Everyday Leadership | Leading out of Relationship

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome to Words of Life. I'm Cheryl Gillum, and I'm here with my co-host for this series, Steven Nolan. Welcome, Steven. Hey, thank you. I'm excited to be here.

I'm not a replacement for Bernie, but I'm going to try my best. Steven, you are holding your own, man. And so we are so glad that you're with us.

Thank you. You know, we're currently in this series, Everyday Leadership with Major John Murphy and Bethany Farrell. And throughout this series, we're studying what effective leadership looks like through a biblical lens.

Yeah. And this week, we're talking about leading out of relationship. So although leadership doesn't mean boss or employee, I think we can all think of a boss that we just really enjoyed working with. We knew that it was an opportunity. We knew that the time that we had with that person, that they're leading us, they're teaching us, and they believed in us. There's two kinds of people that we find ourselves working for, people that's relational and that you feel like you're doing something with that person. And then there's the other kind of leader where it feels transactional, where you're like, I am just here to feel a responsibility. Right. And we know that Major Murphy talks about how in our relationships, our leadership is much more effective when there's that personal relationship and it's not a transaction, right?

And the influence goes so much further. And so if you've been listening to this series, we hope you've enjoyed it. And we pray that in some way it'll inspire you to be a Godly leader. Hello Major Murphy. Hello again. Here we are for session three of Everyday Leadership.

Yes. Hopefully it's been helpful up to this point. Oh man, so helpful.

My wife has to continue to remind me about the importance of relationships. You talked last time about your cabbage making. It reminded me of when I was younger, going to school and living in Oklahoma. And I had this dream of getting a little homestead and moving out there and Five Acres and Independence was my book that I really enjoyed reading. And I had this whole plan and it really was kind of to pull away a bit, right? And you can do that a little further out west, maybe perhaps a little easier, but it really was this thought of, I just want to pull myself away from those around.

Not necessarily because it was negative, but I just started to fold my life in on, how do I want to say that? Self independence. Yeah. I was just really concerned about being independent.

There's a big call for that. And self-reliant. Yeah. People are worried about what's happening in the world around them and they don't want to have to rely on any of that. That's true. We're going to go the opposite direction in this right here because I think that is a huge danger.

There's two problems inherent there that I think we can get to in a minute. But first I want to tell you a story. I have a good friend. I didn't know him a few years ago, but he's become a good friend.

We'll call him Henry. And he shared a story with me. His testimony actually, what he shared with other people, but finally he felt confident enough to share it with me. He came through one of our drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs a number of years ago here in the South. The interesting thing was that he had been a pretty high level, successful professional prior. Eventually his addiction, as you know, happens completely, overtook his life and he ended up at the Salvation Army.

He did very well in the program, graduated, got a job with the Salvation Army as he was kind of sorting life out some more, getting back into society and, you know, how do I now live sober when what I knew before was not that. Since he was very successful before, an organization reached out to him, kind of recruited him and had a position available for him with their company. So he had a choice, a very difficult one. Was he to take the new position or, you know, stay where he was? There was a disparity in pay between where he was and where he could have gone, right?

It was very alluring. He told me this story really because he didn't take the job. He didn't. He paused.

He had a conversation with the officer that was there at the time and kind of walked through this dilemma that he felt and the officer was very frank with him. He said, you're not ready. You're not prepared.

You need more time and leaving now, although enticing, could jeopardize your recovery. And more so, he said, what you need to do is submit to where you are. I don't know how I would have taken that statement, right? You are approached with seemingly the next logical step of what God has brought you through and you reach out to someone you value significantly and they say, no, you're not ready. You could jeopardize where God has taken you.

You need to submit to where you are, where God has placed you right now. Henry did follow that, which I think would be very difficult, but I'm convinced that the reason he did follow that guidance was the relationship that he had with that officer. That advice couldn't have just come from anybody.

No, we would not have taken that. But when you are in relationship, you live with someone who's caring, right, who you know cares about you, who you know is only out for your best. When you're living with that individual over time through the ups and downs, then you come to understand their devotedness to you and you understand that they are looking out for your best interest. So I think you can accept that kind of guidance, however harsh or difficult it may be. I think that's the power of relationship when we want to talk about leadership.

And maybe it would be important for us now to define kind of what type of relationship, what does that kind of relationship look like? And as we did before, it's probably best if we start with some scripture. Hallelujah. Can I read it for you here?

Please. One of the scriptures in 2 Corinthians 13-14 says, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Right. I pulled it out because of its emphasis on the Trinity, right? The Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.

Let's focus on that because that is our example. That's our model, what's the ultimate healthy relationship is supposed to look like. The interchange between those three persons of the Godhead.

Mark Shaw says there are four characteristics that define that relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that's a place kind of I'd like for us to start and see how we can view our own relationship through that lens. Let's do it. Okay.

Let's do the first one. The first characteristic is full equality. So equality, not as equivalence, not as the same, but as respecting and valuing each other, right? Respecting and valuing each other. Equality also implies a respecting of each other's boundaries. Now boundaries do a lot of things for us.

They define tasks, responsibilities, roles, right? Those are all essential for developing healthy relationships so that we know how we are to interact with each other and we could say in what lane we're supposed to be in. We know there are boundaries. Boundaries also guard against us inappropriately intruding on each other, on each other's thoughts, feelings.

We're able to set boundaries when we respect and value each other fully because then they're not a negative, but they're a positive. Right. The second is glad submission. Submission.

Ooh, that's a word. Sacrifice submission. We keep hitting this, don't we? This is where we willingly set aside our own wishes and engage, and here it comes. Self-sacrifice for the sake of somebody else, for the sake of another. We look out for each other's individual comfort, preferences, rights and privileges, and this is what we don't want to hear, by yielding our own, right?

Because I'd love to look out for your rights and privileges as long as it doesn't cost me any of mine sometimes, right? But yielding our own privilege in order for somebody else. We submit to each other gladly. I think you see this a lot in, the perfect example is a family, a marriage perhaps, right?

Where you go in understanding that is what you're going to do. That's what the Trinity models for us. That's what we understood as husbands and wives. I think that's what's expected in all our relationships, that we value each other and then we submit or yield to each other's wishes, wants, desires. There's an honoring in that, that you honor that person each time you step back or that you step aside. Right.

Or whatever the case may be. Another characteristic is joyful intimacy, right? We highly value, and I love this word, we enjoy each other, right?

We really enjoy each other. We want to communicate with each other through words, of course, but shared experiences. We communicate not just through what we say, but how we experience life together, right? Shared experiences, being kind to each other, acts of kindness, and just spending time together.

Yeah. Man, communication will make all the difference, like in a relationship, whether it's just like we've talked about with marriage. I mean, obviously without communication there, you will run into constant situations and trouble, but communication plays such an important role in how we engage even in the office with your friends or with leaders. I know that if you have a leader who makes a decision, that seems to have come out of the blue.

If they just run with it and everybody has to follow suit without understanding, sometimes it's harder to follow that definition of leadership than if they say, here's how we came to this. Let me explain what's going on. And just having a better understanding or an open line of communication can really help the whole relationship to function more fully and efficiently. And the last one, Bethany, is mutual deference. That's a big word.

I had to look it up. Mutual respect, right? Mutual respect. And in this sense, we're valuing the distribution of responsibilities among ourselves. We're valuing how responsibilities are split up. And although roles may vary and power we know is not equally distributed, we're in families.

We know it's not equally distributed. There is a desire when we mutually respect each other that everyone participates in decision making to the level that they can, in power that is shared among each other. And I think there's also this willingness to defer to each other based on wisdom, based upon experience, the nature of the situation at hand. It makes me think of our family dinner table. We eat together at night around the table and everybody has to play a role or the meal doesn't happen.

I think it's worth thinking through when you read through the Word of God and see the way that the persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the way that they're announced in Scripture and the roles that they have to play, especially in the New Testament. We see this beautiful understanding of that relationship in action. And I think it's a concrete, it is a concrete example of how our relationships should function as well, especially in leadership. Okay, Major, what's today's action?

All right. Let's make this, that's easy. How can you show someone today that you're devoted to them? How can you show that you are devoted to them?

How can you communicate that they're valued, that you're willing to set aside your own rights, right, for their sake, your pleasures for theirs, and that you respect them enough to, in this instance, defer to their wisdom, to their experience, to give them the opportunity to feed into you? How can you show your devotion to somebody today? The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. And we'd love to hear from you. Call 1-800-229-9965 or visit salvationarmyradio.org to connect.

Tell us how we can help. Share prayer requests or your testimony. With your permission, we would love to use your story on the show. You can also subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmyradio.org to learn about more programs produced by the Salvation Army. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army Worship Center. They'll be glad to see you. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life.