Sermon Illustrations on resistance
Background
Facing Resistance in Leadership
Resistance. Internal resistance. Resistance is the key difference between management and leadership: Good management is usually met with a grateful response from those whom we manage. Leadership is often met with stubborn resistance from the very people we are called to lead. Management is about helping people get to where they want to go and accomplish what they want to accomplish.
Management is about taking care of the most important assets, opportunities, resources, plans, and especially, as one of my colleagues often reminds us, of the people entrusted to our care. Management, biblically speaking, is called stewardship. And stewardship is about taking care of what is most valuable and accomplishing together what all of us most want to get done.
Taken from Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change by Tod E Bolsinger. Copyright (c) 2021 by Tod E Bolsinger. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Leaders Must Manage Resistance to Change
Humans are wired for stability and continuity, so we are deeply grateful for a good manager who keeps everything running well. But leading change is disruptive. And everything within us resists disruption.
When we are faced with change, we need leaders who can stand it when we resist the very thing we want and need, even to the point where we will turn on them, oppose them, sabotage them. According to the late Edwin Friedman, one of the critical attributes of a leader who is going to bring about a “renaissance” or renewal of deep change is “persistence in the face of resistance and downright rejection.”
Taken from Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change by Tod E Bolsinger. Copyright (c) 2021 by Tod E Bolsinger. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Stories
The Embodiment of their Hopes
I have been reading Julian Jackson’s biography of Charles de Gaulle — it’s exceptional, so far — and I find myself meditating on a story Jackson tells near the beginning of the book. In June of 1940, which Marshal Petain announced that France had fallen, de Gaulle started making broadcasts from London insisting that France had not been defeated and there was still hope. Quickly he became the focus of hope for the French resistance…but nobody knew who he was. They weren’t sure what his name was or how he spelled it. One resister, an art historian named Agnès Humbert, wrote:
How bizarre it all is! Here we are, most of us on the wrong side of forty, careering along like students all fired up with passion and fervour, in the wake of a leader of whom we know absolutely nothing, of whom none of us has even seen a photograph. In the whole course of human history, has there ever been anything quite like it?
These resisters of the Nazi conquest didn’t know the first thing about de Gaulle, but he became the focus of their determination, the embodiment of their hopes. In light of this I’m inclined to reassess a famous statement of Churchill’s, which I had always thought false modesty: “It was a nation and race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” Which of course probably was false modesty; but it also may well have been a true statement.
Alan Jacobs, Snakes & Ladders (Newsletter), October 18, 2021
Flying into a Headwind
I started flying small Cessna planes when I was in high school, and I vividly remember one flight between McGregor, TX and Austin. We had an incredibly strong tail wind down to Austin, so we got there in record time. On the way back, however, we were flying into a momentum-stopping headwind. It took more than three times as long to fly back to McGregor. The wind was so strong, the instructor showed me how to literally fly backwards. I am not exaggerating!
Do you know what you have to do when the headwind is so strong you can literally fly backwards? Do you know what you have to do when the flight home is taking three times as long as the flight out? Do you know what you have to do when the engine is turning but it feels like you’re going nowhere? You keep flying toward your destination. All you can do is remain faithful to your original flight plan.
Cody Sandahl
Analogies
Only the Dead Go with the Flow
By illustration, I have been told that when a cow is born, she innately senses that her departure from her mother’s warm womb to a cold, scary, unknown world outside is upon her. In response, she will resist birth and try to stay in the womb. On the other hand, the absence of such resistance is often a sign of a stillborn calf.
Relating to our world of death, “going along” is a sign of death. Living fish swim against the stream. Only the dead go with the flow.
Resilience and Resistance in Leadership
Resilience is not about becoming smarter or tougher; it’s about becoming stronger and more flexible. It’s about becoming tempered. Which takes us back to the blacksmith’s shop. Tempered. Let the word linger there for a moment. What comes to mind? Tempered glass? Tempered steel? To temper is an odd verb. It means both to make stronger and more flexible. Tempered steel is perfectly balanced at the midpoint between too soft to be useful as a tool and so brittle that the tool will break through hard use.
To temper describes the process of heating, holding, hammering, cooling, and reheating that adds stress to raw iron until it becomes a glistening knife blade or chisel tip. It also describes the process by which blending the right ingredients of raw material brings about something greater than the sum of its parts.
To lead, especially in the face of resistance, requires that we develop resilience. The old King James Version of the Bible uses the word tempered (Exodus 30:35) to describe the way an apothecary mixes herbs and spices into a fragrance that is both purer and holier than the original unblended ingredients. Similarly, the soul being shaped for the challenges of leading a people through their resistance needs both hardships and relationships, both hammer and anvil, both forge and pool.
Taken from Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change by Tod E Bolsinger. Copyright (c) 2021 by Tod E Bolsinger. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com