Where the Heck Are We Going?

I am currently taking an online course titled "How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You Are Going."  The instructor is a well-respected church consultant, Susan Beaumont, who I have actually taken an in-person course with a number of years ago.

I think part of what attracted me to the course was the good experience I had in her classroom those many years back, but even more it was the course title.  Because, really, who among us knows where the combination of issues we are currently facing will take us?  And if you don't know where you are headed, it is far more challenging to lead!  This, she argues, is a liminal season.  We are neither here nor there, but rather, somewhere in-between  It is a time of uncertainty.  And part of the task of a leader, she suggests, is to embrace that reality.

Beaumont has built her course (and her book by the same name) around the basic notion that a traditional leadership style just plain won't work. "Instead," she writes, "we can approach this era with a different leadership stance . . . . We can let go of our egoic need to look successful and lead instead from a place of open wonder and curiosity."  (21)

I don't know about you, but letting go of that egoic need to be successful is a real challenge for me!  But I realize she is right.  I need to make room in my soul for whatever lies ahead. I need to be willing to think and act and lead in new ways, different ways.  I'm not going to get all the answers in her course, but at least it will help me think in a new way.  Because they never taught us this stuff in seminary!  Come to think of it, though, they did remind us from time to time that God is with us in all things.  I guess that's a pretty good place to start!