Practice #2: The Upside-Down Job Description

I recently had a conversation with NieuCommunities’ founder, Rob Yackley, about my role within the missional church community we serve among in San Diego (NieuCommunities has two other sites in Vancouver, BC & South Africa).  Coming from a leadership paradigm where I had been used to getting a piece of paper with a job description that I am responsible to achieve, I unconsciously entered the conversation seeking a checklist of responsibilities.  Having trained and lead leaders like myself for many years, Rob knew the tension his leadership style would create in me.

He began to explain that my job description was filling out beautifully based on the passions and practices I had displayed since joining NieuCommunities.  I was a bit confused. Rob continued to explain that rather than handing his staff a sheet of paper of responsibilities, he seeks to foster an environment where ones gifts and passions have room to be discovered and lived out.  As those passions and practices come to life, the job description starts to fill itself out.  It is a description based on what God has gifted you to do rather than what I tell you to do, he said.

This is an upside-down leadership style that cultivates the divine imagination God has for his followers.  It is building the Church around leaders who are living out their vocation and ceaselessly committed to advancing God’s Kingdom.

Does this style leave out the responsibility of necessary details?  No, the dirty work is accounted for and gets done, but it is not front and center.  When you’re participating in God’s Mission out of your unique vocation, the dirty work is no longer menial labor, but a necessary piece of the grander picture.

At its core, the missional Church seeks move towards others in the way that God moves towards his people in Jesus.  We don’t expect people to come to us, we have been called to go to them.  This model requires an imagination bigger than ours.  We need leaders who have been swept up into God Story and who have found their unique role within it.

What would happen if our job descriptions grew out of our God given passions and practices? If the imagination of God is unleashed in his people, we create room for God’s imagination to be unleashed in his Church.  May this be so.