Recently, I
heard an interview with Lou Holtz legendary football coach. He told the
following about his development as a leader.
When he left as assistant coach of a nationally ranked program to become
head coach for the first time at William and Mary University, he was full of
certainty that the success his previous school had achieved would guarantee
success in his new position. “Unfortunately,
I failed to realize that William and Mary had more Marys than Williams,” he
said laughingly. The team was a complete
failure his first year.
He went on
to say that in the off season he sat down and took stock about what had
happened and what he had learned. From
this he drew what he called “The Three Principles that have guided me all my
life as a coach and leader of others.”
What were these?
1.
Always
do the right thing. He shared
that a leader can never compromise his or her integrity in either the pressures
of success or failure.
2.
Give the best you can of your gifts and
abilities. At William and Mary
he simply didn’t have the talent that his previous program had. He could not ask his players to be other
people. He could ask them to give the
best of what they had. He learned to
know this about himself and his players.
3.
Always show others that you genuinely care
for them. He not only applied
this to himself but to all the young people under his charge. He taught them to always show others respect
and that they truly cared.
I could not
help but apply these insights from Coach Holtz to our context as leaders of
Christian communities. First, I thought about the number of
situations where I had seen clergy fail because for some reason (or rationalization)
they had lost their essential moral compass.
“Act with integrity in the moment” is something we must always live
by. Is there any better description of
Jesus or the Saints than that they acted with integrity in the moment; they did
the right thing. I would content that at
no point in American history has our community more needed its religious
leaders to model this truth.
Second, I
have to admit that here have been many times in ministry that I have felt that
I could be the right priest and leader if only I had the right
congregation. I have had to learn, like
Coach Holtz, that we only get the people God gives us. I believe that the shortening length of
tenures of clergy in the past 30 years reflects this quest of many of us to find
a geographical cure from our present lack luster people. We only need to look at the Twelve Apostles
to be reminded that Jesus built his Church on fairly ordinary people. A friend of mine used to joke that “it is
hard to fly with eagles when you work with turkeys!” Yet the truth is that we are given who we are
given. In our theology, we believe that
God has given to the local community the spiritual gifts and fruit to carry out
what God wants in that place.
Third, as
I often say to clergy at conferences and other occasions, “The ministry is
about people, and people need to know that you, as a leader, genuinely care for
them.” Today, I find many clergy who
think ministry is about ideas, theology, or some cause. Some think it is about emails and blogs. Some apparently even think it is about our
success and careers. Think about this
for ourselves. We have all known people,
maybe even leaders, who initially fool us into believing that they really care
about us. However, we learn quickly and
sometimes painfully the truth that they did not. Genuine care is long-lasting. This is why I think that the long-term pastor
is often so effective at influencing a Church.
John Maxwell is famous for saying, “They don’t care what you know until
they know that you care.” Amen to that!
Let me
close by pointing out that Coach Holtz never described his success as vested in
a system, a strategy, or a way of organizing his teams. He described it in being a model and in
relationship to others.