Leadership for a Time of Pandemic

Practicing Resilience

Tod Bolsinger

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780830821075
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

In just a few weeks, everything changed. Hopes that we would soon return to normal quickly faded as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. Christian leaders have been forced to deal with the loss of in-person gatherings, devastating financial hits, and the heightened anxiety of facing a future with no clear understanding of what it may look like. What does ministry require now? And how can those who feel the burden of leading in this unprecedented context be equipped for their calling?

For decades, Tod Bolsinger has helped leaders learn to adapt to a rapidly changing world that seminary training had not prepared them for. Now he has provided a unique resource applying some of his key insights to the current global crisis. Leadership for a Time of Pandemic draws from Tod's popular book Canoeing the Mountains to describe the basics of adaptive leadership in uncharted territory. Then, in a preview of his forthcoming book Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change, he focuses on how to create a rule of life in order to stay resilient.

This brief, timely book is an ideal resource for leadership teams to explore together. Christian leaders in any context will find wisdom and encouragement to provide the kind of resilient leadership that has never been so necessary.

HOW ARE RESILIENT LEADERS FORMED?

STRESS MAKES A LEADER

“That hammer is heavy,” the instructor said.

For my wife, Beth, and me, taking a beginning blacksmithing class, this was the moment when we started doing the actual work we had come to do—to transform a piece of steel into a tool that could be of good use. Standing in front of the anvil with a pair of tongs and a piece of molten steel fresh from the forge, the weight of the hammer and what we were going to be doing for the next couple of hours felt significant. We were enthusiastic and ready to jump in, swinging away. But our instructor warned us that a lot of wasted effort happens when we try to force something. In reality, the process and tools do much of the work. Besides, he said, we could pull a muscle or tire out our arms by thinking we had to add a lot of muscle to this process of heating, holding, and hammering.

The malleable, heated steel on the anvil was now ready for the hammer. One swing at a time, slowly, repeatedly, over time, in a process that requires constant reheating and replacing, the steel is shaped into a tool for the task.

“Just remember,” the instructor said, “you are going to be swinging that hammer over and over again. You don’t have to swing it hard, just let it fall and let the hammer do the work.”

Let the hammer do the work.

Blacksmiths may be the only ancient artisans who used their craft to make their tools and then used their tools to ply their craft. The very act of making tools is what helped them hone their craft and turned them into the smiths who then made tools for others. Leaders may be the same kind of artisans today. One of my friends who is both a pastor and a marriage and family therapist likes to say that in anything relating to the care or leadership of humans, “You are your only tool.”

As we consider what it takes for a leader to develop the tempered resilience that will enable them to withstand the challenges of a changing world, we will see how stress makes a leader when that stress is focused on a particular formational purpose. In other words, what gets hammered into a leader becomes the very attributes they will use to hew hope from despair.

So then, what are the hammers that will form the tool that can accomplish the job of bringing change? To answer that question fully, we have to leave the heat of the Los Angeles blacksmithing shop and travel to the cool mountain rivers of Idaho.

FISHING WITH ZACH

It was the best worst day of fly-fishing in my life. If I scroll through the pictures I took, I see nothing not to like: several shots of glistening rainbows, hulking browns, and charismatic cutthroats. Smiling faces with a stunning backdrop. Beth and I spent the day catching big fish on a beautiful river that cuts majestically through a mountain canyon. What could be better?

I have been fly-fishing for almost twenty years, but like any recreational fisherperson who gets in at most a couple of weeks a year, I am not an expert by a long shot. So I decided to ask a real expert for some pointers. That changed my day.

Our guide, Zach, is not just a guy who knows the local waters and can show you a few pointers. He’s the head guide for all of North America for his outfitter. He’s been fishing almost every day for more than twenty years. And with every one of my imprecise casts, every unproductive mend, every late hook set, every tangle, and every missed fish, he calmly, clearly, precisely corrected me, demonstrating the analytical skill of the engineering student he once was.

In one day he broke down and remade my entire approach to fly-fishing. It was exactly what I needed after years of cultivating some bad habits reinforced through the adrenaline-filled high of catching and landing fish. It was frustrating—a humbling day.

On a day that I would usually just keep celebrating the high fish count and brag-worthy pictures, I was way more aware of how much I still had to learn, how often—as experienced as I was—I did it wrong. So, at the end of the day, I was tired and melancholy. When my wife and our friends enthusiastically cheered each other on about one great catch after another, I sat there spent and reflective with a half smile.

The next day I was back on the smaller river I consider my “home waters” with another friend and another guide. But that day, instead of asking for more pointers, I just asked the guide to point me to some good spots on the river while he worked with my friend. I had enough lessons to practice still left over from Zach.

Deliberately, methodically, intentionally, I tried to put into practice what I had learned with Zach. I could still hear his low, calm voice in my ear. And then it all came together. A smooth, precise cast into the right spot; a gentle, quick mend of the line; and—boom!—a hard strike. Within two seconds, I was playing a big fish. The guide came over to lend his net to the cause, and after a good fight, the most beautiful rainbow settled softly into the net. The guide let out a hoot. “I’ve been fishing this river for ten years; that’s the biggest fish I have ever seen here.” (I whispered a thank you to Zach under my breath.)

What I learned on that frustrating day and through Zach’s clear, firm tutelage is an example of what has been termed deliberate practice. When the oft-quoted “ten thousand hours” is cited as the path to mastery, what most forget is that it is ten thousand hours of deliberate practice.10 It is ten thousand hours of hard work under the tutelage of an expert, focusing on the mistakes that need to be overcome, the undoing of bad habits, and the development of new skills. The key is that we sometimes have to sacrifice some of the enjoyment of the task to get better at the task. It isn’t pleasant to sacrifice some of the joy of a good day fishing to get better at fishing. And the voice of the instructor, the strain to master a new task, and the awkwardness of repetitively doing something that we are not already good at is hard and stressful.

It hammers away at us.

What is also often overlooked is that practice is something that we do, not something that we think about or even pray about. Deliberate practice is a kind of stress that we take on in our body so that we can develop the poise to bring the strength and capacity formed by that stress to bear in a particular circumstance. As one of my mentors taught me, “At the moment of crisis you do not rise to the occasion, you default to your training.”11

All practices are embodied; that is, they are more than a mental activity or attitude, but over time for a Christian they increase the capacity to act more like Christ. While learning requires reflection, practice must be enacted in order to be learned. Even spiritual disciplines, as Dallas Willard points out, are dependent on what we do with our bodies.12

Both what I am calling spiritual practices (which shape our capacities to be a resilient Christian leader) and leadership skills (which leaders take on for the goal of forming and leading their communities to be more resilient toward change) are similar in this way. While we remain committed to reflection and relationship, if we want to grow as resilient leaders, we need to retrain our brains (which are part of our bodies!) through what we do with our hands, ears, eyes, and mouths. In the words of Dallas Willard, “A discipline is any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.”13

To return to our blacksmith analogy, the hammers for shaping the raw material of a leader have practical but indirect purposes: stress adds strength. Hammering shapes the steel into the chisel that can face the stone. In the same way, spiritual practices for a leader are not about being better at the practice itself but creating the strength and character that has the resilience to resist a failure of nerve and overcome a failure of heart to hew stones of hope out of a mountain of despair.

Practices, then, are not about learning intellectual concepts but about developing bodily capa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• The New Uncharted Territory
• WHAT KIND OF LEADERSHIP IS NEEDED?
• How Are Resilient Leaders Formed?
• Resilience and a New World
• Notes
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright