Setting the Fundamentals

Ministry Mess Management is directed principally at Christian ministry leaders and presumes that Christian ministry leaders subscribe to biblically-based principles and Christ-centered management. It is our humble attempt to examine ministry failures and malperformance rooted in breeches of one or more of those biblical principles. We will demonstrate the close link between biblical principles and wise management, indeed a linkage based in God's reality. They go hand in hand. Necessary management decisions, including gritty and distasteful ones such as terminations, should be as much grounded in biblical principles as good management principles, not simply pragmatism or financial need. Furthermore, we invite you to think, and to frame, organizational behavior (and failure) within these values and wisdom.

We wish to encourage, even urge, Christ-centered boards and managers to discerningly understand, detect and courageously be able to expeditiously act, yet with grace, out of a sense of biblical necessity in an organizational context when danger signs based both in biblical and sound management principles are flashing warnings. Governing and executive leadership are sobering responsibilities with, we believe, transcendent effects.

To begin, in this first chapter, we attempt to present an easily understood and easily remembered framework for keeping these virtues in view as a leader and then their application to organizational leadership. We evaluate each of the following cases thereby.

Effective management isn't just about integrity and smarts. We have observed that a rich, interdependent constellation of values and the wisdom that grows from biblical principles and virtue must be brought together with a number of executive competencies involving thinking skills, people skills and domain expertise to create effective leadership in any given context.

Notwithstanding the fact that we have feelings and desires, our thinking and acting includes a value system at our core—a set of interacting values, commonly based in virtues that provide a grid through which we think, decide and select actions. It lies behind our worldview. While our beliefs regarding virtues and values are not determinative—we obviously do act against our values (or "better judgment") from time to time—our thinking does tug us in the direction of our values and subjects our decision-making to them. The clearer and more prescribed in our thinking they are, the more influence they have. In leading an organization, they are crucial to our impact on the organizational culture.

Over the past nearly four decades, one author sought to find a unifying construct for thinking about biblical virtues and their derivative values and then their application to leading an organization. This chapter first introduces this virtue-based values system to the reader and then discusses the related roots of biblical wisdom.

Virtue, Values and Wisdom in Organizational Leadership

Christian ministry leaders would be quick to agree that both biblical values and wisdom are vital to effective executive leadership and a healthy, effective ministry. Yet, the vast majority of ministry executives do not have a coherent mental model for formulating and inculcating biblical values into their management leadership, strategy and action or the application of wisdom to their leadership. They can articulate their values, but simply as a list of what comes to mind when asked or what they recently read in a popular book.

This chapter sets the stage for all that follows and provides a useful basis for both framing values and wisdom. We'll look at extremely powerful and useful virtue-based values, biblical construct and how grace is part of leadership. Then, secondly, we will take a similarly useful and powerful approach to looking at wisdom. Finally, we'll assess how the problems of the organizations discussed in the following chapters resulted, fundamentally, from a breakdown in these values and wisdom.

Virtue-Based Value He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness (Heb —hesed or ~ loyal love, ~devoted love), and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 (NAS)

For any organization, the importance of virtues-based values and ethics and an effective construct or system that captures all the key ingredients of a values system useful in both a personal and organizational context cannot be overemphasized.

For example, as this chapter was being written, the CEO of IBM made business news because she chastised the IBM sales department in a video that was internally distributed (and leaked), particularly focusing on IBM's failure to land certain large opportunities. She noted pointedly that IBM didn't get back to customers in a timely manner, customers who had made requests for proposals. And, consequently, IBM lost the sale opportunities.

We readily agree that trust is absolutely essential to a healthy organization. Trust must permeate the entire organization. It must exist between management and employees, but it also must exist between the organization and its customers, its suppliers and, if a donor supported nonprofit, its donors. Trust is an extremely vital virtue to organizational survival. And, it is only one of many.

However, organizations, including ministries, undermine their trustworthiness routinely! Are their products reliable? Do they deliver on time? Do they pay their bills on time or before? Do they complete projects on time? Do they complete projects on or below budgets? Do they return phone calls or follow-through on promises? Do they get their receipts back to donors in a timely manner? Do they keep promises to their employees, such as espousing certain biblical values and then living up to them?

Trustworthiness must be present throughout and revealed in thousands of actions of the organization. For example, if management does not know how to create an organizational rigor in keeping promises, its credibility will deteriorate and so will its reputation. How do we, as executives, create an organization that has integrity and trustworthiness from top to bottom? And, trustworthiness is only one of many values that must permeate the organization!

Ethics establish the plumb line against which the organization measures its behavior and the behavior toward which it strives. Its desired behavior, in this context, determines its self-vision (what kind of organization it wants to be). Its vision of itself, coupled with its desired behavior, determines its style. Its style is what its employees and the public see and experience. If values are vague or unstated, the internal vision is ambiguous and inadequate, and the organization will wander in its behavioral style and probably even its basic day-today ethics. With such wandering, it will invariably get into trouble, even possibly serious trouble.

Furthermore, and perhaps personally more important, rectitude is essential to the biblical view of wisdom, and wisdom is essential to effective biblical leadership. So, to grow in wisdom, one must understand and grow in biblical virtue, since it is the foundation of wisdom. And wisdom is the beginning of leadership. No understanding and growth in virtue equals no wisdom and no wisdom—poor or inadequate leadership.

The Problem with Customary Approaches to Values (or virtues)

When reading or creating values, whether one reads Aristotle or Bennett, Moses or James, Ben Franklin or John Maxwell, Blanchard or Lencioni, we encounter virtues (or values) as a list. We humans tend to think in terms of lists. It is part of our natural linearity in thinking. Unfortunately, the list of the things we can think of as good or virtuous is very long. So writers shorten their list—to their favorites. But no two lists are the same! This variability of lists from person to person leads, or could lead, to the impression or conclusion that virtues are relative; they depend on personal opinion, inadvertently fitting postmodern thinking.

One of the authors consulted to a large human services governmental organization that had its ten values (yes, it had good values) in a picture frame on the conference room wall. During his introductory comments, he had taken the values down, laid the frame face down on the table and asked these senior executives to write down the organization's values. You can guess the results. When they were done with the construct explained below, they could draw the values on a napkin.

If lists don't work, what is going on? What is going on is that biblical, virtue-based values are really not a list! The list approach doesn't work and hasn't worked for 2,500 years of human literature. There must be something other than a list. If a set of activities doesn't work using a linear or list approach, one likely possibility (much more likely to be recognized these days) is that we are dealing with a conceptual system. A systems approach to values—how novel.

But, if a system, what would that values system look like, and how would it be shaped or constructed to provide comprehensiveness and integrity (wholeness)?

Our Search and Discovery

One author began a search and analysis many years ago for developing or discovering a coherent, systemic ethics or values construct or framework, one that would capture conceptually all the sought-after virtues (ethics), could be applied broadly, easily remembered, easily taught and that would pertain to a range of situations, from individual behavior (including within marriage) to that of organizations, governments and agencies. Although we were acquainted with the contemporary Christian and secular literature (and some ancient) concerning ethics and values, we found it universally list-based and dissatisfying. Virtually all modern writings on values or ethics are lists, sometimes quite long in an attempt not to miss anything. They appear on walls, ancient frescos, in articles, in corporate literature, in annual reports, on plaques, in books, even computer monitor backgrounds. And, unless short, are never remembered. A list of over three or four is not remembered by employees. All organizations claim ethics of some sort, usually in terms of some relation to integrity. Integrity was one of Enron's four key values! The problem is that people do not remember the list! Much less do they know how to apply it to the everyday situations they encounter. The problem is magnified when we realize that the lists are not the same from "expert" to "expert." What are we to use as our list?

We found our answer in the Bible, most clearly in Micah 6:8 where God expresses the fundamental, elemental or cardinal virtues He expected or desired for Israel. (Ravi Zacharias, I have been told, has pointed out that this passage seems to be God's consolidation of all He had taught Israel in terms of right living.) They are three, a trinity. But what is special about these three? Why did God reduce His principles to these three?

It was from this trinity that we discovered an unfolding system of all the other biblical virtues we, and all Christians and Jews, believe in. The core virtues are a) devotional love (Heb chesed or hesed), b) justice (Heb. mishpat) or the idea of rectitude (justice is the corporate or collective effect of rectitude, for the believer, our righteousness) and c) a humble walk before God.

First, regarding devoted love or loyal compassion: The Hebrew word, 'hesed, represents this concept of loving devotion or a committed love or loyal (or covenantal) compassion and is translated by several different words, usually "loving kindness." (This variability suggests difficulty in capturing the richness of hesed.) It is an extremely important word in Old Testament usage. God uses it repeatedly regarding His relationship with Israel. Even the "loving kindness" translation is inadequate to convey the richness of the concept. A single word would be very useful. In English, we, too, have a similar concept, but no single word. "Devotion" or devoted love may come close. The idea is associated with strong friendships or, for example, marriage. Nevertheless, this core virtue is what bonds human beings and is a vital ingredient of trust, as we shall see. We are told in Proverbs 19:22 that "that which is desired in a man is hesed." There is, in fact, a lot of hesed in the characterization of the Greek word agape (committed, unselfish love) used by Paul in I Cor. 13.

Second, regarding justice, rectitude or integrity: In employee surveys, this virtue repeatedly ranks highest in traits desired for a boss. It includes the idea of doing the right thing under God's principles whether corporately, governmentally or between individuals. It essentially is behavioral. Usually, it is this virtue people have in mind when referring to "ethics."

Finally, regarding humility: Fundamentally, humility is an attitude, not an initiatory (proactive) virtue as are the other two. It enables other selfless actions on our part, the willingness to subordinate ourselves to the needs of others. In 1 Peter 5:5, Peter tells us to "clothe ourselves with humility," and to humble ourselves (vs. 6) as an act of will. Humility, coupled with courage, is an absolutely essential enabler for the other two virtues and the derivative virtues discussed later. It activates or enables the other primary (and secondary) virtues. God promises grace to the humble believer. It is the key to our spiritual growth and capacity to show grace to others.

Putting these primary virtues together as a trinity of interdependent virtues, a systems view of virtue or ethics emerges. This construct or model, unlike models rooted in Greek thought which are generally bi-modal with balance seen as the virtue, hubris as the failure, is tri-part, based around the core set of these three virtues. They are core values or virtues in the sense that all others seem to grow from them and depend on them.

Deriving Additional Virtues

This emergence or manifestation of derivative values occurs when the core values or virtues are synthesized or combined with each other. (Think of different atoms combining to create a molecule with yet different attributes, or think of the three (interestingly) primary colors combining to create the rainbow.) The three cardinal points, the core virtues, of the model are to be held firmly and in marriage or union with each other (not in balance, which comes from classical thinking). Furthermore, they need each other to work. They are interdependent. They, in fact, are a system, not a list. When synthesis is achieved, the model reveals an unfolding and flourishing flower of personal and organizational attributes that surprises with its comprehensiveness, complexity, beauty and effectiveness or power for what we deem success by any definition. At the heart of this model is courage based in faith. It takes faith and courage to have integrity, be transparent, love loyally, be generous and be humble.

The interactions between the primary virtues produce a rainbow of derivative virtues. When the primary virtues are elaborated upon and combined or blended together in our character, a systematic encircling rainbow of emergent new virtues ranging around the triangle of core virtues is revealed, composed of varying degrees of the primary virtues—just as the color wheel is composed of varying amounts of the three primary colors. These derivative virtues include: honesty, truth-seeking, excellence, diligence, teachability, equity, transparent trustworthiness, authenticity, thoughtfulness, respect, protectiveness, kindness, mercy, a generous spirit and win-win thinking, servant-leadership, gratefulness, willingness to be open, listen, forgive, and on our part, confess, and, importantly, meekness—strength or excellence with self-control (blending humility and integrity).

The Greek word, praus, translated meekness (sometimes "gentleness" in the English Bible) was applied to well-trained warhorses. They didn't lack strength, but they applied their size and strength obediently and, therefore, seemed gentle.

Each of these derivative virtues manifests its core nature in different ways, depending on the circumstances, just as the primary Micah 6:8 virtues do. With a little thought, this virtue system can be easily reduced to an illustrative diagram and shared with others.