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The 4th Commandment is to honor your father and your mother. Traditional reading of this commandment expands that honoring in two directions. The first is in the people honored - not just mom and dad, but anyone in a position of authority - principle, teacher, pastor, boss, senator, etc. The second direction is the sphere of honoring. What does honoring mean? Luther puts it in both positive and negative terms. We should not despise out parents or superiors nor provoke them to anger, but honor, serve, obey, love and esteem them. As a child it makes great sense, even if your parents are messed-up idiots, they still have a wider authority. The trouble comes in the adult world. What do you do when serving and loving look like they are at odds with esteeming and honoring. There were many times in the business world were I would have a boss I dearly loved and esteemed his/her judgement, but they had certain blind spots (we all do). Serving that boss meant calling it out. It meant not honoring their judgement.

The key question is - when you think your “leadership” is lacking judgement, missing the boat, way out of line or killing prime opportunities what does the 4th commandment require in the modern world? The modern world has two things that level the advantages of experience: the pace of information and a default egalitarianism. The diligent 20yr old can be much better equipped and informed than the mediocre 55 yr old. The hard working entreprenuer can have much better insight than the corporate executive. The latters would appear to be the “superiors”, but the formers actually are in the better position. Does the 20 yr old shut up and obey, or is the better part of honoring to speak up and bear the consequences if there are any? Does the entreprenuerial spirit fall in line to the corporate thinking, or do skunk works become the correct response.

This is also mixed up with the fact the the Baby-boomers, a group that as a collective disregarded the 4th commandment, and still often act like juvenilles, are in many of those “superior” positions. Is stupidity a requirement of the 4th commandment?

There is a corollary to the 4th commandment given to mothers and fathers. Don’t provoke your children to anger (Eph 6:4).

Right now, to me, the better part of honoring seems like the old National Review slogan - Standing Athwart History, Yelling Stop! The hierarchical postions are not ours. The “leaders” should be allowed to make their mistakes. But that honoring stops at the active need to further something that makes one angry enough to spit nails. Argue, warn, cajol and act to minimize the damage both direct and colateral.

Tags: Behavior, Church, Culture by Agricola
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Had an interesting conversation about change today. The subject was small churches. The background subject was me being irresponsible. The church that I’m the current Pastor of has had its share of trouble in the last few years. At some point in the last 5 years it worshipped about 120 people on a normal Sunday. When I arrived in July it averaged about 50. The logical conclusion is that something is wrong.

Lou Gerstner (former IBM CEO) is semi-famous for the firestorm he elicited when he said ‘the last thing IBM needs is a vision.’ The point behind that statement was not that vision was un-important, but that IBM had more than enough visions, what it lacked was execution of any of them that would actually ring the cash register. With IBM then having posted the largest quarterly loss on record, Gerstner and York (CFO) had to restore some basic blocking and tackling before turning to strategy. I bring that up because the core disconnect that we danced around and fleshed out was that strategy was everything to my collegue. My position was that restoring some basic blocking and tackling got you to the point of being able to talk about strategy.

In restoring blocking and tackling my approach has been - in my collegues phase - shotgun. I would prefer experimentation or learning. What practices that are logically unhelpful are people in an emotional place to consider? What potential answers are they willing to consider? What to persue? The goal is two fold: 1) to encourage an open learning environment and 2) build the ownership of both problems and solutions by the congregation. Both of those goals don’t eliminate the emotional response, but they make it part of the considerations by the people who would have it. The approach is one of shared discovery and action. Acknowledge and Fix some of the fundamental problems, gain some good feeling from righting the ship and then build on that into a new vision.

I’ll continue with these thoughts, but for now the fundamental break was where does that vision come from? Does is come from an individual, or does it emerge from a group? I’ll argue that in some situations the second approach is actually faster and more helpful in reaching necessary change.

Tags: Behavior, Church by Agricola
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