underway. Unhurried leaders also learn to rest as hard as they work.
Just as Dallas Willard once advised John Ortberg (“You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life”), we must also eliminate hurry from our leadership. We hurry when we think that the first thing to be done as a leader is “do something.” Often the first thing to be done as a leader is something more receptive than active, something like listening, seeing, or reflecting.
Leading from Abundance
What if we thought about our work and our responsibilities as a ministry to God? We could choose to regard our relationships, our opportunities, and our responsibilities as places through which God’s living water flows from him through us to others.
When J. Oswald Sanders—author of Spiritual Leadership—was asked, “What is the secret of spiritual leadership?”, he responded without missing a beat, by answering the question with one word: “God.” That’s all he said. He had learned in nearly ninety years of life that the secret of growing in godliness is God. The secret of my spiritual leadership is God.
This is key to understanding the words of Jesus: “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things [food, clothes, basic needs] will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).
Bernard of Clairvaux, a twelfth-century reformer in the Benedictine order of monks, offered this insight into life and leadership as overflow, “The [one] who is wise, therefore, will see [their] life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then [offers] the overflow without loss to itself… Today there are many in the Church who act like canals; the reservoirs are far too rare… They want to pour [this stream] forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves.”
Hurried leaders are quick to do and slow to be; quick to speak but slow to listen; quick to teach and slow to learn; quick to lead others but slow to let God lead them beside his still waters.
The instinct of many leaders is to focus first on solving the problems of dryness and deadness that we see. How do we cause more inspiration, refreshment, energy, direction, and strategic vision to come to the dry and dead places? Then, when we have an idea, we work on squeezing more out of what is before us, often with strategies like more rules, accountability, and exhortation. But those around us usually feel more drained than energized.
Douglas Steere, a Quaker professor and author, wrote these words fifty years ago about the busyness he witnessed among Christians when they gathered, “In religious circles we find today a fierce and almost violent planning and programming, a sense that without ceaseless activity nothing will ever be accomplished. How seldom it occurs to us that God has to undo and to do all over again so much of what we in our willfulness have pushed through in his name. How little there is in us of the silent and radiant strength in which the secret works of God really take place! How ready we are to speak, how loathe to listen, to sense the further dimension of what it is that we confront.”
These words are just as true today. Instead of living and serving in the presence of a God who is always at work and from whom flows abundance, we work almost violently, as though no work but our own would make a difference. We forget that God is already working and that we would be wise to simply join him in that work. And whatever work God is doing, he does so in a way that is in keeping with who he is: gentle, kind, patient, peaceful. When we are working with God, we also will work with gentleness, kindness, patience, and peace.
Leading in His Presence
We are led before we lead. Consider the words of Isaiah 55:1-3, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.”
In this brief passage, I hear four key words of invitation: come, listen, buy, and eat. Notice the sequence and the flow of these words: they encourage us to come to God, listen to him, trust him, and enjoy him. Come is an invitation to presence and communion; listen, an invitation to conversation and learning; buy, to trusting and entrusting; and eat, to contemplation and nourishment.
Our leadership is too often mostly in terms of go: Go to meetings. Go to serve. Go, go, go! But the first invitation to us leaders is always Jesus’ come. We learn to go with Jesus only after we come to him and grow in following him.
Consider the four words of invitation in terms of a grocery store. We won’t get much nourishment if we don’t first come in through the doors of the local market, put good food into our carts (listen), and then buy what we gathered. But all that activity won’t help us if we don’t eat and enjoy the good food we take home.
Leading in God’s presence means learning to slow down to a pace that doesn’t weaken our rootedness in the richness of all God is, a pace that enables us to bear the fruit of God’s presence in all we are becoming and all we are doing. We are to live at a slow enough pace that we are able to taste eternity and share it with others.
Vision of God, Vision from God
We who lead need to see in our mind’s eyes where we are going and what we are intending to do. Of course. Whatever vision from God we may have in our hearts and minds, it will be most rich, rooted, and creative when seen within a vision of God. Any holy vision from God is reflected light from our vision of God.
It is both God with us and God within our vision that will enliven our work. Jesus made it quite clear in John 15:5 that apart from him we can do nothing. We can be quite busy apart from him, but busyness and fruitfulness are not necessarily the same. What we as leaders therefore want to discover is the intersection of God’s vision and ours.
Something Oswald Chambers says in My Utmost for His Highest (in the July 6 reading) proved a sustaining and guiding insight on “Visions Becoming Reality.” Chambers says, “Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has! He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal. We assume that the next step after receiving a vision is to get moving and get working. But I’ve found that often God wants first to make the vision real in our actual lives so that we can live the vision and then see it realized through our work. This has required a lot of patience over the years. “
Consider the one-third rule. We are wise to devote one-third of our planning time to the preparatory practices of spiritual, communal, or missional skills. Doing so is a practical way to both make seek-God-first opportunities a priority and to practice God’s presence as we work.
When we trust more in God than we do in our own opinion, perspective, or assessments, our vision of a kingdom way forward in our relationships and our work will be clearer. Our holy, humble confidence in God and, therefore, in the steps we take as leaders will grow.
Ask yourself, “Is my leadership and spiritual influence rooted in self-confidence or God-confidence? Do I know the difference between the two?”
Suffering has a way of reminding us that our lives—our real lives—are not defined by our activities, that what we accomplish is not the essence of our lives. And suffering slows us down. Hurry has a way of making us skim the surface of God’s loving presence in our lives. Being slowed down by suffering gives us an opportunity to sink roots deeper into our heavenly Father’s love.
Unhurried Influence
How do we become the sort of people who reliably bear fruit that lasts? We improve the health, the wholeness, and the holiness of our inner life.
Despite Jesus’ concern about the internal, too many Christian leadership strategies for spiritual growth seem to focus on outward behavior and appearance. When Christians fail to be honest about our struggles, those who follow us make the assumption that we are struggle-free, unlike them, and that they cannot follow such a perfect leader.
Chuck Miller shared a simple illustration involving a pitcher, a cup, a saucer, and a plate. Picture the cup on the saucer and both sitting on the plate. In the pitcher is all that God is and wants to pour into the cup, which represents my life. As God pours into me until I am full, the overflow spills out onto the saucer that supports me: the saucer represents all the relationships in my life. As God’s people in my community receive all that God pours into our shared life, that overflow spills onto the plate, which represents the work of God we share. Unhurried leadership gives sufficient attention to the process whereby God fills me to overflowing; it is the fruit of overflow rather than pouring out the last few drops of whatever we have on our own to give.
Wayne Anderson, one of Fadling’s mentors, introduced a discipline he called “extended personal communion with God” and Fadling came to term as unhurried time with God. He urged us to set aside the better part of a day once a month to simply be alone with God for no other reason than to be in God’s presence, listen for his voice, and enjoy him in a peaceful, unhurried way.
How Grace Empowers Leadership
Just as I am saved by grace, so I live by grace, serve by grace, and lead by grace.
God has given us strengths. He blesses our strengths and uses our strengths. But we get attached to our strengths and they become idols: our strengths become God replacements and, as such, can become lord instead of Jesus.
Fadling notes, “When my vision of leadership is more hurried, that pace tends to indicate that I’m serving out of my own strength rather than relying on graced-by-God strengths perfected in my weaknesses. I’ve come to the humbling conclusion that pride has often been an engine for my apparent leadership success in the past, and I have seen this in too many other Christian leaders over the years.”
Too rarely do leaders honestly admit, “I can be wrong.” Those four words are a beautiful (and true) statement of humility.
When people are suffering, hopeless, tempted, hurting, or overwhelmed, they need real grace that we are able to give because we have actually received it. Real grace never gives easy answers to troubles, and comforting counsel is richly seasoned in real grace. So God never grants Paul’s prayer for healing or resolution from his “thorn”; instead the Lord awakens the apostle’s mind and heart to his great and all-sufficient grace. And when God tells Paul that his grace will be sufficient, He isn’t saying, “I know you wanted resolution, but you’ll have to settle for grace.”
Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an eighteenth-century spiritual director and writer, suggested that “to make humility your foundation stone, the God of goodness begins by making you more keenly aware of your weakness. Yet when this feeling casts you down, at once let hope pick you up; for, as you know, it pleases God to turn our greatest weaknesses into triumphs for his grace.” In a sense, Paul comes to understand that when God does not answer his prayers in the affirmative, the Lord might be offering a better response to a different question.
Unhurrying Our Thoughts
You’ve probably heard it said that “you are what you eat.” An echo of this insight is the idea that “we are what we think.” The thoughts that we allow to make themselves at home in our minds and hearts shape our souls. Some of those thoughts are good, true, and life-giving; some of them are not.
David prays, “Search me, God, and know my heart.” Too often, instead of inviting the searching eyes of God to know my heart, I hide what is in my heart from myself, from others, and—as if it’s even possible—from God. David’s prayer continues: “Test me and know my anxious thoughts.” Similarly, I invite God to “test” what he has searched out in me, especially my anxious thoughts—and I define anxious thoughts as every thought that is not rooted in my trust in God.
Sometimes we allow troubles to loom larger than the ever-present and almighty God who has good plans for our lives. We’re tempted to hide rather than submit our hearts and minds to the gaze of the God who loves us, the One who wishes only to heal, free, guide, and empower us to walk more closely with Him.
One way to notice your thoughts is to practice journaling. Journaling as a tool helps both unhurry and discern your thoughts. Here’s a simple three-level framework that has been freeing and life-giving for Fadling. Noticing, discerning, responding—these three steps help me in a number of practical ways.
Fadling goes on to say, “This three-part tool often helps me uncover the negative thinking behind that feeling. I also use this tool when I’m feeling overwhelmed by thoughts that seem in conflict with one another. Finally, walking through the noticing, discerning, responding steps has proven a useful problem-solving and decision-making tool for me.”
Prayer as Primary Influence
When it comes to the rhythm of contemplation and action in the life of a leader, more of us have tended to neglect contemplation in favor of action rather than the reverse. We live in such an outward-focused leadership world. Fadling explains, “That’s why I have sought to integrate contemplation and leadership over the last twenty-five years. Prayer really is someone we are with more than something we do. Prayer—being with Jesus—is a leader’s greatest source of influence. Therefore, prayer must never be a merely peripheral activity for leaders.”
It would help immensely if we saw our influence—our leadership—as the care of souls. Our most lasting influence in the lives of others is to enable them to become whole and holy in all the ways Jesus invites them. We can’t do that without prayer.
There is a fruitful connection between focusing prayer on particular people and then finding in yourself in greater interest, curiosity, compassion, and engagement with those people. Bringing people into God’s presence through intercessory prayer keeps alive and vital their place in your heart. When prayer is thin, love is thin.
As a Christian leader, we do not need to choose between living either a contemplative life or an active life. Author and pastor Eugene Peterson said it like this, “The contemplative life generates and releases an enormous amount of energy into the world—the enlivening energy of God’s grace rather than the enervating frenzy of our pride.” The contemplative life and the active life are complementary, not either-or.
May we as leaders pray soul prayers so that those we serve might find grace that empowers, encourages, stimulates, and energizes them for every good thing God gives them to do. In this way, prayer is more relational than transactional.
Leadership prayer is also more person-focused than program-focused. How often do we focus our prayer on asking God to bless with success some meeting, service, gathering, service project, or initiative? Leadership prayer aims to be more God-focused than me-focused.
Leadership prayer is not merely expressing what I want as I sit in God’s presence; instead, it is often a kind of dying to what I think I want. This element of prayer is really more about our own spiritual formation than it is about improving any ministry situation.
Thomas Merton said that “in prayer we discover what we already have.”
Working with God
Fadling explains, “When I think about my own journey as a pastor and now as a spiritual director and leader to other leaders and organizations, there are times my activities as a Christian leader were vaguely intended for God, but they didn’t spring from God, they weren’t inspired by God, and I was not operating with God. I was far more aware of the work I was doing and far less aware of the work God had already been doing and had called me to be a part of.”
One way to reflect on how working with God actually works is to think in terms of how prayer (relationship with God) and leadership (doing God’s work) relate to one another. Here are three ways this can work:
- Pray or Lead: Some leaders see the connection more as pray or lead rather than pray and lead. Perhaps they see themselves as driven extroverts who just don’t have the temperament to sit around “doing nothing” in prayer.
- Pray then Lead: Other leaders see the connection as pray, then lead. Regardless of their temperament, these leaders realize that they must have a healthy relationship with God if they are to do his work well.
- Pray and Lead: What works best is an orientation toward pray and lead. Consider these benefits: we learn to lead prayerfully, and we learn to pray with an eye for initiative and engagement. This suggests a way of praying and leading in which these activities intersect and interplay rather than being separate and disconnected. We need not see prayer as falling in the “being close to God” category and leadership as falling under the “doing for God at a practical distance” category. Prayer is living in vital friendship with God. Leadership is working in vital friendship with God.
Contemplation is not just a meditative practice. It is personal communion with God. Contemplation is a way of living and working in his presence. A contemplative life is an attentive life in a distracted world. It is a listening life in a wordy world. It is an abiding life in a detached world. It is an unhurried life in a frenetic world.
Consider this insight from spiritual director and teacher Thomas Green about how contemplation relates to our work, “The apostolic life is the overflow of the contemplative. One goes first to the chapel, as it were, to be filled with God, and then goes to the marketplace to share with others the God he has encountered in prayer.”
What does engaging our work look like when it is birthed in contemplation and guided by discernment? Our working with God is prayerful, rooted, organic, clear, elegant, stable, and simple.
- Prayerful. Holy engagement in our work begins and ends in prayer, and prayerful contemplation is the spirit of the entire journey. Our work can truly be a rich contemplative activity.
- Rooted. Holy engagement in our work is a journey grounded and rooted in the Scriptures and in the solid traditions of God’s people from centuries past.
- Organic. Holy engagement in our work remains spiritually alive. Jesus uses organic and natural images to describe our connection with him: a sheep with its shepherd, a branch connected to a vine.
- Clear. Holy engagement in our work seeks a simplicity and clarity of purpose. Jesus used straightforward stories to capture people’s imaginations and teach profound truths.
- Elegant. Holy engagement in our work reflects the elegant beauty and grace evident in the rest of creation.
- Stable. Holy engagement in our work with God enables us to work with continuity and perseverance, to be stable and reliable.
- Simple. Holy engagement in our work finds a way toward simplicity.
Clearly, it’s a process! Reflection is taking time to learn from the journey so far; it is the spiritual practice of examen. We learn to look back and notice the ways God’s grace has attended our path.
May you slow down in this season of life and practice the lasting fruit of daily influence as an Unhurried (Out of This World) Leader!