Coaching: how we do what we do
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When we began Highlands Church in 2009, my co-pastor Mark and I led with this motto: how we do what we do is as important as what we do. We had both experienced very poor leadership in churches where decisions were driven by outcomes with little regard to the impact on staff or the church culture. We felt certain that the true fruit of ministry was found and developed in the how. How we prioritize relationships. How we make decisions. How we empower leaders.
Without really meaning to, we were leading through a shared leadership model. When our third co-pastor Jenny joined the team in 2010, she named for us what she was seeing: that though Mark was a straight, cis, white man, he was deferring and sharing power in all kinds of ways. It looked to Jenny like what she imagined the Trinity to be - in a perichoresis or a circle-dance of mutuality among the Three. (This, by the way, had absolutely no correlation to the fact that there were three co-pastors.)
In our Trinitarian-inspired shared leadership model, women lead. LGBTQ people lead. Black, Indigenous, People of Color lead. Differently-abled and neurodiverse people lead. Employing shared leadership means the community hears from a diversity of perspectives all the time, instead of one dominant perspective. Power is shared. And it means that relationships are the priority - the primary how of being the church.
Relationships are really hard work, as I imagine you are well aware. Leading with others is incredibly powerful and complicated. So a shared leadership model can either be breathtakingly beautiful - a vision of heaven… or it can go disastrously wrong.
Over the last fifteen years of living and leading in this model, we have learned many lessons the hard way. We have learned how powerful the Enneagram tool can be in helping us identify our specific ways of wielding power, of attempting to manipulate the situation for our desired outcome. And we have learned how incredibly fruitful it is to work. through. that. shit. What we’ve seen is that when transformation is happening in the leadership team, the fruit only multiplies throughout the entire community.
If you’re curious about this model of leadership, or maybe you’re neck-deep in the struggle, I would love to be a resource and a sounding board.