Belonging

It is said in leadership circles that one cannot lead in a vacuum, and that one cannot lead without followers.  In other words, leading and following both happen in the context of a relationship.

I've been thinking about this lately related to the work I'm doing with AllOne and with SEED.  In both cases, the hardest part of my work is getting people to recognize a relationship that may not appear obvious or beneficial (or sometimes exist at all).

I was talking with a good friend a couple of months ago about a group of churches in a specific geographic location and denomination.  Probably half of these churches have stopped participating in any meaningful way in the fellowship of this larger denominational body.

It is always tempting to think that we don't need others in our own local church, or other churches in our community, or in our denomination.  In my conversation with this friend, he said something insightful about how the minute we consider "that group" separate from ourselves, we create space that allows us to distance ourselves from it.  Hence the "District" or "Conference" or "Collaborative" or any such entity can be ignored because our identity is not invested in it.

This is illogical in any context.

• In an organization, for example: simply because someone works in another department or business unit, that does not mean their actions do not affect me; work flows in streams, and even if someone else's work is never directly connectable to my own, the culture and company reputation are partially formed by each other employee's actions, which affects me.
• In a neighborhood, the actions of my neighbors impact me. The color they paint their house, the state of their yard, the volume of music and hours they keep ... all these things affect me even if I try to avoid it all by hiding in my house all day and night
• In a family, the interplay between various family members impacts them all.  It is often said that you don't marry a person, you marry a family.  Even if I have no contact with anyone in my family any more, I still came out of that family, and you can't understand why I do (or intentionally do not do) what I do without recognizing the effects of growing up in that family

For Christians, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 that we are all part of one body, whether we acknowledge -- or like -- it or not.  When one part hurts, we all hurt; when one part receives honor, we all do.  To intentionally try to separate ourselves from other parts of the body, then, is delusional and harmful.

Jesus says in John 15 that so long as we remain connected to him, we will flourish, but as soon as we cut ourselves off from him we die.  A branch that is cut off from a tree is dead: it may still look alive but it cannot live on its own.  And if, as Paul says, we are now the body of Christ, then cutting ourselves off from the rest of the body means that we are dead, even if we still look alive for a time.  This is the same as Genesis 3, where God says that the day Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they "will surely die."  By eating the forbidden fruit, they died that day, even if they still looked alive for a time.

Why do we even want to keep ourselves separate, distinct from, those others in our company, our neighborhood, our family, our church or denomination?  Because we think by keeping ourselves separate we can be safe, secure from being hurt.  As if.

We are still connected, whether we like it or not.  By pretending we are not part, we are guaranteed to die.  By recognizing and living out our connectedness, we are almost guaranteed to get hurt ... but we are also guaranteed to receive fresh nutrients, the inflow and outflow of what is good and necessary for life.  I know many, including close friends and family members, who are mere shells because they have cut themselves off from the world, from those who might (or have) hurt them.  What they don't realize is that they have cut themselves off from life.

We were made to belong, and we do belong.  Do we try to avoid it, pretend it isn't so, or do we acknowledge it, recognize that pain will come, and commit to being in relationship anyway?

What is this all about?

I have been pondering -- fretting, really -- how to launch this blog.  So many thoughts crystallize daily, and which is most important to share?

Clearly, however, before I share ponderous thoughts, I must simplify.  So this week's posts will be about a journey, a journey that involves leading and following.  It's a theme of my life, especially over the past two years.  So I'll share how I came to be where I am: with AllOne Community Services (www.allonecommunity.org), SEED (the upcoming www.seedlivelihood.org), and with my PhD work.  Today: AllOne.

Two years ago I had the realization that my combination of work efforts (full-time job, PhD studies, and church leadership training) was somehow lacking cohesion.  And I was frustrated by the fact that all the work I did at the local church level somehow was not creating a model for organizational efficiency, effective processes, and growth, in any sense of those words.

One of my recognitions, then, was that the problem went beyond my own personal synergy and even my individual church involvement.  There was, it seemed, a chronic problem with coordination and collaboration.  Instead of one body of Christ, as the church liked to talk about, we had 20-30 churches each operating in virtually complete isolation.

Now, that may be overstating the case a bit.  Each church in our area has partnerships of some kind: some with schools, some with government or community groups, and even some with other churches.  But these are almost all tactical collaborations: how we do what we do, rather than strategic -- why we do what we do, with its logical how outcomes.

So I started having conversations with local pastors, church leaders, and church members, and discovered a resonance in many places.  So after almost a year of these conversations, the time seemed ripe to act, and AllOne Community Services was born.

Initially, the effort took a couple hours a week.  After the excitement of those first conversations, however, the work took on a life of its own and I felt compelled to spend more time on it.  At my full-time job, then, I approached my boss, a wonderful supportive leader, and reduced my work hours from 40 to 32 hours a week.  This gave me one full day a week to work on AllOne, and the results increased exponentially.

At our first gathering in June 2010 we had only four churches represented, but three others had confirmed attendance only to be waylaid by car troubles, migraines, and medical emergencies.  And the energy was plain: churches wanted to find ways to work together, to not duplicate efforts, and to represent one body of Christ to the community.

Community leaders were also excited.  Upon hearing of our church survey (if you want to coordinate services, you need a current map of service provision), the St Johns Neighborhood Association asked to partner on doing a larger effort including all nonprofits and faith-based organizations in the area.  The directory has been a smash hit and has helped AllOne get a broader picture of the over- and undersupply areas in our community.

We've also been building a web site (www.stjohnschurches.org, due to debut in the next few weeks) that will serve as a showcase for the work we do together as well as a one-stop location for people looking for a household of faith in St Johns.

Now in 2011 we will be working two streams: facilitating monthly pastoral gatherings to build relationships and understanding between churches in St Johns, and convening and facilitating collaborative project work teams from the churches.  We have a large number of possible efforts, and I am optimistic that once we collectively decide on a work, we can partner with each other and with other community resources to make a deeper impact without burning out any one church or its people.

Many people ask: where does the money come from for AllOne?  The current answer is: my personal bank account.  God asked me to do the work, so while we are pursuing other funding sources, thus far all expenses have been covered by my previous full-time income.  Of course, as you will see in future blog posts, this has created interesting situations because I am no longer at that full-time job.

This is a journey of leading: God's leading of me and my family and of the churches in the area, and my leading of this collaborative effort.

And it is a journey of following: the duty and privilege of being able to follow those worthy of being followed, and of recognizing the need to follow and submit, sometimes even when we don't want to.

I hope you'll continue to follow me in this blog form.  I look forward to our interaction.