How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

by Clay Scroggins

  Some eager leaders start planning a path to climb the ladder through less than savory means or even by developing an exit plan. We’ve all seen this distortion leave behind a wake of devastating consequences. These types of leaders will leave an organization too early, bouncing around from job to job, from church to church, hoping to find the golden ticket that allows them to be in charge. Of course, there are leaders who leave for good reasons, after seeking wise counsel and for the good of all involved, and you might need to eventually leave your role as well. Just be aware that you will never find that magical place where you can lead without any constraints. There isn’t a healthy church or organization that exists for leaders who think they don’t need an authority over them. The dream of an unrestricted frontier where you can lead exactly how you want, when you want, and in the direction you want is a pipe dream. It doesn’t exist.

  The more leaders I speak with, the more I realize that no one ever feels fully in charge. CEOs answer to boards, principals answer to superintendents, pastors answer to elders, and government officials answer to the people. The idea of a role where you can have all the authority and be fully in charge is found only in a monarchy or a dictatorship.

  Leading without constraints and giving into unbridled ambition will be the death of any leader because God didn’t intend for our ambition to run wild. I’m not saying you should stick it out in a bad situation forever. You may eventually need to leave your current job. Just know that if you are sensing a voice inside you telling you that your boss is the only obstacle between you and the life you’ve dreamed of having, it’s a distortion of your ambition. You don’t need to kill your ambition, but you can’t let it run wild. Thankfully, we don’t need to follow either extreme. There’s another way. A better way.

  THE ORIGIN OF AMBITION

  I’ve talked to young leaders who want so badly to be good Christians that they won’t allow for any ambition. And I’ve talked to young leaders who have so much ambition that they don’t feel like they can be good Christians. Neither of those is the answer. There is a more Jesus-centered way that allows you to harness the ambition God put in you while remaining where you are.

  To understand, we need to go back to the origin of that ambition inside you, the genesis of it all. Understanding your past will always bring more clarity for your future. So we need to understand what ambition is, where it comes from, why God has put it in you, and how to harness it for the purpose it was given.

  In the creation account of Genesis 1, we read about how God made us: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). You and I were made in God’s image. The imago dei. We were stamped with the image of God, and that has been passed down to us from generation to generation from the beginning of time. If you haven’t processed the weight of that, now would be a great time. When God made you, he had himself in mind.

  I’ve had the beautiful and unforgettable moments of holding each of our kids for the first time. And at different times and in different forms, this verse from Genesis has inevitably popped into my head. I think about how this little delight, this bundle of joy I’m holding, was formed in the image of God. This child was fashioned, designed, formed, and shaped in the image of the Creator, giving them the highest possible value. And the same is true of you and me. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, this truth speaks directly to our value. You are most valuable because you were created to be like your Creator.

  When God created the world, he attributed the highest honor to humankind by creating us in his likeness, with his characteristics, and imbued with his purposes. Tucked in the middle of this beautiful act, God named the purpose for which he created us. In the next verse, God gave two actions of purpose. “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number’ ” (Gen. 1:28, emphasis mine).

  God blesses us by giving us a purpose for living. He gives us an agency—something to do. First, he says, “Be fruitful and increase in number.” That’s the fun part! All kidding aside . . . let me be the first to say there’s very little that is more annoying than pastors who incessantly make sex jokes. It’s always slightly disturbing to me, so I’ll spare you the ones that immediately come to mind here. What is important is that we see the drive to “be fruitful and increase in number” as both a gift and a responsibility to steward.

  Let me add that you should certainly have “the birds and the bees” talk with your kids, but they’re probably going to figure it out eventually, because it’s hardwired into them. But just because they have it doesn’t mean they will see why God gave it. They need help understanding why it is given and what God intends us to do with it. God clearly gave us this drive, but he also gave us a context for this drive. In the same way that trying to kill ambition isn’t a great option, trying to kill that desire to “be fruitful and increase in number” doesn’t work either. That’s why Paul comes along in 1 Corinthians 7 and says to get married if trying to kill the sex drive is killing you. If you leave the drive to “be fruitful and increase in number” unchecked and let it run wild, it will bring negative consequences. The classic image we give to students in our ministry is that “fire outside the fireplace is dangerous.” God gave us a context for the drive he gave us, so we must discover the context and harness it for good. Sex is a fantastic gift and it shouldn’t be ignored. Letting it run wild leads to all kinds of trouble in this life, but suppressing it, ignoring it, and treating it like a curse is also a big mistake.

  Sex isn’t the focus of this book, but I’ve been talking about it because what’s true for that God-given purpose is equally true for the next one we see in Genesis 1:28 (emphasis mine): “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’ ” This command to “subdue it” is a mandate for leadership, and in this mandate, we find a clue to the third option I’ve been talking about—that middle way that helps us understand what we should do with the ambition God has put inside us.

  The Hebrew verb that we translate in English as subdue has a greater depth and meaning than our English translation captures. To fully understand the intent behind the command, we have to remember the context in which God spoke this. So where were Adam and Eve? They were where God had put them when he made them—in a garden. If we want to grasp this mandate, the context of the garden of Eden has to be front and center in our minds.

  SPACE TO GROW

  Every March, I’m giddy as an eager little puppy at the thought of planting vegetables. Whether it’s the turn of the weather, the activity it provides our kids, or the temptation I feel as I see the ads at the hardware store, I just can’t not want to garden. I’m not saying I’m good at it. My thumb, as it turns out, is not that green. My wife, Jenny, gets quite frustrated with me because she sees my gardening attempts as a complete waste of money. Last year, as the weather started to get warmer, she said to me, “Instead of wasting your time on that garden, why don’t you just skip the work and donate $100 to Home Depot?” I’m crying inside as I type this.

  For whatever reason, something inside me comes alive when I find the right soil combination and get my hands dirty working that soil. The sight of a seed I’ve planted sprouting out of the ground is thrilling, and that moment when something is ripe enough to be plucked off the vine makes me feel like a boss! Last year, I had one pepper that survived my gardening efforts and I paraded it around the kitchen like LeBron in Cleveland with his championship trophy.

  You can tell that I am not the best gardener, because I threw a celebration over one small pepper. But as terrible as I am, I’m slowly learning what it takes for these delicious little veggie nuggets to grow. I’m learning how to subdue the elements so they work together to grow something. I’m learning how to subdue water for the benefit of the plants. I’m learning how to subdue the ground to give the cucumbers enough space to flourish. I’m learning to plant at just the right location to sub
due the sunlight for the benefit of the herbs. I’m learning to plant marigolds around the bed to subdue the deer so they do not eat the strawberries. I’m bringing the elements God has provided under my control for the benefit of the little veggies I’m serving, so they have what they need to grow, develop, and become what they’re meant to become. The work of subduing these elements to produce a fruitful result in gardening is a great metaphor for the God-given drive toward leadership that was placed within us at the beginning of time. Here’s why.

  The mandate to subdue is something deep within me, and it’s deep within you as well. But just because it’s in me doesn’t mean I’m always handling it well and directing it wisely. Just because it’s deep within me doesn’t mean it’s going to come out of me in the way God intended. And the same is true for you. We all have it, but there’s always the potential for it to be twisted, perverted, and co-opted.

  FINDING KABASH

  While I didn’t “Doogie Howser” seminary, I enjoyed it, but I’m still very aware that I’m a practitioner and not a scholar. I took the standard four semesters of Hebrew, but I’m not an expert. I can still interpret Hebrew well enough to know that the Hebrew word for “subdue” is an interesting one. In Hebrew, it looks like this:

  If you were to pronounce this word, reading from right to left as the Hebrew language does, it would create the sound kā·bǎš or kavash or kabash. If you don’t spit on the pages of this book when you hit that “k,” you haven’t hit it hard enough. Go ahead. Give it a whirl. I find that saying it out loud is like eating a bag of Funyuns. It’s not all that good for you, but it’s hard to stop, because it’s just so dang fun.

  As I started playing around with that word on my tongue, sounding it out, it sounded strangely familiar to me. Does it sound familiar to you too? It reminded me of that English phrase we sometimes use—the word “kibosh.” As in “put the kibosh on that thing,” or in other words—stop it. End it. It’s over. Done.

  There aren’t many shows that make me laugh like Seinfeld. If you don’t consider it one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, we’ll have trouble being friends. Through years and years of mental training, I have conditioned my mind to operate on two levels: on one level, I function in life. On another level, I run my life through my “Seinfeld Directory,” making connections between my life and various Seinfeld episodes. It’s taken years of what some would say has been wasted time and effort, but deep down it brings me joy. And that makes it worth it to me.

  In the ninth episode of season four, in a show titled “The Opera,” “Crazy” Joe Davola leaves Jerry a fantastic message on his answering machine, laced with the word “kibosh.”

  Jerry, Joe Davola. (*Joe starts spitting) I have a hair on my tongue. Can’t get it off. (*Still spitting) You know how much I hate that? Of course you do. You put it there.

  I know what you said about me, Seinfeld. I know you bad-mouthed me to the execs at NBC—put the kibosh on my deal. Now I’m gonna put the kibosh on you. You know I’ve kiboshed before. And I will kibosh again.1

  If you have a few minutes and can handle this kind of distraction, you should do yourself a favor and YouTube this clip. I guarantee it will bring you thirty-seven seconds of chuckles and an immeasurable amount of lingering giggles.

  The word Joe Davola uses, kibosh, is eerily similar to that Hebrew word we saw in Genesis, kabash. Note that for the sake of clarity, I’m going to spell these words differently, but I should add that the more I study the creation mandate in Genesis 1:28, the more convinced I am that kibosh in the Seinfeld sense is somehow a derivative of the kabash of Genesis. Full disclosure: I’ve searched and searched to find the etymology of the word kibosh, but in the end it’s just not clear that the two are connected. No one really knows where the word came from. But even though there is no clear pathway from kibosh back to kabash, I’m convinced these two words must be kinfolk—cousins, if you will.2

  They sound alike and may even be related, but they’ve come to mean very different things.

  Kabash /'kä bäSH/

  to subdue, cultivate, and organize something in such a way that it thrives, grows, and flourishes

  “fill the earth and subdue it.”

  Kibosh /'k¯ı bäSH/

  to put an end to something or to dispose of it decisively

  “put the kibosh on my deal”

  Kabash, as we first see it in Genesis, speaks to the ambition God has given us to lead—our drive to subdue, cultivate, and organize so this world flourishes. It’s a good thing, a gift we need to steward creatively and responsibly. But here’s the problem: far too often, that good kabash becomes kibosh—an attitude of opposition and negativity that kills creativity and shirks responsibility. When we give in to kibosh, we are embracing a distortion of kabash. I’m convinced that we’ve taken God’s good command in Genesis 1 and twisted it. It may not be intentional, but somehow we’ve taken God’s command to kabash and have filled it with a new meaning—the exact opposite of what God intended.

  THE KIBOSH LEADER

  I use these two words—kibosh and kabash—as a shorthand way of thinking about two different kinds of leaders and two different ways to respond to ambition. You’ve probably experienced the kibosh type of leader. Jesus referred to this kind of leader. He gave us a picture of what this looks like in others and warned us against following in the same way. In Mark 10, Jesus’s closest followers were arguing over who was going to have the title and the position required to be the leader once Jesus was gone. Without rebuking their desire to lead, Jesus quickly and sharply rebuked their misguided views on leadership. “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them’ ” (Mark 10:42). The kibosh leaders are the ones that lord their authority over those entrusted to them. The kibosh leaders leverage authority not to serve others, but to serve themselves. Let’s revisit our diagram of Ambition Distorted and see how it relates to the kibosh leader.

  We saw earlier that there are two ways we distort our God-given ambition. Some of us, when we’re not in charge, resort to waiting until we’re in charge to step out and lead. We pass the buck and just do what’s asked of us. When we believe the lie that authority is required to lead, that good desire to kabash—to embrace the creativity and responsibility God has placed within us—gets co-opted into kibosh—a selfish negativity toward anything that doesn’t benefit us directly.

  The simple answer for how kabash became kibosh is sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin entered the world and distorted everything, including the good ambition God placed within us, that desire to make something great or achieve something of worth. Adam and Eve’s fatal decision was to believe too little of God and too much of themselves. God gave them full dominion to kabash all his creation, but he gave them one stipulation—do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For whatever reason, they didn’t believe he was to be trusted, and they disobeyed. This act set in motion the evolution of kabash to kibosh, from responsible stewardship of our ambition for God’s glory into a selfish negativity that seeks only what is best for me and mine.

  The desire to rule or control without restraint is dangerous, but so is the inner passivity of waiting to have authority in order to lead. We might fall into the trap of believing it’s up to us—if it’s going to get done, we must do it at whatever cost, regardless of those in authority over us. This extreme doesn’t operate in faith and reliance on God but trusts in our own abilities apart from God. There are many who fall into the opposite trap—thinking we need to wait around until God gives us a certain title or promotion. But God doesn’t want us to sit back. He wants us to responsibly engage, doing the work he has given us wherever we are, with whatever title or role he has currently assigned to us.

  The lie of kibosh is that God can’t be trusted, so I need to passively wait or take matters into my own hands. But the truth of kabash is that God h
as given us ambition, and when I responsibly cultivate that ambition and gain influence by answering his call upon my life, I’ll eventually have the authority to do what he wants me to do. That’s what separates kibosh leaders from kabash leaders. Great leaders, young and old, understand that God is the one who gives authority and that having influence is the path toward authority, not the other way around. As we learn to trust that God is the one to establish authority, we find ourselves becoming the kabash leaders God intended us to be.

  Let’s review:

  • You have ambition because you were created with the drive to create, contribute, and influence things around you. We saw that killing that ambition or letting it run wild will create negative consequences.

  • In Genesis, God names the ambition inside you and calls it kabash. To kabash is to bring something under your control so you can make it more effective, beautiful, and useful.

  • Over time, the kabash God has given you has been co-opted by sin into kibosh. To kibosh is to bring something under your control for your own good through dominant authority.

  • When your kibosh is passive, it leaves you waiting on authority to lead, abdicating your responsibility as someone created in God’s image. When kibosh is active, though, it manifests as selfish ambition where you are working for self-advancement and the ability to control others for your own purposes.

  THE KABASH LEADER