In this edition of Leadership Insights some thoughts from me on the importance of asking the right questions, an article by Brian McLaren that reminds us that education cannot save us, only Christ can do that and an article about Alister McGrath's new book on atheism.


ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
By Paul Arnott


I was recently invited to write my reminiscences of twelve years' work with the ABC Radio for the 70th anniversary of the ABC in Northern Tasmania. It was an interesting exercise, which made me realise again the importance of asking the right questions. Max De Pree, in Does Leadership Have A Future? suggests that leaders need to learn to ask themselves the right questions.1 He suggests that good leaders "should possess the wisdom and insight to raise important questions that search for deeper meaning."


De Pree says we need to ask ourselves: "Who do I intend to be? This is not the same thing as asking What do I intend to do? Which is always a consequence of who one intends to be. A person can find out the latter by asking What do I believe? What is my purpose in life? To what am I devoted as a leader?" Max De Pree asserts that these raise the issues of purpose, virtue and truth, all of which lead to hope: "Without purpose, virtue and truth it is difficult to experience hope...For leadership to endure it must be in <http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?cti+vy74rT+preactodansu.html> tertwined with hope - hope in the sense of looking forward to the future with expectation. If leadership has a future leaders must be able to articulate, find, and live out their own sense of hope. Hope grows dim as people deviate from their core values and grows stronger and becomes contagious in the context of shared hope within a community."


One of the most important questions for us to answer as leaders is what are we prepared to go to the wall for? If we're not clear about the issues we'll die for we can find ourselves fighting battles over things that are ultimately of little importance. Something else I've also learned over the years when someone raises a problem is to listen but not necessarily to respond. We need wisdom to discern which issues not to respond to but it's a mistake to think we need to respond to every problem everyone raises.


1. Quoted by Robert Banks and Bernice M. Ledbetter in Reviewing Leadership, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004, pp.130ff.


Informed, but not Transformed: Too many "educated" Christians have gotten lots of information but are the least Christ-like. by Brian MacLaren, Leadership contributing editor
I'm an educator at heart. I love to teach. Before becoming a pastor, I loved teaching literature, writing, even grammar. In my spare time, I loved teaching music. I still love to take people into the woods and teach them about plants, birds, reptiles, weather, ecology. Anything I know, I love to share with others. Most of all I love to teach people about God, the Bible, the gospel, the Christian life.
But the word about in the previous sentence causes me pause. I don't want just to teach people about God, about the Bible, and so on. I want to drop the preposition in the same way the apostle Paul does in Ephesians 4:20 (NASB), when he speaks of the need for people to "learn Christ," not just learn about Christ.
When I taught people to play guitar, I wasn't just teaching them about the guitar, how strings vibrate, what frets do, or why the grain of the soundboard is important. True, I share this information; it does have some value. But I was interested in teaching guitar.
When I taught writing, it wasn't just information I was interested in transferring. I wanted to help my students become the kind of people who could think clearly, feel honestly, and convey those thoughts and feelings in phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. It was the same with literature. Yes, there is an about dimension, but it was always in service of the direct, transforming, empowering encounter: learning literature, learning interpretation, learning poetry.
Beyond about. This difference between learning and learning about parallels an important shift that is signaled by the change from "Christian education" to "spiritual formation." True, in many quarters people slap a sexier new label on what they've always done. But elsewhere the shift in language reveals a profound shift in values, from teaching about God to teaching people God, from teaching about the Christian life to teaching people to live it, enjoy it, practice it. At its best, the change in language signals a shift in priority from transferring information to training for transformation.
This flows from a reality many pastors secretly acknowledge but seldom verbalize: that too many of our most "educated" Christians are some of the meanest. They may know the most information about the Bible but are the least Christ-like.
Too often there seems to be a direct correlation between knowledge about theology on the one hand and arrogance, contentiousness, and an uncharitable spirit on the other.
No one is in favor of ignorance, but mere knowledge that "puffs up," as Paul points out, isn't much better.
Many of us were initially hesitant to explore "spiritual transformation" because it required us to learn and teach historic spiritual disciplines. Our resistance, I think, was less a matter of laziness than of doctrine: we worried that spiritual practices, many of which were thought of as "Catholic," were about earning salvation or achieving God's approval in a legalistic sense.
Eventually though, confident that we are saved by grace through faith plus nothing, confident that the gospel means Jesus Christ plus nothing for God's approval, we have begun to explore Christian practices for the sake of transformation. As Dallas Willard says, we've realized that the gospel is opposed to earning but not to effort.
In my evangelistic conversations and in my visits to a variety of churches, I am becoming more and more sure that, both for our current church attenders and for the unchurched we wish to reach, one question is increasingly paramount: Can your church help me experience God and experience personal transformation? By this question, they're telling us they don't just want to learn about. They want transformation. They want to learn Christ.
We have well developed curricula and structures for teaching information, but we are still quite primitive when it comes to training for transformation. But that problem is also an opportunity, for us leaders, to seek transformation ourselves, from being educators who teach about, to being spiritual mentors and trainers who first and foremost practice a transforming faith as a way of life ourselves, and have effective ways of bringing others onto a transforming path, too.
Of all the many things I am optimistic about in the church these days, this is one of the best.
Brian McLaren is founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland.
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Copyright (c) 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal. August 15, 2005