The end of consultants

A journey to rediscover the true meaning of leadership

At the start of last year I came to a series of significant personal revelations.

I think I was feeling a bit as though I had pushed hard for four years and that it was time to take it a bit easier. God seemed to have other ideas, and wanted me to change the very way I thought about what I was dong,

A starting point in the journey was that God seemed to have me stuck in Matthew chapter 10 for about four months, and gradually the meaning in the chapter started to become clearer and clearer.

The first step was encountering this passage:

5-10 Jesus sent his twelve harvest hands out with this charge:

“Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously.

9-10″Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment, and all you need to keep that going is three meals a day. Travel light.

There were a few things that hit me about this passage.

The first was “Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place”. As Fusion has grown the focus can easily move overseas, but this seems to be saying ‘Be where you are’.

The second was “don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy”. Jesus isn’t going for the big – he’s going for the small.

The third was “right here in the neighbourhood” which compounded the sense of a turning away from the grand plan to look to those people right in front of my nose.

The fourth was “You have been treated generously, so live generously.” I started to realise that it was easy for me to live poorly and not generously – particularly with those people who are “right there in the neighbourhood”

The fifth thing that really spoke to me was “”Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment.”. For someone who had big dreams to hear Jesus paint this picture was actually a little bit shocking – he is basically saying, step into subsistence living because it’s the living not the trappings that is important.

The kicker for me was “You are the equipment”. It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking that the work you do is the important bit of ministry, but Jesus sheets it home and says, no Matthew, it’s not about the plans or the programs – its about you…

As I started to come to terms with this small-scale, dirty hands Christianity I realised how different this approach was from how I saw my ministry with Fusion.

I saw that ever since I started work with Fusion, I had been looking for the ‘silver bullet’ that would ‘fix’ Fusion.. thinking that there was one thing that could be done that would make things work.

I started to realise that I had moved to a consultancy style leadership, where I felt as though I no longer had the time for the practical work. I had moved into management. I had even done the first year of an M.B.A.

It turns out that people who thought like I was are the ones that some are blaming for the Global Financial collapse. There are many people who are expressing opinions like those in this article, that as leadership and management get seen as an industry in their own right, they become dangerous.

As I let the words “you are the equipment” sink in, I realised that I needed to think differently about what it meant to lead. Leadership means living what you are about.. not just creating structures or supporting others.

As I said, God kept me in Matthew chapter 10 for a number of months, and over the next few days I will be sharing with you some of the things I discovered.