Latest / Church Staff Book Club / We Don't Like to Admit We Have Power
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: How would I have time for close friends because they're all here. Hey, welcome back to the church staff book club. My name is Jonathan Malm. And I'm Jason Young. And we are both feeling sick today. So we sound a little bit, are a little bit lower in the register. And I know I live in San Antonio and spring, the trees are trying to kill me. Like the pollen, everything has a yellow gloss on it. It is, it's rough. And you're Atlanta and you started feeling it a couple of days ago. Yeah. Yep. But we're here. We're ready to chat about chapter eight. Chapter eight Of emotionally healthy leader. Yes. This is actually my favorite chapter. I think I would have led the book with this chapter. I feel like this has some revolutionary, maybe it's not rev- for me it felt revolutionary. It felt like I'm like, this explains a lot of things that go wrong in churches. A little bit behind the scenes. This is not a part of the book, but I'm curious. Your writer, why would you have started the book with- Just to understand your thinking, why would you have started the book with this chapter? This chapter, again, I would say is kind of revolutionary. feel like this, if you could get this chapter right, it would fix a lot of things at your church. ⁓ know, so, okay, again, this book is about being an emotionally healthy leader, right? So, okay, maybe based on the subject of the book, this is not necessarily like the thing that you're trying to pitch, right? It obviously... can contribute to that. man, this, feel like a church has got this right. I feel like so many things I see that happen wrong in churches and organizations, things when I look back at my life, I'm like, ⁓ that's what either I was failing at or that's what someone else is failing at that I realized. And it's, mean, we need to get into the material, right? Cause it's really good, but that's what I feel like this, this chapter is like, if you could understand this and if you could do this, you would save so much pain in your organization. Which, okay, what is this chapter about, right? Yeah, I was just about to ask you, like, all right, sum it up for us. You're on a roll. Yeah. So this chapter is about acknowledging power, which is something that I think in the church world, we don't want to acknowledge because we've been pitched this idea of humility, right? Like you need to be humble. You need to be a servant acknowledging that you have power over someone feels like a scary thing, right? Obviously boundaries is another part of the chapter, but I would say the The thing that I got from this the most is acknowledging the fact that you have power. We in ministry have power over people. They give it to us. We have it because if we're a pastor, we've been given power by God. And we'll talk about the kind of six sources of power, right? But we have power. And if we don't acknowledge that we have power, I mean the Me Too movement, like this literally explains the Me Too movement. You have all these guys that were flirting with girls. They thought like, ⁓ we're just having this flirtatious environment. And then... they didn't realize that they were in a position of power and because of that, they could not be peers with these girls. And because their flirtation seemed unavoidable because of their power, they were giving into it a lot of times. I mean, there's a lot more nuance to Me Too movement, right? But like, this was like, when I'm like, okay, that's what's going on. Where these guys are like, we were just flirting. I don't know what, I don't know how you saw that from that. Again, they were in a position of power. They did not acknowledge their power in that. dynamic in that relationship and it led to an inequity of power. And so often in churches we do this where, you're the, you're the, you're just, just the worship leader. I'm just the like, I'm just the church secretary even, right? Like I just make the bulletin, but you are in a position of power because you work at the church. You have spiritual authority just by your association with the church, just by the fact that you, you know, the church put their stamp of approval on you. And whenever you say things or whenever you do things, people People will listen to it, even if they might normally disagree if you are a peer, but because you're not a peer, they will listen to it and go along with it. And you have authority that you need to acknowledge. You need to acknowledge it soberly. And that's the big thing, acknowledging your power with sobriety. I don't know, what did you get from this chapter? That's what I'm like, I'm like, and it's obvious, but this was like, whoa, this this explains so many things that happen in churches. Yeah, no, I think you, I think you set it up by echo that, mean, We don't talk about power because it's dirty. We talk about humility because it's clean. We talk about humility because it's Power is a part of like sex, right? Like the two things we're not supposed to pursue, Power, sex and riches. Riches were a little more okay with power and sex. like. Yeah. And I think it's, what you said, leadership. It's not that you even have to go seek the power. Leadership gives you power. The nuance, and Kazera talks about his power, but you mentioned boundaries. Boundaries actually determine whether that power builds or whether that power damages. And so that's why those two get coupled together. So leadership gives you power and boundaries help determine, am I going to use that power, which it might feel dirty to you, but when we unpack it, he does such a great job of laying out what it is, understanding it, boundaries, things of that nature. So that's what I would say. Let me ask you this. What makes power, and this might seem like an obvious question, but what makes power so dangerous if it's not examined? And let me give you context of the question. If leadership gives you power, but let's say I disagree with that because it feels dirty. It doesn't mean it's not true. So if I don't acknowledge or examine it, it could become dangerous. So what makes power so dangerous when it goes... when it's not examined. I've been teaching my son this, my five-year-old son. We're driving home from school and he's like, dad, go faster than that car. And my natural dude tendency is like, ooh, this would be fun. I can impress my son, right? But I'm realizing he doesn't understand that like we're driving a weapon. It's a tool, but this is also a weapon. This could kill people. This car has power and we have to use power with responsibility because if we use it incorrectly, we will hurt people. And if I don't acknowledge the fact that like my car could hurt someone. you know, he plays with cars all day. He watches the movie cars, right? Like that's like he for him, cars are a fun thing. They're a fun toy. Power is a lot of fun, right? But I've had to tell him, I'm like, no, we have to be careful with the car because we could actually hurt someone with this. This is a really powerful tool that we have to use carefully, right? Like that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to teach him. And I realized when I was younger, I didn't really acknowledge the power of what what a car could do, right? Like you don't realize a car can literally kill people. Like it is a dangerous tool and if we don't, it is a powerful tool. It's a good tool. It's not a bad thing, right? But if we don't acknowledge the opportunity for damage or the opportunity for harm that it has, we will use it uncarefully. Uncarefully, I don't know if that's a word, but we will use it without care and we can potentially wound people. And I think that's the big thing is we don't realize power is fun. Power is sexy. Power is like... You know, and we won't acknowledge it, but we feel it, right? Like it, feels good to have power. It feels good to have people like waiting to hear what Jonathan has to say. Well, okay. ⁓ Jonathan said something. We should probably jump on that idea. Like that feels really good to me. Right. And if I don't acknowledge the danger along with the good feeling, I'll use it without care. That's, mean, that's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's fair. think we automatically label power as bad. And I think Skazero. talks about how power is something that, you know, is entrusted, not avoided. Because it's like, what can you do with what has been, you know, given to you? And power is a necessary tool. If you're going to lead people. Well, yeah, because leadership always comes with influence, right? So again, cliche phrase, but it's how you steward it. And I think you're right. I think in this... episode, we want to invite you to think about your role as a leader. You may lead staff, you may lead volunteers, and we want you to examine your leadership and the power that comes along with it because the reality is unexamined power becomes harmful power. And so if in this 30 minutes, you know, conversation, if you could like get a few little nuggets and examine it in your own life. You could be the leader that uses the leadership to influence the power that you've been entrusted with to actually build something, not the leader we often read about in the headlines that damages something or someone. So that's why this conversation is so powerful. Yeah. As I was thinking, so we were, you know, he was talking about the types of power I can, you know, we can unpack them here. Positional power by the fact that you are a pastor or on staff at a church, you have power. personal power, your gifts, your knowledge, your personality, your talents, all of those things. The God factor, the fact that you are, especially if you're a teaching pastor or a pastor of a church, you're speaking for God, like, right? Objective power. This is just someone, this is one of those things that like, you know, when you were in college and everyone looked at you as the natural leader, like everyone's kind of like, that person is going to fix the problems, right? Like a lot of us experience that, especially what those are the types of people who get into ministry because people are drawn to following those people, right? Relational. Every time we know something secret about someone, every time they let us in, every time we experience something deeply personal with them, that gives us power over them. As a friend, I have power over my friends. Like could, I could harm them by sharing secrets that they don't share, right? ⁓ Culture of power. You talk about, you know, your age in some cultures, age has power in some cultures, you know, being young has power in some cultures, your race. I, I acknowledge that like as a white person, I Generally, people listen to me a little more, people trust me a little bit more, right? Like that's a reality that I've seen firsthand. Gender, being a man, that gives me power. So you look at megachurch pastors where each one of these, they became a megachurch because they have great charisma, they're great at teaching. Like it's like they have good things, right? They have the positional power, they have the personal power, they know things about their staff, they know things about people. they've been amassing power, not in a bad way, like this is just the reality of that position, right? Amassing power and then because there's 5, 10,000 people under them, that's even more power. So they're getting propped up, propped up, propped up, propped up. The disparity between the people they're leading and themselves is so massive. And if they're not acknowledging that power, that's where the abuse comes. The power is not the problem, right? It's how we use that power or it's how we even, you know, maybe don't even acknowledge the power and it becomes abusive just because we didn't even acknowledge it. And I think that's so often what happens when you talk about, you know, like, Nobody talks about the church of like hundred people that like the pastor was like abusive and like, cause it's like, oh, it only affected, you know, 20 people. It's the mega church cause there's 5,000 people that the disparity was so vast that it really impacted people. Right. So that's why we see it. There's, there's, know, there's abuse of power in every role ever. Like, in the mega church environment is where we see such headlines, like you said, because that disparity is so vast. And if we're not sober minded with our power. That's where we get in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're listening right now and you work in a large church or five, 10 K plus, or you work in a church of, you know, under a hundred, we fully acknowledge, regardless of the size, power could be used to build or damage. And that's the thing. It's how it's used. And so it could happen anywhere. It happens in families, you know, it happens in a lot of places. Wherever humans are, this can happen. But how do you, you know, maybe the question is, we could all probably like tell story after story about, yeah, I saw that or I was a part of that. I, maybe that's where some of your listening or watching right now, some of your woundedness comes from is because you receive shrapnel from a situation like that. Or you were directly, you know, ⁓ impacted because of someone used power negatively. And again, not just in church, could be family. friendships, a lot of places. What we hope today is that by talking about it, it gives you hope that you can be the leader that is entrusted with power, that can build, not necessarily build another great big church, but that you can build a healthy ⁓ life, you the leader, but you can also build ⁓ emotionally healthy leaders around you because when you do those things, you become the people that wanna, you become the leader people wanna follow. So we just hope this is an encouragement to you and maybe tactically we'll get into it. How do you not allow that power to eclipse humility or to become the person that uses it to damage other people? Yeah, I think it'd be fun. Cause I think there's this, I read the book and I immediately acknowledged some power I think, but I wonder if people listening might say like, well, I don't really have power. I wonder if you and I can go back and forth and just kind of talk about some moments in our life where we didn't think we had power or we didn't realize how much power we had, but then looking back on it. I mean, I think my first example would be as a pastor's kid. I grew up as a pastor's kid. I had power. ⁓ generally every parent trusted me with their daughter. Maybe they shouldn't have, whenever I was a teenager, right? Like that was not, but like I had power. Like people were like, he is the pastor's kid. He is a wonderful, upright human being. Right. And so like I could. I could go on a date where they might be like, don't necessarily trust that guy. I had trust of parents. I had trust of people in the church. I had trust of, you know, people my age, people younger than me, people older than me. I had the trust of people just because of my association with my dad. That was power that I was not aware of. And I did hurt a couple of people from it because I, and now looking back on them, like, that's what was going on. I did not acknowledge the power that I had as a pastor's kid. I don't know what would be like a power time that you're like, I didn't really realize that. Probably a little bit like that. I'm not a pastor's kid, but a kid that made good decisions gave me this power of a parent. on you? Yes, yes. My kids and family, they still talk about that. And if something doesn't go right, they're all like, oh, the halo is kind of tilted a little bit. So I'm like, oh, that's interesting. It's kind of an LOL. right now. Yeah, that's right. I would say maybe... Back in that day, I was an intern and I thought positionally, so you talked about those types of power. like on the rung, right? The lowest rung. Totally. I literally had an office, literally no exaggeration, closet, right? But man, I was super proud of it. So I lowest person here at this church. But because the student pastor, who's highly respected, trusted me, right? There was this, and here I am at 17. Do you think he trusted you because you were younger? So he's like, this person knows youth? is that kind of... I don't know. Maybe I think about the power as it relates to like all the other students. And I thought I was almost one of them. Because I was similar age. 17, yeah. And so I think I began to realize that people came to me for things or almost I was an extension of the student pastor who was, you know, in his 30s, 40s, you know, right? So I think I then realized... Wait, I have, and I wouldn't have called it power, but we would never acknowledge that term. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially church world. Yeah. That I realized, wait a minute, I do. And I could think of like, I could think of moments when I, okay, here's one. I remember working at a church and we were the team, we were gathered together in a meeting, senior pastor, if said his name, 99 % of you would know his name. We were sitting in a meeting, senior pastors in there, this is a good story from him. Okay, good, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This actually gave me an enormous amount of respect, but it also helped me realize power. everybody shares their opinion. I didn't say anything because I'm just listening and taking it in. It wasn't that big of a deal to me. I could have gone either way. And all of a sudden the senior pastor paused and he said, you know what? when you were 17 or was this like? Yeah, definitely not 17. Okay. I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, no, I was I was in my late 30s and And the senior pastor leaned forward and he looked down at me because I appreciate what everybody shared But I want to hear what Jason has to say and I thought okay So that was that was a that was that was like an all-authority like that was almost like the the dove Descending and landing on Jesus where it's like this is my son. I want to hear what he's saying It caught me off guard because I was like fine with whatever in this conversation. So I said what I said and then this is where I saw something happen and he thought for a brief second, felt like 30, it was probably like three. And he said, you know what, we're going to go, everybody else shared an opinion. Then he asked me, I shared mine and he goes, you know what, I appreciate everybody sharing their opinion. We're going to go with what Jason said. And I, you know, I'm not seeking it, but it was one of those moments, like, I don't know quite what happened. Part of it was the senior pastor asked Jason, and I realized senior pastor had power, but it was, there was a moment that I realized, again, call it what you want, power, influence, leadership, those are all kind of playing together. But it was an example of even in a meeting, it showed up. And you could either have let that experience inform, need humility in this. because or it could puff you up, right? And I think that's, that's, you know, I'm so humbled by the fact that pastor chose my decision, right? Like a lot of us say that, are you actually humbled or were you puffed up? Because if you're puffed up, that's when you start wielding that power a little more carelessly. I mean, similarly, I think one of the first times my church currently, ⁓ you know, one of the staff members was like, Hey, Jonathan, can you, can you pitch this idea to pastor? I'm not on staff. I'm just attending, right? And they're like, cause pastor will like it if it comes from you. And it caught me off guard. was like, what? Like you guys are the people like in the trenches, right? But that I acknowledged, okay, that's power. Like I'm not gonna do that because me wielding my power, I'm his friend, I'm his, know, and friendship gets into the next part of the chapter, right? But I'm his friend, he trusts me, he knows that I'm for him, he knows that I've seen a lot of things from different churches. I have a lot of power, a lot of influence in his decisions and I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to try to manipulate him. to go what my other friend is trying to get him to do, right? Like I'm like, I'm not gonna be a part of this, right? Like I had to be careful with my influence, with my power. ⁓ And that's, mean, there's just little, there's little moments like this where we choose, because we acknowledge we have power, we choose to either use it or to withhold it. And that makes all the difference. It does. Let me ask you this, if we can, you know, in our remaining time, can we talk about boundaries? Cause this is a huge, and what you and I have actually written about, this before, boundaries, they sound good. mean, know Henry Cloud wrote a book on it and it sounds really good, but I hear from many, many, many leaders, I want to do that. I don't know how to do that, especially when I work in the church and I'm always available, have accessibility. maybe the question we kind of to open this part of the conversation is, why do you think leaders struggle to set boundaries? And if that's you, Hey, I'm with you, so you're not alone in this. But I'm curious, why do you think Jonathan leaders struggle to set boundaries? It's really tough whenever you... know, church is your employment. Church is also your family. Church is like, there's these blended, know, church is your friends. There are these blurred lines of, as a pastor especially, I need to be able to talk to you and say, you're out of line. Like, that was inappropriate, that was wrong. And so there's this... power that I need to be able to wield in your life that I can't do as your peer. Peers can't wield power against each other. We can because again, I know stuff about you, but it's, it's a different type of power dynamic. So I know so many pastors who feel extremely lonely because they feel like they can't be friends with their congregation, rightfully so. And they're either totally by themselves and that's where they live kind of like a fractured life where it's like, you know, they have secrets, they have secrets because they can't share it with anyone. They don't have anyone to share their secrets with. Like they don't have. you know, not even that they're living a double life, but like this is an inappropriate thing to share with somebody that is underneath me, So that's part of it, is like the idea that like being friends with someone that you wield power over is a power imbalance and it's tough. And that's where boundaries kind of break down. You know, we were talking in this chapter specifically, it was not necessarily talking about boundaries like don't let someone call you at 2 a.m. or, you know, only work 40 hours a week. It was really more like what is appropriate in our friendship? I know with my pastor, we've had to acknowledge, I'm like, hey, are we talking as friends right now or are we talking as you as my pastor? And the only way that our friendship can work with him as my pastor is I have to be willing to say, okay, I'm acknowledging you as pastor right now. What do you have to say to me, right? I am submitted to you. Whereas as a friend, yeah, we're gonna joke. We're gonna say dumb things to each other and that's appropriate and that. But at this point right now, you are... Disciplining me right like you are bringing discipline to my life and I have to be willing to humble myself and say okay I am under you in this moment right now Even though normally we act as friends and that's that's a really hard thing to do because you have to first of all acknowledge that there is a power imbalance and you have to acknowledge that like things change in our relationship and my relationship to you needs to be appropriate for what's happening in the moment and That's tough for a lot of people and it requires humility. I mean, I I constantly talk about you you Jason. I mean like I feel like we have a lot of humility in the way that we work together. You know, like there are lot of times whenever we're writing a book and like, know, you have to be like, okay, I'm going to trust you on that. Or like, I'm promoting the book and I have to put my name first or you're speaking. So we put your name first or like all of these things are opportunities for humility. like, it's, it's for these types of relationships to work. has to be mutually submissive humility. And it's really tough. It's it. mean, we haven't had too many issues, but every now and then, like, I noticed I'm like, man, Jason really just. pulled out the humility card right there. That was awesome. Like you made it easy where it could have been a little bit more uncomfortable for us. And just for what it's worth, know this is not in, Eric did talk about you and me, but I will say you modeled this and you may have to work through it internally, but the way you do, you modeled this part of the conversation really well. In fact, it's one of my favorite things that you do that went away from you I talk about because you could. flex or demonstrate or fight for power or whatever. too. you should. And I think it's probably one of my favorite things about us that, sometimes I might feel it, but it's like, you know what? I yield to or submit to or trust this, that if this does work, we have to like do that. And you know, which is interesting because in the book, he does talk about power and boundaries, like in the context of relationships. So you think about the dynamics of a staff. you know, sometimes there's probably roles that get blurred. I'm curious and, you know, even me thinking about this, how does, how can power show up in like everyday team relationships? So somebody's listening right now, they have a team volunteer staff, how could power show up? ⁓ And then we could talk about like, you know, what could they do? Yeah, I well, this is kind of off topic, but I feel like one of the things that I regularly hear, you know, I do these Ask Me Anything Mondays and people are like, how do I, like, I'm a part of a small group, I'm on staff, but I'm on a small group. I can't, I can't be myself in this small group. That's inappropriate. I can't share the things that I'm frustrated about with my, you know, my pastor is frustrating me. Like he's my boss. I'm frustrated with my boss, but I can't say that because this is this person's spiritual, everyone's spiritual leader, right? There are these realities of like, the relationships we have when we're on staff, there's an inequity of power again. And you can't necessarily be completely transparent. And I think this kind of ties back into the whole idea of Sabbath and of resting well, because if all of our life is surrounded by ministry, all of our friends are in ministry or recipients of that ministry, we don't have a place to go, a well to draw from. of people that I can be honest with, of peers, of people that like I can actually be. A lot of pastors, I posted something the other day about like, the joke was like, when you're on a, when you're, when your pastor is recording a podcast about how to build a healthy team and you're wondering if he has a team you don't know about, right? Like, that's the joke. Like, well, we're not a healthy team. are you telling them we're like, that's the joke, right? But then people, someone else was commenting like, oh yeah, when pastors telling you how important it is to have close friendships, but he doesn't have any close friendships. I'm like, oof, that's real. Yeah. And some of that's because I can't have close friendships as a pastor, right? Like I can't, all of my time is at the church, all of my ministry is at the church. How would I have time for close friends because they're all here and, I can't do that. Like there's, that's an inappropriate relationship, right? ⁓ Or it's a difficult relationship, maybe inappropriate. Cause he doesn't say like, you should not be friends with your congregation. Like he just says that's not biblical. That's not the way Jesus modeled things, but it's much more difficult. ⁓ So that's what I see is like how. how do we have relationships whenever there's just this blurry mess of church being friendship, employment, family, power, discipleship, discipline, all that stuff. I don't know, what would you say? It's tough. never necessarily, sometimes I just say join a small group, join a group of creatives that are in your field and be a part of that group. That's what I tell people, but I don't know if that's a perfect solution. And I don't know if there is a perfect solution. Yeah, I don't know. This is a great example. For many years, I struggled and my wife, Stacey, could tell you this. I struggled with being part of a small group, even though the pastor told us to, you know, be part of a small group. And the reason, not that I'm against small groups, it's the opposite of that. But when Jason shows up, Jason- It's Jason stuff a little bit. Yeah. It's like, well, we'll just defer to the, he's got the- He's the pastor. Yeah. And it's like, I don't want that. actually. And so, you know, that used to be an internal struggle. ⁓ And so it's just, yeah, figuring out what's a great place. How do you do that? And I know for many people probably watching listening right now, the boundaries, the limits, you know, saying no is very difficult. Some do it because they love the need to be needed. ⁓ I think some of you listening right now, you are afraid to disappoint people. think some of you want to make a courageous decision to, for no to be a complete sentence. Remember this, like every yes and no has a cost. And it's like, know these things, but sometimes it's not until we have to pay the price, do we realize that some of us never change even. And so when you think about, you know, we train people how to treat our time and treat our energy. And so if you want to be that best version of who God's empowered and entrusted you to become and to lead, I think there are foundational things. And you mentioned the conversation about the Sabbath. I think there's a conversation we talked about slowing down. I think there's boundaries where you establish some things that clarity could disappoint, but it eventually builds respect for most. And so it's just being mindful of limits with time and energy, right? when it comes to leadership, but it's hard. And so how do you protect your energy and time so that the leadership of power that has been given to you, you can use that to build up ⁓ people, to build up his church, to build up whatever it might be. Because the goal is to have less power. if it's like, just, because it's a dirty word, right? It's how do you steward it well with wisdom? Yeah. So the idea is how do we wield that power appropriately? Hey, we're at the end of this podcast episode. We're going to be talking about chapter nine next week. Hope you found this helpful. This again, this chapter was phenomenal for me. If you're reading along with a book, I recommend getting to this chapter. But if you're not, we hope that you found this helpful anyways. We hope you subscribe to the podcast, find us on social media, ask us questions, say what you liked about it, what you didn't like about the podcast. We just want to be open and available to you, but we will see you next week for chapter nine.