00:00:09.240 - 00:00:27.790

to the dean, my colleagues on the faculty cabinet and staff. I say good morning to our guests and returning students. I say good morning, thank you all for the opportunity to speak to you and

00:00:27.790 - 00:00:45.100

for the privilege of your time. Now to our new master of divinity, master of Arts and Theological Studies and Master of Arts in Youth Ministry students. I say, here you are, this is the

00:00:45.110 - 00:01:00.230

first day of school. It's probably not what you imagined when you imagine coming to seminary. That's certainly not what I imagined when I was invited to give this convocation address. But here we are and we

00:01:00.230 - 00:01:17.230

are so glad to be together, if not in the same room, at least in the same space . It's still really happening. We have been preparing for you since before. Theological education was even a

00:01:17.230 - 00:01:36.150

twinkle in your eye. You know, people aren't just born professors, professors are people who discover their gifts for learning for thinking, for caring and they develop those gifts over years and years of hard work

00:01:36.740 - 00:01:52.310

. They have a claw to share those gifts with the academy, the church and with you our campus . The building where you may be sitting, this chapel where I am standing. The very fiber optic

00:01:52.320 - 00:02:09.350

cable that makes it possible for us to connect all of this is here for you Because of the stewardship of gifts given by faithful people for more than 100 years. People who believed that one day you would

00:02:09.350 - 00:02:24.030

show up and you would need an education. The rest of us bring our gifts here to take care of the property, pay the bills, keep everybody warm and cool, watered and fed to tell the

00:02:24.030 - 00:02:42.560

seminary story. Find all the resources that we need to spread the joy of learning and all the 100 other gifts we give each day for the vitality of our community. Now you are a part of this

00:02:42.560 - 00:02:59.850

place. Run by gifts. We need you to receive our gifts and you need us to give your gifts. Two. I know you're not supposed to end a sentence center proposition, but bear with me

00:02:59.850 - 00:03:10.660

, I kind of got into that and couldn't get out. Now. I don't know why you think you are called to this place. My guess is that the answer to that question has many, many

00:03:10.660 - 00:03:24.480

layers to it. Now. You may think you know exactly why you are here and you may be exactly right. Or you may be in for some surprises. You may be here without much of a

00:03:24.480 - 00:03:43.300

clue about what's to become of you. But I believe in fact, I strongly believe that you are here to develop your gifts to tend to the gifts of other people. That is, you are here

00:03:43.300 - 00:03:59.490

to prepare for leadership. You are not here only for yourself. You are here to become a leader . A steward of the mysteries of God, for the people of God, for the people of the

00:03:59.500 - 00:04:15.240

world and indeed for creation itself. And leadership is what I want to talk about this morning. So , let's start by taking a poll. Yes. This is something I cannot do if we were in

00:04:15.240 - 00:04:30.670

the chapel. So, here's your poll statement. I am a good leader. Now you answer. Do you strongly agree agree, disagree or strongly disagree ? Are you sharing the results pole? Can everybody

00:04:30.670 - 00:05:03.900

see the results? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Only 81% of you have voted. Keep voting. Yeah. All right. So, what we have here are The results of your poll, 83% of

00:05:03.900 - 00:05:19.970

you agree that you are strong leader. 13% strongly agree. One person strongly disagrees. You're probably looking at this and thinking about how you might or might not compare to other people. Faculty may be looking

00:05:19.970 - 00:05:32.260

at this, trying to deserve what kind of work we have to do to develop leaders. Um, but what I want to say and you can stop sharing that, let's stop sharing the results. Um

00:05:33.240 - 00:05:48.280

what I want to say is what this poll tells me is everybody has an idea of what a good leader is. There's something in your mind that you were thinking about when you answered that whole and it

00:05:48.280 - 00:06:00.340

may or may not be what I think of as a good leader or what the president of the dean or the person you're looking at in the screen thinks of, but you have an image in your mind

00:06:00.340 - 00:06:18.390

that has power about what a good leader is and your standard of good leadership is what organizational psychologist Peter Singer calls a mental model, a deeply held internal image of how the world works. That limits us

00:06:18.480 - 00:06:31.810

to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Our mental models are the lenses through which we see reality. But the thing is we often don't even know we have those lenses. So what we see and what

00:06:31.810 - 00:06:46.760

we think is reality is really only what we're seeing through our mental models. So leadership lesson number one , if you do not learn to see your lenses , you will always keep leading in the same way

00:06:47.440 - 00:07:04.000

and you will be frustrated. Our mental models of leadership. Where do they come from? Mostly from culture. So let's consider the model of leadership displayed on Mount Rushmore. Well, lots to say about

00:07:04.000 - 00:07:18.530

Mount Rushmore this summer. I know, but this morning let's just take it on face value. Okay , that was a pun. The images on Mount Rushmore expressed. The mental model of the great man

00:07:18.540 - 00:07:39.780

, a theory of leadership that defines a leader as an individual who rises above the rest because of his commanding courage, vision, personal achievement, boldness, Dowler, wisdom, foresight, and perseverance. The

00:07:39.780 - 00:07:55.270

great man model comes from the enlightenment. Centering, if not idolatry of the individual. The great man model. Oh it has incredible staying power. We've told this story over and over and over. We've

00:07:55.270 - 00:08:13.190

taught it to our Children. The qualities of the Rushmore men are not per se bad qualities. No throwing out the baby with the Bathwater. The problem is with the model, the mental model limits us

00:08:13.200 - 00:08:31.680

seeing those qualities As the one and only good definition of good leadership. And with that we have some blind spots. For example, the model keeps us from seeing the truth that no one really accomplishes anything

00:08:31.680 - 00:08:48.670

significant by themselves. It keeps us from seeing that no one is just one thing. No one has only one dimension to their identity. And if you have seen Hamilton, you have seen the effort to

00:08:48.670 - 00:09:09.040

tell a multidimensional story of who the actual great men were as people. The mental model of the great man privileges one voice and that privileging always has a price and it's usually paid by the people who are

00:09:09.040 - 00:09:26.200

not in the room where it happens, That mental model of the great man is a great man who's white, which means whiteness has power over everything else . And everyone here, one hero, 1 dimension

00:09:26.200 - 00:09:43.910

, one voice, one race with power over others . That is not a sustainable model for life and community. Rushmore man has got to go. Rushmore man is the only leader ship model has got to

00:09:43.910 - 00:10:03.500

go, but he doesn't go peacefully. Just watch the news, drink of water and you can get one too. So what are the other middle models ? Well, lots of smart people have asked this

00:10:03.500 - 00:10:18.860

question since the late 20th century and they've given us many models. If you study leadership, you may start listing them in the chat. They are transformational leadership, servant, leadership, adaptive leadership, strength

00:10:18.870 - 00:10:35.500

based leadership, leadership from chaos theory, emergent leadership . Well, what I want to say today is lots of other smart people committed to the body of christ. Have asked what we might learn from the

00:10:35.500 - 00:11:03.070

inside of these thinkers and that's who Mhm I want to share with you. It's really a little bit of my big bibliography here. This is who I am in conversation with today. So let's start with

00:11:03.070 - 00:11:24.700

Gil Rendall, wonderful wise organizational psychologist, church person , longtime consultant. He says the first task of leadership is to paint an honest picture of the current reality. In 1999, having just graduated from seminary

00:11:24.700 - 00:11:41.570

with an M8 as a second career person, I went to work for the Fund for Theological Education, FTE. It was a national ecumenical organization. My job, there was to encourage highly capable young people

00:11:41.570 - 00:11:58.850

to become pastors. And the picture of reality that was painted for me was this, Fewer than 7% of ordained clergy are under the age of 35. In 15 years, there will be a tsunami of

00:11:58.850 - 00:12:15.730

retirements of baby boomer pastors and there will not be a next generation of clergy to lead those churches to take those pull pits. So we have a problem , our pipeline has broken down, we have a

00:12:15.730 - 00:12:30.960

problem with the supply system, we need to rebuild the pipeline. Well, the picture of the pipeline was something like this, how people become pastors, Children are reared in congregations where people know them.

00:12:31.340 - 00:12:43.330

They go to sunday school vacation bible school, church youth group and the time by the time they are teenagers and they get to preach on you sunday, there is a little old lady in that congregation who

00:12:43.330 - 00:13:03.060

is gonna shake their hand when they leave and say , young man, I believe you'll make a preacher and sure enough he'll go on or she too, you too, he'll go on to christian college,

00:13:03.840 - 00:13:15.830

he will meet a christian girl or vice versa, young christian woman, a young christian man. They'll go to a church school, they'll fall in love , they'll get married while they're, they're a professor

00:13:15.830 - 00:13:28.950

will tap them on the shoulder and say, I believe you have gifts for ministry and their friends may decide to go to seminary. They may do a volunteer year of service, but pretty soon they will

00:13:28.950 - 00:13:45.250

end up in seminary and they will graduate, become ordained. Go on to serve a congregation where Children go to church with people who know them, vacation bible school youth group and the whole cycle will continue

00:13:45.640 - 00:14:01.840

. Okay, sure. This may be your story and if it is, it's a beautiful story and I'm glad that it's still going on. The problem with the mental model of a pipeline. Yeah.

00:14:03.140 - 00:14:26.160

Oh, they're telling me my screen share. Didn't turn off well, I am so sorry. Yeah . First to zoom convocation address, we will learn some things. Mhm Okay. This story. Maybe

00:14:26.160 - 00:14:39.050

your story and if it is, it's a beautiful one. The problem was the mental model of a pipeline was getting us to try to do what had always been done, but only to do it better

00:14:39.140 - 00:14:54.830

. Even though the way things were were not the way things had always been. We were using the past to predict the future and the past is a good predictor of the future if the president is like

00:14:54.830 - 00:15:13.230

the past. But at the end of the 20th century, the present actually was increasingly less and less like the past. For example, we were trying to reconstruct something that existed in an era of convergence

00:15:13.240 - 00:15:31.640

when people shared in large cultural identities and generally agree on what should be done and what was right and in general, they and in general, they bent their will to that. Sure. But at the

00:15:31.640 - 00:15:46.540

turn of the 21st century, we were living in a time of divergence, in which instead of generally agreed upon answers, there were many different answers growing from individual circumstances and needs. How could a system

00:15:46.540 - 00:16:00.010

built for a time of convergent work? In a time of divergence further, we were asking people to enter into allegiance to the institution of the church And at the end of the 20th century, there were

00:16:00.010 - 00:16:18.370

major reversals and trusted institutions. You know, many of them were rational response to betrayal by institutions, but there were also changes in our social contract that replaced the centrality of centrality of the group with the

00:16:18.370 - 00:16:29.920

centrality of the individual. It was a shift from where in this together to you, do you and I'll do me and we just won't hurt anybody in the process. How did a pipeline makes sense in

00:16:29.920 - 00:16:48.560

that environment? One other difference in reality, that's worth mentioning. The pipeline. We aim to rebuild drew predominantly from, withdrew from predominantly white denominations to feed predominantly white denominations. Demographers were telling us that

00:16:48.560 - 00:17:03.990

by 2040 White would be the minority race, did the pipeline model Paul and prepare leaders for that future . Now, if you think I'm going to answer these questions are raised about the pipeline and its blind

00:17:03.990 - 00:17:18.040

spots, you are about to be disappointed because remember the first job of a leader is to paint an honest picture of the current reality, not to jump in with a solution that's Rushmore, man. The

00:17:18.040 - 00:17:33.500

changes I've described punctuated the equilibrium of the system and the hits have just kept on coming. The big changes did not destroy the pipeline, as witnessed by you who are here because of it. But the

00:17:33.500 - 00:17:49.060

changes from convergence to divergence, institutional mistrust, the deterioration of the social contract, racial demographic changes. And you can name more. Those changes meant that the pipeline alone could not respond to present conditions.

00:17:49.440 - 00:18:06.260

We needed something new. We needed something that we might discover outside of the usual places, places where God might already be at work within us. And this is the challenge of leadership in these times.

00:18:06.270 - 00:18:27.880

In your times, leaders need double vision to look at what is and what is becoming Father Richard board , founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation says this space is this space where we're between, what

00:18:27.890 - 00:18:45.640

is and what is becoming, where the past is not a good predictor of the future, is actually a good space. It's a space where genuine Nunes can begin roar, admonishes us to get there often

00:18:45.650 - 00:19:04.110

and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible that they're aurore is speaking of is liminal space . Pretty honest description of our current reality limb analogy is the threshold between the diminishing paradigm which in truth

00:19:04.120 - 00:19:21.600

, we only actually ever knew in part and the emerging future which to be sure we cannot see. Well. I remember one of my clients when I practiced school law was the superintendent from a small district

00:19:21.600 - 00:19:33.090

in west texas, a really good educator. And he told me, well, everybody says I need a new parodic. Um uh huh and he did . And that awareness of the need for a new

00:19:33.090 - 00:19:48.090

parodic um and his ability to joke about it actually distinguished him as a leader who might be up for the threshold work, liminal space is not suspended time in which we do nothing and wait for revelation about

00:19:48.090 - 00:20:03.840

the next step. Nor is lim analogy the time where we act definitively to toss out the old and bring in something different just because it's different liminal season , stir things up, things fall apart, Dysfunction

00:20:03.840 - 00:20:27.450

thrives, but also liminal seasons can be Petri dishes for creativity and imagination and experimentation amidst this swirl the good Leader must remain true to the institution in connection to God and true to self, Not in service

00:20:27.450 - 00:20:41.980

to the image of who we wish we were or to the image others have projected onto us about what a leader should be. Yeah, A word here about staying true to what we have to hold on

00:20:41.980 - 00:20:57.910

to. Well, it's much harder than you may think. The temptations of the ego for leaders are just well, they're just so hard to recognize. I hope that you, as you start this school

00:20:57.910 - 00:21:15.440

year, might begin a running list of your own traps. The situations where you get caught by the gnawing or urgent need to be seen as right or as smart or caring or strong and by virtue of

00:21:15.440 - 00:21:33.760

your behavior, you end up cutting off relationships in my experience untamed. That instinct, instinct to be seen as something keeps us stuck in the old ways of leading, and that's why we need spiritual disciplines

00:21:33.380 - 00:21:48.760

and that's why we need to stay close to jesus . So how do we stay in this space where genuine Nunes can occur? One way is through the practice of wonder. Now wonder can mean many things

00:21:48.770 - 00:22:07.280

, and here I especially mean a certain kind of generous and genuine curiosity that opens up new possibilities that hence at mystery. When we convene a new learning community and education beyond the walls. We draw from

00:22:07.280 - 00:22:23.960

parker palmer and we say to the people, if you find yourself becoming judgmental or cynical or self righteous , try turning to wonder. I wonder what my reaction teaches me. I wonder what they are feeling

00:22:23.960 - 00:22:40.500

right now. I wonder if there is another way you can actually try this anytime you could try it right now while you're listening to me. Yeah, in liminal space, a leader might begin to wonder

00:22:40.510 - 00:22:53.790

about the ways things have always been done. For example, a leader might wonder about the way a group makes decisions. Now. I took parliamentary procedure as a course in college, so I know something

00:22:53.790 - 00:23:08.450

about how groups make decisions or at least the rules they follow. And I know that we follow these rules because we believe they are democratic, they order rational arguments, they allow anyone to speak who is

00:23:08.450 - 00:23:23.180

recognized and by voting, we believe the will of the people prevails. Mhm. But a leader in a present different from the past. Might wonder about this. I wonder why some people never speak at

00:23:23.180 - 00:23:40.030

all. I wonder why the room feels tight and certain votes are taken. I wonder whether stacking comments in order of hand raise, it blocks the flow of something new that wants to be born. I

00:23:40.030 - 00:23:57.430

wonder what else is out there. This curious wondering is a risk not unlike the risk I just took and questioning parliamentary procedure here in this stronghold of presbyterians . Mhm. But in wondering, the leader opens

00:23:57.430 - 00:24:12.570

their mind to receive something. Not yet. No . Without wonder. We are at the mercy of our models. Think of your mental models for leadership as an app which instantly downloads all of our past

00:24:12.570 - 00:24:29.570

experiences and learn patterns into our minds and uses that data as data recognition software for interpreting new situations. What happens is then we only recognize information that matches what we already know. The result is that your

00:24:29.570 - 00:24:48.480

field of attention is closed. The universe available to you is limited. Now, bear with me through this example, just practice that gracious blue listening, because, let's say, your pastoral at measure success

00:24:48.490 - 00:25:03.790

in ministry by scanning the field of worship attendance and more people in worship, the better ministry you are . Now. That field was set up by a historical reward system, the mindset of denominational leaders and

00:25:03.790 - 00:25:15.360

let's face it, other clergy. So picture this . You go to a new church, your app downloads your field of attention. Is worship attendance. And guess what? Before you know it, you've

00:25:15.360 - 00:25:26.030

decided that the top priority should be increasing worship. Yeah. Now, I don't know whether you should worry about worship attendance or not. That's something you have to figure out. But what I'm saying is

00:25:26.030 - 00:25:41.740

that you may be using an app that was programmed in a very different time than this one. The season of women maliti invites us to expand our field of attention from that of our apps. When I

00:25:41.740 - 00:25:59.270

came to Austin Seminary in 2011, Mike Hall was to advance the mission of the seminary to serve ordain another christian leaders and to serve the church through educational opportunities across the lifetime of ministerial practice and christian discipleship

00:26:00.140 - 00:26:15.700

. The extent model of continuing education for seminaries put the seminary in the center with the church's circled around and people coming from the churches to the seminary to get knowledge and to take home. Now, I

00:26:15.700 - 00:26:33.200

know our professors were out teaching and preaching in churches , but this was the model of institutional continuing education . That mental model matched the dominant mental model of seminary education educational delivery at an institution by the faculty

00:26:33.200 - 00:26:48.740

of that institution. But the adoption of that model for continuing education locked off a lot of the good parts learning over time and community, developing relationships with professors, weaving a narrative of shared experiences. A

00:26:48.740 - 00:27:00.120

lot of the reasons you're here, Plus the thing was the model wasn't really working. Not very many people were coming, they came and they got a little bit of information that they took back, but

00:27:00.120 - 00:27:17.160

there was no transformation. We weren't serving pastors, laypeople, congregations or anybody with nearly the robustness and quality of our other educational programs, nor were we meeting the actual felt needs of leaders in the practice

00:27:17.160 - 00:27:33.400

of ministry. Over time, I began to wonder how are the needs of people in practice like and unlike students in a degree program, the field of attention shifted. Instead of standing in a circle with

00:27:33.410 - 00:27:48.570

the seminary in the middle to understand our work, we stood over to the side and we could see like a playground full of people doing all kinds of things and using all kinds of equipment. The question

00:27:48.570 - 00:28:08.400

changed to how we could join in the play and what gives we might bring to share. After I'd been at ft a few years, two young men , Matthew, Wesley Williams and Stephen Lewis joined our

00:28:08.400 - 00:28:25.240

work of helping young people discern their callings. Matthew had grown up on the south side of Chicago at trinity United Methodist Church, I mean not United Methodist . So I wish United Church of christ and Matthew

00:28:25.240 - 00:28:36.120

was one of those young people that the old ladies in the congregation said, you will make a preacher . He preached his first trial sermon on youth Sunday as a 15 year old and he says it was

00:28:36.120 - 00:28:53.420

titled Lions, Bears and Giants. It was a 10 minute message on David and Goliath about overcoming insurmountable challenge and it was received to great acclaim. His pastor dr Jeremiah Wright brought the fourth his own preaching

00:28:53.420 - 00:29:10.590

cape like imagine ted bringing his geneva gown and he lay it on Matthew's shoulders and Matthew said, I didn't expect it to be so heavy. The cape felt at once like both a weight and a warm

00:29:10.590 - 00:29:27.150

blanket. And since that moment I have been negotiating the relationship between the calling that had taken root in me and the tradition that had been placed on me . Stephen Lewis grew up in charlotte north Carolina,

00:29:27.160 - 00:29:45.630

the son of a psychologist and a child of friendship , missionary baptist church. The church stoked his curiosity about the sacred arts of the spirit God and the african american experience. One evening, mother mary Pearson

00:29:45.630 - 00:29:59.210

, a saint of the church, grabbed him and said, God has his hand on you, Stephen God is working on, you. Don't get discouraged . Keep your hand in God's Well, steven wondered

00:29:59.210 - 00:30:11.890

how she could be so sure, because he certainly did not always feel that way. Members of his family suffered from serious mental illness. He suffered traumatic loss, including the death of his fiancee in an

00:30:11.890 - 00:30:26.960

accident. He was on a quest to make meaning of things that seemed meaningless. Well steven and Matthew both went to Seminary Matthew to the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. I'm smiling thinking about Margaret aimer and

00:30:26.960 - 00:30:44.850

Stephen to Duke, but each of them wrestled with where and how they were to serve. They had both been called by communities who had survived through collective resistance from communities where the truth told by the dominant

00:30:44.850 - 00:31:00.640

culture was not the whole truth and four communities that knew about making a way out of no way. How were they to live those calls? The two of them shared an office in their early days at

00:31:00.650 - 00:31:15.350

FTE and over time as they became insiders to the power structures in the world view that funded FT with both money and mental models. They would find themselves looking at each other and shaking their heads and saying

00:31:15.360 - 00:31:30.600

, there has got to be another way they were troubled by the focus on the individual leader as the lever for change, The Valerie ization of individual merit and the blind spots of a closed system. There

00:31:30.600 - 00:31:42.270

has to be another way, they said. And over the years, they, together with their colleague , Dori Gredenko, banker baker came up with what they call another way for living and leading on purpose

00:31:44.140 - 00:32:01.450

. In the model of another way, the leaders central question is always how do I create the conditions for the community to discover its power to address its complex challenges? How do I create the conditions for

00:32:01.450 - 00:32:15.180

the community to discover its power to address its complex challenges? Do you hear how this is different from the image of a good leader as one who always knows what to do, tells people what to do

00:32:15.190 - 00:32:34.410

and gets people to do it another way liberates leaders from that model, and this model of leadership they developed Centers on four practices known through the acronym C . A. R. E. Create hospitable space

00:32:34.420 - 00:32:52.720

, ask self awakening questions, reflect theologically together and act the next most faithful step. This kind of leadership is more about process than product, so it's hard to give you a simple, pithy illustration.

00:32:52.730 - 00:33:14.130

So instead let me share descriptions from what they call another way manifesto. Leadership is a communal practice that builds the capacity of a team, community or organization to envision and enact a future informed by the past

00:33:14.140 - 00:33:32.670

and by the diverse people around us. In the present, leadership is more about public listening than public speaking dialogue is an essential leadership practice and a core process for change in the face of uncertainty and destabilization

00:33:34.140 - 00:33:53.200

. Give yourself permission to prioritize experimentation. Pay attention to history, power, justice and equity, or you will merely make change without making a difference. And finally, the wisdom of our ancestors and our

00:33:53.200 - 00:34:10.970

descendants is always present and available to us. So remember to welcome them as we face the most difficult tasks of our lives. The mental model of another way conjures a whole different image than the faces of

00:34:10.970 - 00:34:32.080

Mount Rushmore. The mental model of leadership as communal practice, listening, calling upon tradition and experimentation. It's beautiful, beautiful in its mutual sharing of gifts , beautiful in opening to a mystery that is beyond

00:34:32.080 - 00:34:49.840

what we can rationally comprehend. A beauty that reveals what we otherwise cannot or will not let ourselves see a beauty that can bear us through this world, which is so ugly. Sometimes we can hardly stand

00:34:49.840 - 00:35:07.800

it into the glory of a hidden wholeness where we are each hole and may hold all together in christ . And that is good news. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news? That's

00:35:07.800 - 00:35:13.140

him. So good my rush warrant. Hello.