Flight Is the Only Sane Response

Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles into Strengths
by Dan B. Allender, Ph.D.

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There are two common stories I hear from students who come to Mars Hill Graduate School. One group of students will say, "I didn't want to be here. I was working in Washington DC/Portland/Charlotte/Chicago. I loved my job, my church, and my friends, but in a matter of months my life was turned upside down. It felt like God spun me around, headed me west, and here I am, not really sure why. But I am here, and I sense that this is where I am meant to be."

The other group will say, "I knew this is where I wanted to study. I heard about the school through a book/a seminar/a student, and I have wanted to be here for years. But since I've come, I feel like I'm going through a crisis of confidence. I don't know if this is really what I am supposed to do. I'm afraid, and I feel crazy for ever thinking I wanted to come here."

Doubt is the context for surrender. And flight is the path for obedience. When we're reluctant to lead, doubting ourselves and our call, we are ripe for growth as a leader. Likewise, when we hear the call to lead but we run in the opposite direction, God has a way of having us thrown off the boat, swallowed by a large fish, and spit onto the shore where we are to serve. If the situation weren't so serious, it would be hilarious. God invites us to run and yet to know that he will arrive at our place of flight before we arrive so he can direct our steps again.

Perhaps you doubt this is true. Or, more likely, you hope it might be different for you. But the data from the bible seem to support this premise more often than not. God seems to choose leaders who don't want to serve, and when they do follow God's call, they often do so in a way that creates new chaos. Consider each of the three patriarchs. Abraham was a liar and a coward. Isaac, the least troubled of the three, was forced to live with the memory of his father's knife at his throat, and later he allowed his wife to manipulate the entire household. Jacob was so manipulative and self-serving that he was like Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strip, billowing chaotic dust wherever he went. Or think about Moses. In a ridiculous encounter God speaks to Moses from a burning bush. Moses removes his sandals and acknowledges the place to be holy ground, yet he second-guesses God's command that he return to Egypt to free his people. (No doubt Moses was recalling his first effort to free the slaves-the murder he committed, a crime which sent him into a forty-year exile.) Moses' efforts to dissuade God lead to a second plan that involves Aaron, his more articulate brother. This is not the behavior we would predict of Moses or God. It seems much closer to a script from Monty Python than Ben Hur.

God's habit of calling reluctant leaders gets even odder. He calls young Jeremiah, a boy who is no more than eighteen years old. Jeremiah resists three times and secures a promise that God will protect him. As the story unfolds, we see that it would have been wise for Jeremiah to have pressed for a definition of protection and then read the fine print. His life was one of inexhaustible suffering and the absence of what most sane people would call protection.

And then there is Jonah. Jonah is a world-class model of trying to flee the call of leadership. He runs away on a boat and is thrown into the deep chaos of the sea only to be swallowed by a piscine taxi that spits him onto the shore of the very place he was trying so hard to avoid.2 Again, it is a bizarre story that makes our devotion to formal, academic preparation for leadership seem like it was invented on the dark side of the moon. The kind of people God calls and their reluctant responses to that calling are not what we expect of professional leaders. We expect our leaders to eagerly and faithfully execute their duties. After all, they're trained professionals.

The Flawed Formal-Training Process

The training process for leaders-secular or religious-can usually be broken into three areas: content, skill, and ethics/character. At the seminary I attended, 90 percent of the curriculum was devoted to content, 10 percent focused on skill, and our character and ethics, or how we lived in relationship with others, was never addressed beyond a few talks in chapel. It was assumed that who we were as people and how we related to others had been addressed prior to our arrival at seminary. The place for personal growth was thought to be the church, not the seminary. The seminary trained men and women in the bible, theology, church history, and other academic rigors, and then it taught those who would pastor how to preach and conduct themselves in the church. Practical skills were assumed to be learned from classroom input and field experience. We all knew that what mattered was how well we did on papers and tests. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, seminaries began to admit that their students needed much more. So professors of practical theology, who had been or were still in the "real world" of the pastorate, taught courses and occasionally took students into the trenches. But the focus was still about 80 percent content, 15 percent skill, and only 5 percent ethics/character, with a course on spiritual formation thrown in for good measure.

Oddly, the same is true in many MBA and other leadership programs. Content is king. In MBA programs, however, skills are wed more to the curriculum than in most seminaries. Yet character is equally ignored. As more business dishonesty and illegalities occurred and became public knowledge, though, a cry rose to bring in ethics. The secular world has also been quicker to include psychology and its offspring in the mix. Most MBA graduates have studied personality profiles and the data on their own work personalities. Folks who have been trained in or who have taught in the business world tell me that the mix is now likely 65 percent content, 30 percent skill, and 5 percent ethics.

Notice the pattern: teach theory and skill, and hope that somehow the issues of character and ethics will take care of themselves. The assumption is that parents have already dealt with their children's character issues or that the church, synagogue, or other religious institution will take care of shaping ethics and personal values. The academy is for content and practical skills.

This is a problem because we in academia fail to address the narcissism that drives many leaders. We enable troubled and manipulative men and women to devour their colleagues, their staffs, and their congregations simply because they've passed exams, written papers, matriculated through a degree, and gained the credentials to be called professionals.

Copyright © 2006 by Dan B. Allender, Ph.D.

About the Author

Dan B. Allender, Ph.D., is the President of Mars Hill Graduate School, in Seattle, Washington. He taught in the Biblical Counseling Department of Grace Theological Seminary for seven years, then was a professor in the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling program at Colorado Christian University, Denver. Dr. Allender is the author of The Wounded Heart and has coauthored two books with Dr. Larry Crabb: Encouragement: The Key to Caring and Hope for the Hurting. With Dr. Tremper Longman he has coauthored four books: Bold Love, Cry of the Soul, Intimate Allies, and Bold Purpose.