Latest / Finding God at Work / 9: Lead Measures, Ego, and Grace

Transcript

9: Lead Measures, Ego, and Grace · Finding God at Work

• 0:05
  (Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
• 0:07
  This is Finding God at Work.
• 0:14
  Just a reminder that Finding God at Work
• 0:16
  isn't just a podcast.
• 0:17
  It's also an online course.
• 0:19
  Check it out at findinggodatwork.org.
• 0:28
  Our current series is A Mysterious Business, bringing
• 0:32
  ministry and marketplace wisdom together.
• 0:35
  When was the last time you worked really,
• 0:38
  really hard on something, and then the outcome
• 0:40
  was a flop?
• 0:42
  For me, this has happened many times in
• 0:44
  my life.
• 0:45
  One story from Mission Central's ministry.
• 0:48
  In an earlier version of Mission Central, kind
• 0:50
  of starting back during the pandemic, I was
• 0:52
  collaborating with my cousin Allison.
• 0:54
  She was part of the team, and we
• 0:56
  would lead these leadership cohorts, monthly gatherings of
• 0:59
  mostly 20-something people, kind of the front
• 1:02
  end of their career, talking about living out
• 1:04
  faith in the workplace and what it means
• 1:05
  to exercise leadership in a godly and humble
• 1:07
  way.
• 1:09
  The first few of them went really well,
• 1:11
  and then Allison departed.
• 1:13
  She was getting married.
• 1:14
  She was doing other things in her life,
• 1:15
  and I was trying to put together another
• 1:17
  cohort without her, and I worked really hard.
• 1:20
  I connected with prospective participants.
• 1:23
  I made phone calls.
• 1:24
  I connected with people on LinkedIn.
• 1:25
  I asked for referrals from other leaders I
• 1:27
  knew.
• 1:27
  And we were coming up on when I
• 1:29
  was hoping to launch the cohort in the
• 1:30
  fall, and no one had signed up.
• 1:33
  It was a bust.
• 1:35
  The cohort did not happen.
• 1:38
  I think one person signed up and then
• 1:40
  canceled.
• 1:41
  And that was such an ego-crushing thing
• 1:43
  for me because I'm like, I've got this
• 1:44
  whole ministry, it's been going well, and now
• 1:48
  my cousin is gone, and I suck.
• 1:53
  And this is often our conclusion, right?
• 1:56
  At least for some of us, we can
• 1:57
  really take a big ego hit when we
• 2:00
  experience failure, when we experience a project not
• 2:03
  going the way we hoped, when the outcomes
• 2:05
  are not impressive at all.
• 2:08
  So what do we do with that as
• 2:10
  followers of Jesus?
• 2:10
  How do we make sense of that?
• 2:12
  This is something I've really struggled with in
• 2:14
  my life because on the one hand, you
• 2:16
  hear these teachings about grace in scripture, right?
• 2:19
  That God loves you no matter what, that
• 2:20
  there's nothing you can do to increase or
• 2:21
  decrease God's love for you, that life in
• 2:24
  the kingdom of God is not about earning
• 2:26
  God's favor.
• 2:26
  It's not about our performance.
• 2:28
  But at the same time, it's like, well,
• 2:30
  but we do have agency in the world
• 2:32
  and we do want to accomplish things, right?
• 2:34
  And so when we try really hard for
• 2:35
  something and then we fail, what are we
• 2:37
  supposed to do with that?
• 2:41
  And this is a struggle that has been
• 2:43
  really fruitful in my life, often during those
• 2:46
  experiences of failure, to learn how to separate
• 2:49
  my responsibility from outcomes that are beyond my
• 2:53
  control.
• 2:54
  And as we're looking at the differences between
• 2:57
  work in the business world and work in
• 2:59
  church and ministry world, and also the similarities,
• 3:02
  I think there's a concept that's often used
• 3:04
  in the business world that's kind of a
• 3:05
  helpful analogy, if an incomplete analogy for a
• 3:10
  concept related to the grace of God that
• 3:12
  can be really liberating when we face failure
• 3:14
  and when we face success.
• 3:16
  And that's the concept of lead measures versus
• 3:19
  lag measures.
• 3:20
  So you might already understand this, but just
• 3:22
  in case it's new language for you, when
• 3:24
  I was back at the mortgage company, lead
• 3:27
  measures would be like, how many calls did
• 3:30
  you make today?
• 3:31
  Lag measures would be how many deals did
• 3:33
  you get?
• 3:34
  So for our loan officers who were trying
• 3:35
  to get people to sign on with the
• 3:37
  mortgage company to use our mortgage company for
• 3:40
  their mortgage when buying a home or when
• 3:41
  refinancing, lead measure would be like, how many
• 3:44
  people did I talk to this week?
• 3:45
  How many real estate agents did I talk
• 3:47
  to this week?
• 3:48
  Because you often get referrals from real estate
• 3:49
  agents.
• 3:50
  Lag measures were, okay, looking at the last
• 3:52
  month, how many deals did I actually get?
• 3:55
  How many people actually closed a home or
• 3:57
  refinance their home with our mortgage company because
• 3:59
  of my efforts?
• 4:01
  And one of the most successful teams, it
• 4:05
  was a duo team.
• 4:06
  These two men, they talked about how there
• 4:10
  was a time when their lag measures were
• 4:11
  excellent.
• 4:12
  It was when interest rates had fallen really
• 4:14
  low, so they were getting tons of refinance
• 4:16
  business, so they were just closing all these
• 4:17
  deals.
• 4:18
  And one of them said, you know, we
• 4:20
  really need to still take time to call
• 4:23
  our real estate agents.
• 4:23
  And the other one thought, we're so busy
• 4:25
  closing all these deals for refinance.
• 4:27
  How can we possibly also keep up with
• 4:29
  talking with real estate agents?
• 4:30
  Like, no, no, we'll, we'll come back to
• 4:31
  those relationships later.
• 4:32
  But the other one insisted.
• 4:33
  He said, no, no, we're going to keep
• 4:35
  our goals for how many calls we do
• 4:36
  to real estate agents every week.
• 4:37
  And then later on, when interest rates skyrocketed
• 4:42
  and all the refinance business went away, guess
• 4:44
  what?
• 4:45
  Those guys were still getting referrals from their
• 4:47
  real estate partners because they had maintained those
• 4:49
  relationships.
• 4:50
  It was a success for them, but it
• 4:52
  was also an illustration of this idea.
• 4:54
  What can you control, right?
• 4:56
  You actually can't directly control lag measures.
• 4:59
  You can't just decide here's the number of
• 5:01
  business deals that will close this month.
• 5:03
  Like you can't do that because other people,
• 5:05
  decisive human agents are involved at that.
• 5:07
  Your customers, your clients, they might say yes,
• 5:09
  they might say no.
• 5:10
  What can you control?
• 5:12
  Your lead measures.
• 5:13
  Are you going to go out into the
• 5:15
  community and do what you can do?
• 5:18
  Are you going to make those calls to
• 5:19
  real estate agents?
• 5:20
  Are you going to make those calls to
• 5:21
  prospective clients?
• 5:22
  And this was kind of a light bulb
• 5:24
  moment for me when I, when I heard
• 5:25
  this story at the mortgage company, because I
• 5:27
  realized, wow, when we make goals, sometimes we
• 5:30
  focus on lag measures.
• 5:32
  Right.
• 5:32
  And that's not necessarily bad.
• 5:33
  Like how many business deals do we want
• 5:35
  to close?
• 5:35
  Right.
• 5:35
  But we can't actually directly control that.
• 5:38
  What we need to do is really be
• 5:40
  accountable with ourselves about lead measures, which are
• 5:43
  less exciting, but are actually the thing that
• 5:45
  ultimately leads to the lag measures.
• 5:47
  Okay.
• 5:48
  So that's the, that's the business concept.
• 5:50
  How do we apply that to the context
• 5:53
  of our life with Jesus and life in
• 5:55
  the church?
• 5:55
  Well, there could be an unhealthy way to
• 5:57
  apply it.
• 5:57
  So let's start with that.
• 5:58
  We've talked before about kind of the unhealthy
• 6:00
  self-dependent attitude that doesn't actually depend on
• 6:04
  God's grace, right?
• 6:05
  David counting the troops is an example of
• 6:07
  that.
• 6:08
  We've called it like the fleshly way of
• 6:10
  operating.
• 6:10
  You could have a fleshly way of operating
• 6:12
  where instead of focusing on lag measures and
• 6:15
  saying, okay, the lag measures are what's important.
• 6:17
  And so if I have an outcome that
• 6:19
  fails, I'm kicking myself.
• 6:21
  You can say, no, no, no.
• 6:22
  It's the lead measures that are important.
• 6:23
  So if the lag measures failed, then I'm
• 6:26
  still kicking myself.
• 6:26
  I'm just kicking myself about how bad I
• 6:28
  am at the lead measures, right?
• 6:29
  Like you can still focus on lead measures
• 6:31
  and have a fleshly attitude.
• 6:32
  You could still say, it's all up to
• 6:34
  me.
• 6:34
  It's totally on my shoulders and I just
• 6:36
  got to focus on the lead measures.
• 6:37
  So the lag measures didn't succeed.
• 6:39
  Then it's because I did something wrong with
• 6:41
  the lead measures.
• 6:42
  End of story.
• 6:43
  Okay.
• 6:44
  Now I would say that there's a lot
• 6:46
  of wisdom in doing like quote unquote postmortems.
• 6:48
  Like if a project does flop to ask,
• 6:51
  why did it flop?
• 6:52
  And to look at, did we do our
• 6:54
  lead measures?
• 6:55
  Like suppose a different team or different loan
• 6:57
  officer, the mortgage company had not maintained those
• 7:00
  real estate relationships and then they had no
• 7:02
  deals at all when the interest rates went
• 7:03
  up, doing a postmortem on that and saying
• 7:05
  like, Oh, I should have maintained those real
• 7:08
  estate relations.
• 7:08
  It's like, that's a good thing.
• 7:09
  So we should acknowledge those things that we
• 7:10
  still are responsible for.
• 7:12
  Absolutely.
• 7:13
  But if we're only looking at our own
• 7:15
  efforts and we're only thinking that success is
• 7:17
  totally dependent on our own efforts one way
• 7:19
  or the other, that's a fleshly attitude.
• 7:21
  That's not depending on God's grace and on
• 7:23
  the movement of God's Holy Spirit.
• 7:25
  So God's Holy Spirit can empower our efforts,
• 7:27
  but God's grace also goes beyond our efforts
• 7:30
  and brings about outcomes that we cannot take
• 7:33
  full responsibility for.
• 7:34
  So I want to go to a passage.
• 7:37
  This is from John chapter four, which is
• 7:39
  famous for Jesus's conversation with the woman at
• 7:41
  the well.
• 7:42
  But there's actually another conversation in there between
• 7:44
  Jesus and his disciples.
• 7:45
  It's kind of tucked into the middle of
• 7:47
  the story with the woman at the well,
• 7:48
  because she goes back to the village and
• 7:49
  then comes back and it's while she's gone,
• 7:51
  the disciples and Jesus have this little conversation.
• 7:54
  So this is from verse thirty four on
• 7:57
  Jesus said to them, my food is to
• 8:00
  do the will of him who sent me
• 8:02
  and to accomplish his work.
• 8:03
  Do you not say there are yet four
• 8:05
  months?
• 8:06
  Then comes the harvest.
• 8:08
  Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes
• 8:09
  and see that the fields are white for
• 8:11
  harvest.
• 8:12
  Already the one who reaps is receiving wages
• 8:14
  and gathering fruit for eternal life so that
• 8:17
  sower and reaper may rejoice together.
• 8:20
  For here the saying holds true.
• 8:21
  One sows and another reaps.
• 8:24
  I sent you to reap that for which
• 8:26
  you did not labor.
• 8:27
  Others have labored and you have entered into
• 8:30
  their labor.
• 8:34
  A lot's going on here.
• 8:35
  I wish we could spend more time on
• 8:36
  this image of harvest and reaping and sowing.
• 8:39
  But the basic context is God's talking about
• 8:42
  his work in the world, in human beings
• 8:44
  lives and in communities lives, that there's a
• 8:46
  kind of harvest when people and communities enter
• 8:48
  into the kingdom of God.
• 8:50
  And an example of that is what's going
• 8:51
  on with the Samaritan woman and her community,
• 8:53
  this is kind of sandwiched in the middle
• 8:55
  of.
• 8:56
  But Jesus says, if you are experiencing that,
• 8:59
  like if you're experiencing people coming into the
• 9:00
  kingdom of God, if you're experiencing this, theologians
• 9:04
  might use the term revival, like new things
• 9:05
  happening, don't get a big head about it.
• 9:09
  Already the one who reaps is receiving wages
• 9:11
  and gathering fruit for eternal life.
• 9:12
  That's really exciting.
• 9:14
  People are entering into the kingdom of God.
• 9:15
  People are experiencing eternal life.
• 9:17
  But what's the outcome?
• 9:18
  Is it therefore the reaper gets a big
• 9:20
  head and says, oh, I did a great
• 9:21
  job on my lead measures.
• 9:23
  No, no, no, no, no.
• 9:24
  It's so the sower and reaper may rejoice
• 9:26
  together.
• 9:27
  For here, the saying holds true.
• 9:29
  One sows and another reaps.
• 9:30
  I sent you to reap that for which
• 9:32
  you did not labor.
• 9:34
  Others have labored and you have entered into
• 9:36
  their labor.
• 9:37
  So Jesus is saying that there are others
• 9:39
  who faithfully executed what God commissioned them to
• 9:42
  do in the world.
• 9:43
  And they never got to see the harvest.
• 9:45
  They never got to see the fruit.
• 9:47
  You're coming in mid process and you get
• 9:50
  to see the fruit.
• 9:51
  You get to see people coming into the
• 9:52
  kingdom of God.
• 9:53
  But that's not just because of you.
• 9:55
  That's because of the faithfulness of God primarily,
• 9:58
  but also the faithfulness of these other sowers
• 10:00
  that came before you who never got to
• 10:02
  see the harvest.
• 10:03
  And so what's the outcome?
• 10:04
  It's not that you feel like this ego
• 10:07
  inflated accomplishment of, oh, I did so great.
• 10:09
  No, we're rejoicing together.
• 10:11
  Sower and reaper rejoice together at what God
• 10:13
  has accomplished through multiple generations, even to bring
• 10:16
  about this providential moment.
• 10:19
  So one way, and again, this is an
• 10:20
  imperfect analogy, but one way to think about
• 10:22
  this is that God is a really good
• 10:23
  manager, right?
• 10:24
  It's like he's got a team, but he
• 10:26
  has such a big window of time that
• 10:29
  for God, the lead measures might be in
• 10:30
  a different generation than the lag measures, right?
• 10:34
  God's looking at, okay, we need to do
• 10:35
  all these inputs, these lead measure things.
• 10:37
  We're going to ask people to do those.
• 10:39
  Those people are going to faithfully do those.
• 10:40
  And then those people are going to finish
• 10:41
  their race.
• 10:42
  And there's going to be a new generation.
• 10:43
  And maybe that happens a couple of times.
• 10:44
  And then eventually you hit a generation where
• 10:46
  it's like, okay, now we're going to see
• 10:47
  the fruit of everything that happened over those
• 10:50
  many generations.
• 10:50
  And it's going to happen boom for this
• 10:52
  generation who really didn't, didn't labor for it.
• 10:54
  They've entered into other's labor.
• 10:56
  Okay.
• 10:57
  So what does this mean?
• 10:59
  This means that when things go really, really
• 11:01
  well in the kingdom of God, when there's
• 11:03
  revival, when there's people entering into the church,
• 11:05
  when there's people entering into discipleship to Jesus
• 11:07
  Christ, the generation that's experiencing that cannot take
• 11:10
  credit for it.
• 11:11
  The people who are leading churches at that
• 11:13
  time, it's not like, oh, go study exactly
• 11:15
  what they did and see if you can
• 11:16
  replicate exactly what they did.
• 11:18
  See if you can follow their lead measures,
• 11:19
  because the lead measures were earlier.
• 11:21
  The lead measures were in an earlier faithful
• 11:23
  generation.
• 11:24
  And so that means none of us can
• 11:25
  get a big head about this, right?
• 11:27
  We tend to invest a lot of ego
• 11:29
  in how our projects go.
• 11:31
  That's the human tendency.
• 11:32
  That's a fleshly tendency.
• 11:33
  But God is saying, this isn't about you.
• 11:36
  This is about a work that's bigger than
• 11:38
  you, that you can enter into by my
• 11:40
  grace.
• 11:41
  And that means that when things do succeed,
• 11:44
  we rejoice.
• 11:45
  We rejoice in the providence and the grace
• 11:47
  of God.
• 11:48
  Rather than getting a big ego, we increase
• 11:51
  in gratitude to God's love for us and
• 11:53
  the way he works mysteriously.
• 11:55
  Also, when things don't go well, when we
• 11:57
  don't see the lag measures, right?
• 11:59
  It doesn't mean we don't ask hard questions
• 12:00
  about like, okay, were we responsible for doing
• 12:03
  lead measures differently?
• 12:03
  We still ask those questions.
• 12:05
  Those questions are still important, but we don't
• 12:07
  assume that's the only dynamic here.
• 12:09
  Could it be that we're doing exactly the
• 12:11
  things that God has asked us to do,
• 12:13
  that we're kind of in that lead measures
• 12:14
  generation maybe, and some future generation is going
• 12:17
  to see the fruit?
• 12:18
  And we don't even know that, right?
• 12:20
  That's not very good for our ego, right?
• 12:22
  Because we don't get to parade our reports
• 12:24
  and say, see, here's all the fruit that
• 12:25
  we did because of our faithfulness to our
• 12:27
  lead measures.
• 12:27
  But that's not the point, right?
• 12:29
  So it requires discernment to know, are we
• 12:32
  being faithful with what God has called us
• 12:33
  to do, even if the outcomes are not
• 12:36
  impressive?
• 12:36
  Even if the outcomes, maybe from human perspective,
• 12:40
  look like a flop.
• 12:41
  So we still ask hard questions, but we
• 12:43
  have an attitude that the timeline and the
• 12:45
  vision of what God is accomplishing is bigger
• 12:47
  than us, and it's not about us.
• 12:49
  So this is really freeing.
• 12:50
  This is really freeing because it means that
• 12:52
  when you're doing a post-mortem on a
• 12:53
  project that flopped, your ego doesn't have to
• 12:55
  be on the line.
• 12:56
  Your sense of existential well-being doesn't have
• 12:58
  to be on the line with whether you
• 12:59
  succeeded or failed.
• 13:00
  It's just a question of what is God
• 13:02
  doing now?
• 13:03
  And yes, are we faithfully responding to what
• 13:05
  is God doing?
• 13:06
  Are we putting our effort in?
• 13:07
  Are we thinking smart and intelligently?
• 13:08
  And as God gives us grace intentionally about
• 13:11
  how to prepare for whatever the project is?
• 13:13
  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 13:14
  But also, are we just on our knees
• 13:15
  in prayer, praying for God to move in
• 13:17
  ways totally beyond our wisdom and capacity and
• 13:20
  cleverness?
• 13:21
  Even more so, yes.
• 13:23
  So there's freedom here.
• 13:24
  There's a freedom for a different kingdom mindset
• 13:26
  where it's not about kicking yourself about the
• 13:29
  lag measures, but it's not even about kicking
• 13:31
  yourself about the lead measures.
• 13:32
  It's about faithfulness in what God has asked
• 13:35
  you to do, trusting that He will bring
• 13:37
  about the outcomes, the fruit in His time.
• 13:42
  Lord Jesus, thank you that you are a
• 13:44
  good king, that you and your Father and
• 13:47
  the Holy Spirit, that you're a good manager,
• 13:50
  that you lead us into work and that
• 13:52
  you arrange our work to connect to the
• 13:54
  work of earlier generations.
• 13:55
  And it's not about us and how impressive
• 13:58
  we are, but it's about what you're doing
• 13:59
  in the world.
• 14:00
  Give us that freedom to not need our
• 14:02
  egos to be embedded in success or failure,
• 14:04
  but to be faithful to what you're asking
• 14:06
  us to do and to keep our eyes
• 14:08
  on you and to rejoice that sower and
• 14:11
  reaper may rejoice together.
• 14:14
  Jesus, do your work in us as we
• 14:15
  do our work with you.
• 14:21
  Thanks for listening.
• 14:23
  Finding God at Work is a production of
• 14:25
  Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois,
• 14:28
  dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday
• 14:30
  life.
• 14:30
  You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you
• 14:33
  listen to this episode to get 10 minutes
• 14:35
  of teaching on faith and work every Thursday.
• 14:38
  To get resources to go deeper with each
• 14:40
  podcast series, read our blog, and get info
• 14:42
  about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace,
• 14:45
  go to our website, missioncentral.church.