What is Missional Leadership?
very organization has a unique personality – it’s called organizational culture. Organizations include businesses, clubs, congregations, counseling centers, hospitals, educational and government entities, and, yes, even seminaries. Culture is defined as both process and product. It’s how we do things and what we do. A good example of how organizational culture can vary is looking at Christmas traditions. Within the culture of most Protestant congregations is the celebration of Christmas Eve. That’s product or what we do. Attending a different church on Christmas Eve can find us wishing for our home church traditions of a particular hymn or liturgy, candlelight done in a certain way, children’s choirs or even smells of the season. That’s process or how we do things.
Organizational culture is vitally important when we look at whether an organization is missional. Most organizations start out Missional – focused on those who are outside the organization. Successful businesses are consumer aware. Churches have to be able to interpret culture as well as they interpret scripture. Schools have to read future employment markets to know best how to prepare students.
It is not leadership that accepts the comfortable nor does it conform to the organizational culture.
Leadership plays a big role in determining culture. Start-up organizations are often established by charismatic leaders who create excitement and energy. In fact, we often mistake leadership for charisma because charismatic examples are so high profile. Leadership is better defined by integrity and values. Missional Leadership has an organizational focus on what’s outside their doors. It is leadership that is constantly reading the surrounding culture looking for new ideas and opportunities. It prepares people for change, welcomes it and often creates it. It is not leadership that accepts the comfortable nor does it conform to the organizational culture. It is more relational than managerial, more collaborative and team-based than top-down, authoritative.
Missional Leadership seeks a balance between honoring the organizational traditions, history and stories while challenging people to grow, change and discover the gifts in themselves that can meet the needs of the world around them. It is leadership that creates a new cultural language so the organization can engage the surrounding culture in meaningful ways. It risks the prevailing culture. Missional Leadership calls us to give up our life, our organizational culture, as the only way of saving it. (Matthew 10:39)
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