Getting Stuck in the Battles of the Past Is Not a Winning Strategy (Leadership & Ministry Lessons Part 7)

Consider these words from the Captain,

“Before considering several engagements of this type that occurred during the World War, let us review some of that same war’s lessons, albeit, no human being can say whether or not they will apply to the war of the future. Indeed, there is tragedy in the fact that the solider must learn from examples of the past and only rarely from the present. In fact, there is a certain danger in the study of military history if we seek to obtain from it more than the eternal verities of leadership, morale, psychological effects and the difficulty and confusion which battle entails. We cannot visualize war of the future merely by studying wars of the past. If this were so, the best professor of history would necessarily be the best commander. Certainly the next war will place entirely new problems before us – problems that have not even been imagined. Our descendants may never have to face the difficulties that confronted us in the last war and that still confronts us today, but we can be certain that in place of these they will have other difficulties to overcome…Let us not fall into the mistake ” (Adolf von Schell, Battle Leadership, 66)

The first thing you will notice from that quote is that Von Schell refers to World War One as “the World War.” That is because this was written in the late 1930s and WWII had not yet occurred. The main point in this quote is this…it is important to study and understand the battles of the past but we cannot expect future battles to follow past patterns. Why? Because things change. We face new challenges. There are advances in technology, culture, and strategy that alter the battlefield. How does this apply to leadership in ministry? It is too easy to fight battles of past generations that are no longer relevant to our contemporary culture.

The past informs the future but we should never confuse the past as being the future.
When we do that, we end up in all kinds of wacky conversations that lack relevance.

Leadership & Ministry Lessons from a World War One German Officer (Part 5)

When you lead people into battle, there are going to be times of intense stress and anxiety. One of the things Captain Von Schell was good at was finding ways to put his soldiers at ease when their lives were on the line,

“I noticed that my men were uneasy; they were now waiting for the shell that would fall in the middle of the house…We waited together. This waiting and this uncertainty made us nervous. We sat int he house and listened for every shell. We could tell exactly whether it was too short or too long, whether it would fall to our right or to our left. Finally the following thought came to me: ‘The walls of this house are very thick, in fact about a yard. If a shell bursts outside the house and we are in it, nothing can happen to us. If, however, a shell bursts in the house, then it would be better to be outside. Therefore, the best thing toi do is to sit in the door and watch the shells. We can tell where they are going and we will be in a position to go either into the house or out of it.’ So I sat down on a chair in the door and was soon perfectly satisfied-so satisfied, in fact, that I went to sleep. This action on my part calmed my men to such an extent that they began to play cards. After a few hours the firing ceased.

You may laugh at my action in this case I too am ready to laugh at it. My conviction at that time was nonsense. One cannot decide whether a shell will land three or four yards to the right or to the left. I have only mentioned the point to illustrate that it makes no difference whether or not the security is real; it is simply a question of feeling that it is.” (p.15)

He couldn’t tell if a shell was going to land in the house or outside the house and yet the very fact that his men knew he was “on it” was enough for them to relax. Here is another example of putting his men at ease,

“The shells continued to fall around our shed. No one said a word. I noticed that my men were highly nervous…Suddenly a shell came down right in the middle of the company, but it failed to burst. Nerves were frayed almost to the breaking point…In order to obtain a feeling of security somebody had to act. Then I had a good thought; I called the company barber, sat down with my back to the front and told him to cut my hair. I must say, that in my whole life, no haircut has ever been so unpleasant. Every time a shell whistled over our heads, I jerked my head down and the barber would tear out a few hairs instead of cutting them. But the effect was splendid; the soldiers evidently felt that if the company commander could sit quietly and let his hair be cut that the situation was not so bad, and that they were probably safer than they thought. Conversation began; a few jokes were played; several men began to play cards; someone began to sing; no one paid any more attention to the shells.

Two points stand out in this incident: Instill a sense of security in the men; by doing so you will help them overcome their fears. Do something to induce action among them.” (p.16-17)

I feel a tension here because it seems like a lot of Christianity today plays it safe. We don’t get on the front line that often. We shelter people from it. We professionalize it so much so that it seems only the high ranking officers are involved in the war. We don’t want to put people at risk. We don’t want to do anything dangerous. We don’t want people to get hurt. So we stay far from the battle lines. There is no anxiety to alleviate other than if we sing songs don’t like or we pass communion wrong. Where are we leading people? Are we in the fight? Are they in the fight? Before we have to worry about how to relieve the battlefield anxiety, we first have to be taking people on the battlefield!

Leadership & Ministry Lessons from a World War One German Officer (Part 3)

Leadership requires making decisions without all the information. Combat leadership prior to the advent of satellites and advances in communication technology meant that decisions had to be made without all the relevant information. Even with all the advances in technology that is still true in war and it is true in ministry. You may think a road looks safe but it turns out to be disaster. You can let the unknown freeze you up or you can lead through it.

“Leaders must nearly always issue orders without exact information. Our mission and our will are often the only things untouched by obscurity. These will frequently form our only basis for an order. If a leader awaits complete information before issuing an order, he will never issue one.” – Adolf Von Schell, Combat Leadership, 31

He mentions two important things that assist decision making when one does not have all the information: our mission and our will (the will of the leader and his troops). That means the overarching mission drives the leadership decision. The question should be asked, does this decision drive us in the direction of the overarching mission or does it distract from it? That question will help make the decision clearer even when all the information in not available. As Christians, we would tweak the second…it is the will of God that helps us in our decision making. We ask the question first, “Is this what God wills?” If he does, then we have to move our will in line with His.

In ministry, we are going to have to make decisions based on incomplete information. At the end of the day, if even things get rocky as a result of those decisions, we have to be able to say we believe the decision was in line
with our Christian mission and was God’s will as best as we could ascertain that.

Leadership & Ministry Lessons from a World War One German Officer (Part 2)

As Eric mentioned in the previous post’s comments, this has a lot to do not only with leadership but also with discipleship. How do you get people from pew to carrying crosses? Here is a quote from Von Schell that offers a solution,

“The men, although well trained and of a high morale, were inexperienced in war and reacted strongly to early impressions. The reason may well be that they had not been psychologically prepared for the severe trials they were called upon to undergo. The conclusion to be drawn from this is obvious: we must teach our men in peace that battles differ greatly from maneuvers and that there will often be critical periods when everything seems to be going wrong. It is exceedingly difficult to teach men what to expect in war, but something along this line may be accomplished if we study military history and teach its lessons to our soldiers…There will be many occasions  however, when officers must set an example in order to inspire their troops in advance or to hold their ground in the face of almost certain death.” (p.38-39)

Does this speak to our current situation in Christianity where people have been taught and trained in a pew setting to make a difference in a non-pew setting but still don’t know how or maybe know how but aren’t doing it? I think it does. First, we can’t allow people to believe faith is about Sunday. Training maneuvers and actual war are two different things but often we only engage people in the first. Second, training people requires adequate leadership to help guide them through their experience in a way that builds and does not tear  them down. Here is our problem. Leadership has done a good job of taking people through “training maneuvers” but hasn’t always done an adequate job getting people where the fighting is actually happening (and it is happening).

Our Leadership Dilemma:
Our inability to produce adequately trained and experienced disciples stems directly from ineffectual leadership. We have a leadership dilemma on our hands. I don’t think it is that we have leaders who want to be bad or are maliciously picking the wrong course. Often, we have leaders who are groomed from a 1950s-1980s world trying to play their role in the 21st century with limited results.

What is more, we have watered down leadership in several ways. We have bought into the myth that visibility always equals leadership. The more visible you are the higher your leadership role. We have been so extreme on this that it has impacted the way we view the roles of women within the congregation. Can they pass communion? Yes, of course they can…as long as they do it seated in a pew and not standing the in aisle. Why? Because passing trays might in some way be a leadership role and we know Paul didn’t permit a women to have authority over a man and passing trays could cross that line. Huh? Can a woman be a greeter? Sure she can as long as she isn’t officially a greeter on the greeting committee or be a greeting deacon. What? Where in the world did we get the idea of visibility always equals leadership?

Second, we have come to believe that leadership is only pastoral. That is only the half of it. Taking care of people’s souls, teaching people, and other forms of pastoring are part of what church leaders do but there is more. We need to do more than keep sheep healthy in the pen. We need to lead people into battle, into kingdom work against the forces of evil in this world. That takes leadership. We need leaders who can do the apostolic (word that means someone who is sent) ministry of the church. We need people who will lead us out of the walls of the church to impact the world for Jesus.

Leadership & Ministry Lessons from a World War One German Officer (Part 1)

My brother recently pointed me to a book by Captain Adolf Von Schell called “Battle Leadership“. Based on the forward it looks like recommended reading in the United States Marine Corp. Schell fought for the German army in WWI and shares his insights on the psychology of war, combat readiness, and leadership. There are a few great leadership lessons found in this book that I would like to pass along that are just as valuable today almost exactly 100 years later.

One of  Von Schell first major points is that it is extremely difficult to train soldiers adequately for war in a time of peace. It is one thing to teach techniques and tactics on a practice field and quite another when the shells are exploding and the bullets are flying. You might think you are level headed and know how to handle things until you realize you could die any moment. All of a sudden, all of that training can easily go out the window and there is a temptation to want to do things you never learned in training.

When it comes to learning to handle intense situations, there is no substitute for experience. The problem is you can’t just start a war to train your troops. Captain Von Schell tells the story about how they had run low on troops and had to replenish them with some green recruits who had just been trained for three months with no combat experience. He watched them get defeated and suffer great losses. The next time around, they took the new recruits and made sure they had an adequate number of seasoned recruits who could teach them in the field. What happened from those relationships was that the new recruits learned from the stories of the experienced men that they very quickly learned how to survive because they were spending time with men who had combat experience. They began fighting like men who had much more experience due to the time they spent hearing the stories of those who could share with them from their own combat experience.

Here is the point. There are things that happen in ministry that cannot be taught in a classroom. You just have to experience them. It is so much better if you can experience those things with someone who has been there before, who can help you unpack the experience so you can growth through it, rather than let it tear you down. There are several reasons we are losing ministers left and right that could be addressed by the insights of Von Schell:

• Ministry can be painful and not having sufficient support and training can lead to failure or the inability to cope with failure
• Accountability – too many ministers have zero accountability. That can be dangerous ground to tread on. They need people with more experience who can teach them the ropes and help them when they make mistakes.
• Friendly fire – not all churches provide a safe environment for ministers. You can’t learn how to deal with this in grad school. It must be experienced, processed and grown through.

It is important that elderships are supportive of those on staff and not adversarial. Failure is going to happen to everyone who ministers. The question is, what do we do with it and do we have anyone in our corner who can help us work through it so that we do not become the next casualty of ministry.