What have you learned about leadership from the team of people you work with at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries?
I was very naïve about this, but people need good, strong leadership. Its value is underestimated. I foolishly assumed everybody is a self-starter. I tried to give everybody the vision that I wanted them to run with, and then expected the organization to run well. Years later, I realized how critical leadership is and how seriously I should’ve taken it. One makes mistakes, blunders along, and then thinks the work was just totally unnecessary.
Was there a particular moment when you realized how difficult it was and how much people needed leadership?
The first time something happens you say, “Oh well, it was probably the individual’s responsibility or they made the mistake or whatever.” If it happens the second time or third time, you say to yourself, “No, it’s not them. It’s the leader.” The leader has to lead well and lead properly, and you know, those skills are not readily visible in many. I’d be the first person to admit that I wish I were a better leader than I have turned out to be. My calling is that of a preacher and teacher and an apologist. To lead an organization—sometimes that has felt like a secondary calling for me.
How have you measured success in your leadership?
I look at it in two ways. Today, I am more equipped and better able to meet the needs of my calling as a speaker and as a writer, the calling that I sense deeply in my heart, for which God had wired me and positioned me. I would measure that in terms of both my inner peace—my closeness with the Lord—and in the response we get from audiences all over the world.
The second way I measure success is by asking, “Have I built an organization that has fulfilled its optimum potential?” I would say I sense a fair degree of contentment with where I am personally, but I would also say we could have done a much better job.
I have to admit I was a little afraid of this interview, because I’m kind of overwhelmed with what you’ve done. So to hear you say that “it is not all you had hoped it would be” is startling to me.
It’s a very candid thing, Marcus. I wished I had done a better job of leading this organization. I just think we could have done a much, much better job had the right person been at the helm of leading this organization. I have been constantly committed to a vision, a burden, a passion, a need, and a calling. I have given my best to it, and I have no regrets, but in terms of the cohesiveness and the measured impact and growth of it, I wish I had to do this all over again. I would have made many, many different turns along the way.
This is where Billy Graham excelled. People have not realized what an incredible leader he was. We think of him as a speaker and preacher, who had this huge audience globally. But he had an an eye for the right kind of person to lead various aspects of his ministry, from George Wilson to Cliff Barrow to Sterling Houston, and then you know like Bev Shea and the musicians. I wonder why his teams stayed together so long. I think it’s two-fold. Number one, it was a culture much more given to loyalty and commitment in that generation. But number two, I think his incredible eye and insight into the right kind of person was key to his leadership.
You have talked about writing mission statements for your business and your life and marriage. What are some of the practical steps people should take if they want to write that kind of mission statement?
When you write a mission statement for your life, you have something to measure it by. It is critical that individuals have converging missions for their lives. Imagine, for example, a meeting is called by the CEO and they’re sitting around and the whole discussion is on the software and the breakdown of this or that. As they are about to end the meeting, one of the men around the table says, “But what about the shirts.” And the CEO says, “What do you mean ‘what about the shirts’?” The man replies, “Isn’t that what this company is about, the manufacturing of shirts?” The whole discussion has been sidetracked around other issues, but the main reason for their existence was never discussed. If you have diverging lines of mission, a person may have a complete personal ambition in something to excel and be the best speaker he wants to be. But that person has to know how to work with a team or you are basically preparing somebody else to launch his or her own calling in ministry. If you’re called to launch other people into ministry, okay. But if not, then that person wouldn’t be a good team player. The most difficult aspect I’ve found in building this organization is building a team.
What have you learned in this struggle about building a good team?
First and most important characteristic in every team member is humility. Unfortunately, we are all victim to the same thing. Speakers and those who are in the public eye often fall prey to big egos. As C. S. Lewis said, “It all boils down not to what they are saying, but the way they are saying it.” This is a very critical thing that happens. If I had to do it all over again, I would start looking slower in building a team, and I would do it with a person whose first characteristic to me was that of humility.
Before we ever sit down to write mission statements, how do we discern the specifics of our mission?
First, establish what your personal walk with Christ is going to be; then it should blend with the calling to which God has called you. Your calling is basically God’s claim upon your life. In the book, The Grand Weaver, I basically said “God shapes your burdens and beckons you to your service to Him in the place and pursuit of His choosing.” Then you establish a mission statement on how you’re going to do this.
My calling was to be a proclaimer and to speak and to teach others to go and do the same. So, I’m a proclaimer and persuader on the one hand, but I also prepare other young men and women on how to do that persuading and proclaiming. I have to balance it all. Sometimes I would rather just go and speak and proclaim, but I have to take away from that in order to go and teach, disciple, and mentor. One of my main responsibilities now is the mentoring of younger apologists.
Help me understand your view on pleasure. In your book The Grand Weaver, you said, “Anything that refreshes you without distracting from or diminishing or destroying your final goal, is a legitimate pleasure.” So what is an example of legitimate pleasure in work?
If my wife were here listening to this, she would start chuckling. In my memoirs book Walking from East to West, she said, “Ravi, every third page has an illustration of food in it. One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing during these 30 years of travel, Marcus, is having a lovely meal with people in their home or somewhere else. I also love the pleasure of long walks in the early morning and later in the evening. It’s relaxing. It’s refreshing for the body and the soul. Lewis talks about this in Screwtape Letters in a marvelous way. The pleasure of good music, good entertainment, an exciting sports game—our bodies are meant to be exercised and to be exhilarated in legitimate ways. I think pleasure comes in many different ways. Unfortunately in our world, pleasure has become synonymous with heathenism, and that is destructive. That’s not what I’m talking about.
But do you take pleasure in your work itself?
I have to be honest, like many other good things, the pleasure comes after the fact, not before. You work hard, you prepare hard, you sense the anointing, you see the response, and then you’re delighted.
You have said that one cannot mix the profane with the sacred. Often the choices we face in the workplace are not clearly profane or clearly sacred, so how do we learn the wisdom to distinguish?
It’s a very, very good question. I really think God gives us some elbowroom; otherwise you would end up being judgmental and legalistic. Anything in my experience that brings in profanity or vulgarity or appeals to the sensual in me makes me feel very uncomfortable. There are people I know who watch a movie that might have language or something sensual that I would feel terribly uncomfortable with, but they are okay. I like to leave that between them and God. They have to know for sure in their hearts that this is not compromising of their conviction and their sacred walk with God.
There is no way that I can watch something debased and sensual in a scene without it scarring my memory and probably provoking the wrong kind of response. I think in the end it injures my whole imagination, but if somebody thinks they can handle that and deal with that, in a small degree, without injuring their soul, it’s something they're accountable to God for. For me, no. I can’t handle that and don’t want to, don’t wish to. Everybody has to draw the boundary lines somewhere, and I tell young men and women why I draw it where I do. For me to then cross those boundaries . . . Like Paul, I would say, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” If it’s contrary to your conviction, you would be sinning against God.
When Michelangelo was starting to paint unclad people, his teacher said to him, “Why are you doing this?” He said, “I want to see man as God sees man,” and the teacher said to him, “But you’re not God.” I think that’s a very strong junction to remind us that the eye gate and the ear gate ultimately affect the imagination.
So, would you say that faith in the workplace is primarily an issue of ethics and morality around these kinds of choices?
I think ethics and morality are a symptom of it. The true matter is one of spirituality. I think there are things that injure the spirit and things that build up the spirit. That’s why I don’t think one chooses between the secular and the sacred. One chooses between the sacred and the profane. If a man is an engineer building bridges, he’s as much involved in the sacred calling as I am in building a bridge to the person’s mind for the Gospel’s sake. The engineer who lives for Christ is as much salt and light where he or she is, therefore I think the calling cannot be profane. The workplace, ethics, and morality play a vital role, but as I say in the book, The Grand Weaver, immorality matters only because it is symptomatic of one’s spiritual relationship with God.
In The Grand Weaver, you mention three perversions of spirituality or false truths: the traditionalism, the legalism, and the superstition. Do you see those trickling into the workplace as well?
Yes, but I think I’d like to add another one—antinomianism. Some churches seem to think there is no law that you abide by; you do whatever you want to do. Traditionalism I think came and went, although in some aspects of Christendom it is very much there. Legalism is very present. The church is meant to be a place where people who are lost come and find the healing Balm of Gilead.
When Christians who struggle with legalism go into the workplace, how do you think that affects their work?
It’s tough. If they are putting their own behavior into certain parameters, that’s one thing. But if they have some kind of a pseudo pride and a superiority, they just make others feel inferior because “I do not do those things, I do not go to these places, I do not use such language.” Basically, rather than presenting the attractiveness of Christ, they’re presenting a negative picture of what it means to walk joyfully with the Lord. So legalism, both in the church and in the workplace, tends to be the sideshow of a very conceited soul.
That’s a good phrase. Peter talked about everybody being a kingdom of priests, that is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Do you think the church has lost sight of this?
Martin Luther did not to come to abolish the priesthood; he came to grow up the laity. I think we have lost sight of that in terms of our intercessory and our representative role. We are part of the body of Christ, we bear one another’s burdens, and we have direct access to the person of Christ in our priesthood. Yet it is the priests who despised God’s name by bringing the lame, the blind, and the sick in Malachi. I think sometimes we give what is left over in ourselves, or we fail to play our role in the community. For example, the father of a home should really be playing a priestly role on behalf of his family, on behalf of his children. That is a very important responsibility given to him. It’s interesting how quickly women Bible study groups pick this up. They bear each other’s burdens and pray for their friends. Men sometimes miss out on that privilege of bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. It’s a very important role that the church has missed out on, intercessory prayer and representational prayer.
I also wonder about worship. Can work be worship?
Worship is coextensive with life. It is an aspect of worship. The person who works diligently is reflecting the value of an offering to God. Before I preach any sermon, I first make an offering to God before I present it to the people. I think we must always do this whatever we do. Whether I’m cleaning a house or building a house or maintaining a house, if a person looked at my work, they should see it as an expression of my reverence for God.
This is why we work. When the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, he said, “I’ll give you all this if you’ll bow down and worship me.” Jesus said, “No, you shall worship the Lord your God alone and him only shall you serve.” It is that rare combination of two words, “proskeneo and letrea.” Proskeneo means the reverence; letrea means service. By people’s response to The Grand Weaver, I’ve recognized that one really has to meet people where they are . . . in reverence and in service.
And where are people today in regards to reverence and service?
They want to know how these threads—mission, pleasure, spirituality, work, worship, all the things we’ve been talking about—how do they converge in daily life?
sumber: http://www.thehighcalling.org
I was very naïve about this, but people need good, strong leadership. Its value is underestimated. I foolishly assumed everybody is a self-starter. I tried to give everybody the vision that I wanted them to run with, and then expected the organization to run well. Years later, I realized how critical leadership is and how seriously I should’ve taken it. One makes mistakes, blunders along, and then thinks the work was just totally unnecessary.
Was there a particular moment when you realized how difficult it was and how much people needed leadership?
The first time something happens you say, “Oh well, it was probably the individual’s responsibility or they made the mistake or whatever.” If it happens the second time or third time, you say to yourself, “No, it’s not them. It’s the leader.” The leader has to lead well and lead properly, and you know, those skills are not readily visible in many. I’d be the first person to admit that I wish I were a better leader than I have turned out to be. My calling is that of a preacher and teacher and an apologist. To lead an organization—sometimes that has felt like a secondary calling for me.
How have you measured success in your leadership?
I look at it in two ways. Today, I am more equipped and better able to meet the needs of my calling as a speaker and as a writer, the calling that I sense deeply in my heart, for which God had wired me and positioned me. I would measure that in terms of both my inner peace—my closeness with the Lord—and in the response we get from audiences all over the world.
The second way I measure success is by asking, “Have I built an organization that has fulfilled its optimum potential?” I would say I sense a fair degree of contentment with where I am personally, but I would also say we could have done a much better job.
I have to admit I was a little afraid of this interview, because I’m kind of overwhelmed with what you’ve done. So to hear you say that “it is not all you had hoped it would be” is startling to me.
It’s a very candid thing, Marcus. I wished I had done a better job of leading this organization. I just think we could have done a much, much better job had the right person been at the helm of leading this organization. I have been constantly committed to a vision, a burden, a passion, a need, and a calling. I have given my best to it, and I have no regrets, but in terms of the cohesiveness and the measured impact and growth of it, I wish I had to do this all over again. I would have made many, many different turns along the way.
This is where Billy Graham excelled. People have not realized what an incredible leader he was. We think of him as a speaker and preacher, who had this huge audience globally. But he had an an eye for the right kind of person to lead various aspects of his ministry, from George Wilson to Cliff Barrow to Sterling Houston, and then you know like Bev Shea and the musicians. I wonder why his teams stayed together so long. I think it’s two-fold. Number one, it was a culture much more given to loyalty and commitment in that generation. But number two, I think his incredible eye and insight into the right kind of person was key to his leadership.
You have talked about writing mission statements for your business and your life and marriage. What are some of the practical steps people should take if they want to write that kind of mission statement?
When you write a mission statement for your life, you have something to measure it by. It is critical that individuals have converging missions for their lives. Imagine, for example, a meeting is called by the CEO and they’re sitting around and the whole discussion is on the software and the breakdown of this or that. As they are about to end the meeting, one of the men around the table says, “But what about the shirts.” And the CEO says, “What do you mean ‘what about the shirts’?” The man replies, “Isn’t that what this company is about, the manufacturing of shirts?” The whole discussion has been sidetracked around other issues, but the main reason for their existence was never discussed. If you have diverging lines of mission, a person may have a complete personal ambition in something to excel and be the best speaker he wants to be. But that person has to know how to work with a team or you are basically preparing somebody else to launch his or her own calling in ministry. If you’re called to launch other people into ministry, okay. But if not, then that person wouldn’t be a good team player. The most difficult aspect I’ve found in building this organization is building a team.
What have you learned in this struggle about building a good team?
First and most important characteristic in every team member is humility. Unfortunately, we are all victim to the same thing. Speakers and those who are in the public eye often fall prey to big egos. As C. S. Lewis said, “It all boils down not to what they are saying, but the way they are saying it.” This is a very critical thing that happens. If I had to do it all over again, I would start looking slower in building a team, and I would do it with a person whose first characteristic to me was that of humility.
Before we ever sit down to write mission statements, how do we discern the specifics of our mission?
First, establish what your personal walk with Christ is going to be; then it should blend with the calling to which God has called you. Your calling is basically God’s claim upon your life. In the book, The Grand Weaver, I basically said “God shapes your burdens and beckons you to your service to Him in the place and pursuit of His choosing.” Then you establish a mission statement on how you’re going to do this.
My calling was to be a proclaimer and to speak and to teach others to go and do the same. So, I’m a proclaimer and persuader on the one hand, but I also prepare other young men and women on how to do that persuading and proclaiming. I have to balance it all. Sometimes I would rather just go and speak and proclaim, but I have to take away from that in order to go and teach, disciple, and mentor. One of my main responsibilities now is the mentoring of younger apologists.
Help me understand your view on pleasure. In your book The Grand Weaver, you said, “Anything that refreshes you without distracting from or diminishing or destroying your final goal, is a legitimate pleasure.” So what is an example of legitimate pleasure in work?
If my wife were here listening to this, she would start chuckling. In my memoirs book Walking from East to West, she said, “Ravi, every third page has an illustration of food in it. One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing during these 30 years of travel, Marcus, is having a lovely meal with people in their home or somewhere else. I also love the pleasure of long walks in the early morning and later in the evening. It’s relaxing. It’s refreshing for the body and the soul. Lewis talks about this in Screwtape Letters in a marvelous way. The pleasure of good music, good entertainment, an exciting sports game—our bodies are meant to be exercised and to be exhilarated in legitimate ways. I think pleasure comes in many different ways. Unfortunately in our world, pleasure has become synonymous with heathenism, and that is destructive. That’s not what I’m talking about.
But do you take pleasure in your work itself?
I have to be honest, like many other good things, the pleasure comes after the fact, not before. You work hard, you prepare hard, you sense the anointing, you see the response, and then you’re delighted.
You have said that one cannot mix the profane with the sacred. Often the choices we face in the workplace are not clearly profane or clearly sacred, so how do we learn the wisdom to distinguish?
It’s a very, very good question. I really think God gives us some elbowroom; otherwise you would end up being judgmental and legalistic. Anything in my experience that brings in profanity or vulgarity or appeals to the sensual in me makes me feel very uncomfortable. There are people I know who watch a movie that might have language or something sensual that I would feel terribly uncomfortable with, but they are okay. I like to leave that between them and God. They have to know for sure in their hearts that this is not compromising of their conviction and their sacred walk with God.
There is no way that I can watch something debased and sensual in a scene without it scarring my memory and probably provoking the wrong kind of response. I think in the end it injures my whole imagination, but if somebody thinks they can handle that and deal with that, in a small degree, without injuring their soul, it’s something they're accountable to God for. For me, no. I can’t handle that and don’t want to, don’t wish to. Everybody has to draw the boundary lines somewhere, and I tell young men and women why I draw it where I do. For me to then cross those boundaries . . . Like Paul, I would say, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” If it’s contrary to your conviction, you would be sinning against God.
When Michelangelo was starting to paint unclad people, his teacher said to him, “Why are you doing this?” He said, “I want to see man as God sees man,” and the teacher said to him, “But you’re not God.” I think that’s a very strong junction to remind us that the eye gate and the ear gate ultimately affect the imagination.
So, would you say that faith in the workplace is primarily an issue of ethics and morality around these kinds of choices?
I think ethics and morality are a symptom of it. The true matter is one of spirituality. I think there are things that injure the spirit and things that build up the spirit. That’s why I don’t think one chooses between the secular and the sacred. One chooses between the sacred and the profane. If a man is an engineer building bridges, he’s as much involved in the sacred calling as I am in building a bridge to the person’s mind for the Gospel’s sake. The engineer who lives for Christ is as much salt and light where he or she is, therefore I think the calling cannot be profane. The workplace, ethics, and morality play a vital role, but as I say in the book, The Grand Weaver, immorality matters only because it is symptomatic of one’s spiritual relationship with God.
In The Grand Weaver, you mention three perversions of spirituality or false truths: the traditionalism, the legalism, and the superstition. Do you see those trickling into the workplace as well?
Yes, but I think I’d like to add another one—antinomianism. Some churches seem to think there is no law that you abide by; you do whatever you want to do. Traditionalism I think came and went, although in some aspects of Christendom it is very much there. Legalism is very present. The church is meant to be a place where people who are lost come and find the healing Balm of Gilead.
When Christians who struggle with legalism go into the workplace, how do you think that affects their work?
It’s tough. If they are putting their own behavior into certain parameters, that’s one thing. But if they have some kind of a pseudo pride and a superiority, they just make others feel inferior because “I do not do those things, I do not go to these places, I do not use such language.” Basically, rather than presenting the attractiveness of Christ, they’re presenting a negative picture of what it means to walk joyfully with the Lord. So legalism, both in the church and in the workplace, tends to be the sideshow of a very conceited soul.
That’s a good phrase. Peter talked about everybody being a kingdom of priests, that is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Do you think the church has lost sight of this?
Martin Luther did not to come to abolish the priesthood; he came to grow up the laity. I think we have lost sight of that in terms of our intercessory and our representative role. We are part of the body of Christ, we bear one another’s burdens, and we have direct access to the person of Christ in our priesthood. Yet it is the priests who despised God’s name by bringing the lame, the blind, and the sick in Malachi. I think sometimes we give what is left over in ourselves, or we fail to play our role in the community. For example, the father of a home should really be playing a priestly role on behalf of his family, on behalf of his children. That is a very important responsibility given to him. It’s interesting how quickly women Bible study groups pick this up. They bear each other’s burdens and pray for their friends. Men sometimes miss out on that privilege of bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. It’s a very important role that the church has missed out on, intercessory prayer and representational prayer.
I also wonder about worship. Can work be worship?
Worship is coextensive with life. It is an aspect of worship. The person who works diligently is reflecting the value of an offering to God. Before I preach any sermon, I first make an offering to God before I present it to the people. I think we must always do this whatever we do. Whether I’m cleaning a house or building a house or maintaining a house, if a person looked at my work, they should see it as an expression of my reverence for God.
This is why we work. When the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, he said, “I’ll give you all this if you’ll bow down and worship me.” Jesus said, “No, you shall worship the Lord your God alone and him only shall you serve.” It is that rare combination of two words, “proskeneo and letrea.” Proskeneo means the reverence; letrea means service. By people’s response to The Grand Weaver, I’ve recognized that one really has to meet people where they are . . . in reverence and in service.
And where are people today in regards to reverence and service?
They want to know how these threads—mission, pleasure, spirituality, work, worship, all the things we’ve been talking about—how do they converge in daily life?
sumber: http://www.thehighcalling.org
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