Are All Dreams (Worth Their Salt) Leadership Dreams?

When Not the Religious Type was getting ready to come out, Dan Littauer (of Not Religious) and I got together with a man who knew more than we did about publishing.  He said something surprising, to this effect.

"Dave, of course you want to do as well as you can with this book.  But as I hear you talk, it seems to me that your hopes are not about any book.  To do what you want to do, you need to think long and hard about creating an institution.  Individual genius and accomplishment fade faster than you'd think.  Billy Graham is astounding.  The Catholic Church is more astounding.  Think about it."

I meet so many talented and ambitious young people that it seems churlish to pitch that their dreams are not about their dreams, that their dreams are about some sort of collective endeavor.  But it's interesting to think about this in terms of even the most-individualistic of professions, the arts.  For instance, I'm the only person I know who's had a longstanding interest in this artist's collective from the 20s called The Algonquin Round Table.  It was a gathering of these witty, successful playwrights and journalists and poets like Dorothy Parker and George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley and more. They were in all the gossip columns of the day.  I like a ton of what they wrote.  But by and large, while their names may stir vague memories in some people, they're forgotten, as huge as they were at the time.  The one who left something behind turned out to be a surprising candidate.  He was the least witty of the crew.  His name was Harold Ross and he started The New Yorker.  His brilliance didn't last.  His institution's did.

Or I think of great filmmakers of the golden age of film, the 30s and 40s.  We've got Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind) and Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and John Ford (The Searchers) and, goodness, Alfred Hitchcock (if I have to mention his films, you should just skip to the bottom of the paragraph).  But who is the most influential artist of that era?  You could make a case it's Walt Disney.  The others are memorable to the small circle of people living today who like old movies.  Disney, let's just say, has a very present impact. 

We've got this Culture Center Summit coming up starting Thursday night.  Its entire theme will be about banding together towards the kind of institution that could feel more like Disney or Ross or (this is overreaching, but for the sake of the point) the Catholic Church. 

I hold out hope that my individual brilliance and accomplishment will shine so powerfully that many will praise its beauty.  May it be.

But it seems to me that your dreams and my dreams, under God, are most powerfully reinterpreted into collective dreams.  Jesus says he blesses prayers from two or more people.  Peter and Paul were individual geniuses, but they were rallying others towards something that would long outlast their own brilliance.

What are your thoughts about how this does or doesn't tie into your own dreams?  Is your dream a leadership dream?  How so?

Comments

[Ty Denney]

Well said Dave! If we are talking about influencing other people towards something or someone, then yes I have a very clear leadership dream. If you are talking about building an organization or institution, I have become more skeptical. Using your example of Disney, we lived in LA where I would run into 2-3 people a month who were currently/or had worked for the institution of Disney. Everyone of them spoke negatively about it. Some former employees were so chapped by their experience of working there that they referred to it as a modern day Auschwitz. The dynamics of movement, and I think very clearly there is a movement happening(leaders who are keen on creating vibrant, Jesus centered communities in the great secular, influential cities in the world) are that when the more people get involved it creates a machine and a machine invariably creates institutions. From my perspective institutions struggle with keeping creativity and wide variance of activities at the forefront. Policy and procedure seem to eventually take first place. So, maybe the pressure point is keeping our collective dreams simple and pure and allow for some give and take?

[DJ Sybear]

I'll grant that "successful" dreams, or at least influential ones, have to them a ring of the collective and leadership thereof. However, I'm not so convinced that all "leadership" is best associated with institution or visibility.

Of all the artists you cite, Hitchcock is a great example of this. Certainly he did not create an institution the way Disney did. And yet he has had a pervasive influence on suspense and its use in any genre of film, most especially in thrillers and horror.

All that to say, leadership yes, but that does not necessarily imply institution.

However, in the case of Not Religious, I think the format of what you're trying to achieve is better fitted to an "institutional" approach, if it's fair to call it that. For the stage 3-sensitive among us, I'm not sure institution is a great rallying point, so as long as what's done here isn't heavy-handed, that's fine. For my part, I'd love to see more stage 3 partners emerge in what Not Religious becomes, and I think that's totally feasible given your operational model.

[Dave Schmelzer]

Just a note, by the way. When I talk about "institutions," I'm not suggesting some kind of new denomination. I'm perfectly happy denominationally. It strikes me that there are other variants of institutions.

[David Tunstall]

great post, thank you for the thought-provoking ideas.

Yes, it almost seems like 2 different types of people carry ideas through the stages of 'origination' and into 'institution'.

The 'originators' usually seem to be creative people (with influence or access to it) who have been able to bring an idea to a point where it is articulated well enough and clear enough that there is a nice runway layed out for the vision to manifest. the 'institutionalizers' (is that a word?) seem to come in and fill in the blanks and organize people and meetings and locations and have some of that rigidity to make the idea 'profitable' or 'sustainable' or literally, 'institutional'.

It seems like you would need both types of people (sometimes in the same body...ha ha) to create an institution.

And of course somewhere down the line the idea or institution will split and splinter and/or die...and another idea will take its place.

[Jeff]

This is very good. It reminds me of my marriage. I am a very lone-wolf, individualistic white American male. I don't typically get as excited about organizational or administrative things. My wife, a very precise Asian-American, is very interested in institutions and shaping how things fit together. It is consistently surprising to me how even though I am so often the one upfront talking or spewing "vision", she tends to exert a much more powerful, albeit behind the scenes, systemic influence.

[kennyp]

Man... this brings together 3 recent thoughts I've been pondering...

1. The old adage "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go long, go together"

2. A conversation about leadership & change.. that you always have progressives pushing the envelope, but that leaders who often help birth change & progression sometimes do it best by sitting back & centering themselves on the middle, cause the "buggy" will go (as they say) without having to push the horses (I actually don't know if they say that, but seems like something they would say). Those influencers probably also do well to make sure we're actually going in the right direction, but probably more importantly that we're going together.

3. We watched The Queen last night. I had never seen it before, but I found the relationship btwn Blair (the popular, powerful, progressive, forward thinking leader) & Elizabeth II (old guard, unknowingly disconnected from her people, stubborn on her ways) fascinating. While the majority of the "new movement" were pushing, he (at least in the film) winsomely persuades her towards a shift in direction & has this deep respect for her when she slowly moves toward it. It struck me as a portrait of an institution moving forward without loosing it's deep roots.

What your proposing here (as best I can get my head around it) is super exciting. I'm stoked to be around later in the week as it unpacks... together

[Mark Phifer-Houseman]

Dave and friends,

We spent age 23-37 entirely with leadership dreams and being on the edge of a movement starting, getting stroked a lot as the up and coming couple in co-ministry, then getting laid out by God with chronic pain and illness for 12 years in which I could not lead, our movement wilted and our leaders were scattered abroad; I had plenty of time to reflect and pray about what I could possibly envision out of a disabled leader's life. I have mixed feelings about the thesis.
1) Augustine ended the City of God (his great leadership dream that shaped Christendom for 1300 years) with the wonderful lines, "On that day (the eternal day of Christ) we shall rest and behold - behold, and love - love and praise - for this is to be the end without the end of all our living, that Kingdom without end, the real goal of our present life. I am done."
So, I would say that all Gospel dreams worth their salt are Kingdom dreams that eventuate in our eternal bliss and God's eternal glory. Without that gaze, we are merely building sand castles and putting crosses on them.
I found out that God loved me enough to destroy my incipient movement so that my soul was purified. Peter tells us, "these trials have come, so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, may be purified . . ." God cares more about the purity of our faith, that we might be qualified to participate in that "gazing and praising" that Augustine wrote about without melting like the wicked witch of the West.

2) There has been an increasing distrust of "institutions" among evangelicals since the Woodstock generation came back to church. I recall hearing John Wimber say in the late '80's, with resignation, that the Vineyard was probably just a one generation Boomer institution. Let's hope he was wrong on this account. Like the Methodists or the Roman Catholics, the Vineyard and its sub-movements like yours, Dave, have a gift to offer the Body of Christ that is of eternal worth. We need a better view of leaving a legacy and catechizing the next generations. I thoroughly hope and strive and pray with all my might that my children would think and pray and love and serve and strategize like Gayll and I and our small movement does. I certainly want them to build far beyond our labors, even jackhammering up poorly built sections of our movement, but ultimately, "following us as we follow Christ" and our spiritual mothers and fathers before us.
Robert Greenleaf in does an excellent job of locating a Gospel leader with reference to institutions. He "argued that institutions were both the glory and bane of modern society because they extended essential human services beyond the wealthy few, but also often behaved in unresponsive, bureaucratic, and destructive ways. The servant leader's central mission is to call institutions back to their fundamental mission of service, raising the institution's capacity to serve and to perform as a servant."
Somehow young or adolescently minded Christian leaders ("I've got to be me!" "My generation!" "God is doing a new thing", etc.) like to imagine that life with God can be lived outside of an institution or that every generation's destiny is to abandon institutions and start over. Usually such revolution leads to a naive blindness about one's own institutional development. Again, John Wimber insisted throughout the '80's and into the '90's that he was not starting a denomination. So he refused to own responsibility for churches branded as "Vineyard" to the harm and demise of hundreds of churches or attempted church plants until scores of thousands of believers and seekers in the Vineyard "movement" were harmed by soft gloved hard fisted pastors or just bumbling ones who were ill prepared and unsupported -- that generation had no accountability and very little support.
When two people band together under a covenant, explicit or implicit, there you have an institution for good (Dave and Charles) or ill (Mao and lady Mao).
The continued existence, fecundity in spawning many spiritual children, and vitality of the Benedictines, an institution with a rule, unchanged, that is over 1400 years old, proves that institutions are renewable, essential, unavoidable if you want to make an impact for the Gospel in this world. Certainly, Whitefield with his magnificent voice, legendary anointing, and incredible stamina and longevity made a great impact for the Kingdom, but the Wesleys and their institution with their classes, methods, and bands have had a much more profound and lasting influence.
The business world is an excellent resource for understanding the life cycle of institutions and how they can be renewed. The Peter Senge, Fifth Discipline group in Boston is an incredible resource with their systems analysis and understanding of leverage points. Jim collins latest book, "How the Mighty Fall and why Some Companies Never Give In" is also a tremendous research based work on the topic. I suggest we all get to work understanding institutions, because unless you are going to be a monk or a recluse like J.D. Salinger, you will lead and memb in institutions your entire life. Let's light the candle of the Gospel in Institutions and never give up until they renew or kick us out like Luther. Recall, Wesley never gave up on Anglicans, a tremendous perseverance and laying down his life kind of love given the persecution and hatred served up to him and his followers by the majority, especially the powerful in the Anglican church.
If you are not a builder or you don't have the gifts around you to organize, then recruit to your weaknesses or join a likeminded band with those gifts in place.

3) Finally, (I hope this one doesn't get me kicked off the island) What is wrong with a Kingdom dream of reuniting with the Catholic Church someday? They apologized and agreed with the Lutherans on 'Justification by faith' less than 15 years ago, after a 480 year disagreement. All that movement towards reconciliation and Biblical fidelity has happened in the last 50 years. They are a church in radical transition with high stakes for the future of Christianity world-wide. They represent 2/3 to 3/4 of the Christians worldwide, especially in the global South. Their "brand" is far more Gospel centered and Biblical than the Charismatic brand in the Global South - one has only to watch TV in an African or Latin American country and see the mimicking of all the worst of the health and wealth movement to be sickened in your souls - every leader longs to be a TV star with his private jet, just like Benny Hinn and all the rest. It's the one thing that makes me doubt that God exists. If it weren't for Paul and Peter's warnings that it would happen, I don't know what I would do.
Christianity in our lifetimes (assuming we are 30's and 40's) will be led and dominated by leaders from the global South, Kingdom leaders and cult leaders. Of the Kingdom leaders, priests, nuns, independent evangelists, Dalits in India, Anglicans in Africa - these leaders are the true apostles. They have suffered the persecutions and martyrdoms and hardships of our Lord and his apostles, not Brian McLaren, John Wimber, Rob Bell, Hillsong United (you fill in the blank with the hottest young leaders in the U.S. or British world). Frankly, more of the cult leaders are Protestants, precisely because they start their own movements and are accountable to no historic Institution or governing body anchored to the Scriptures' true witness that the Christian life, especiallly for the leaders, is an ongoing cycle of death and resurrection, of increasing weakness and frailty in ourselves and confidence and power in the Spirit's work apart from our talents, but through our weaknesses. Can one dream about 2 Cor. 12:9f? I don't think it's dream material. Thank God he doesn't show us in detailed dreams our Crosses before they come upon us.
For now, I am learning with the Catholics, journeying alongside their charismatic renewal stream. I think we have a lot to learn from them, and not just from the early Jesuits, but living Catholics and non-Western Anglicans and even some Orthodox in some places like Ethiopia. (But, the Orthodox churches of Russia and Greece are the counter-example to the Roman Catholics. They are corrupt, in bed with the State, and increasingly irrelevant in the global advance of the Gospel. May the Lord prove analysts wrong, since they too have precious gifts to contribute to the Body in the future.)
I do dream that our church would be a church and sodality planting dynamo. I dream of being linked together in a network with the Boston Vineyard and other churches with similar DNA and theology. I dream of 100,000's of secularized university educated urbanites coming into relationship with our Lord and fresh wineskins streaming out of the West/North in Partnership with the Global South churches. I dream of churches led in all the secularized cities of America and Europe with leadership shared between us Westerners and leaders of the church in the Majority world. "Establish the work of our hands!" (Psalm 90)

So, I do believe any Kingdom dream worth its salt is a leadership dream. We may need to be tested at the same level as Joseph who was so enamored of himself as the ruler in his dream, not the purpose of that rulership. But, by the time God gave him the rulership, his character was prepared to lead/rule for God's glory and to serve, even his murderous brothers and their offspring.

I really wish I was back at your culture summit. May the Lord free my entire church staff up for next year's.

Peace,

Mark Phifer-Houseman