May 7, 2025
Ruthless In the Right Direction
Ruthless In the Wrong Direction #1
The Liberal Party of Australia is currently going through the exact mindset that any other poorly led organisation (including churches and parachurches) goes through when they’ve allowed a poor leader to destroy the place, or manage it into decline.
What is that mindset? It is not ruthless enough. At least not ruthless enough in the right direction. It is Exhibit “A” in Australia this week of being ruthless in the wrong direction.
What do I mean by that? Simply this – the Liberal Party of Australia is – yet again – about to make the Leadership 101 mistake of not being ruthless towards those it needs to be.
Politics is a ruthless game for sure, but the ruthlessness is often in the wrong direction, particularly for a losing party.
How does that work out? Those who managed the decline – who always refused to wear a “black hat” in the difficult meetings and speak up against the problematic issue or problematic leader – , then present themselves as the solution to the very problem they helped cause.
They just aren’t ruthless in their assessment of the problem, or their self-assessment of their role in creating and sustaining the problem. That’s the reason it rarely works when those who sat on their hands when things were bad, put those same hands up to solve it all.
Sure, there’s a short sugar rush of “We will change things!” then everything collapses back into the self-deceit, or blindness or loyalty that it was.
Why? because that’s the culture they created. They cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Root and branch change is needed. But only brave souls who are willing to lose sleep at night will commit to that.
Ruthless In the Wrong Direction #2
What is true of politics – and playing out in the Liberal Party – is sadly often true of Christian organisations.
Compliant boards or leadership teams are always wise after the event. I’ve seen that time and time again. Christian organisations that are in struggle street have many things in common, and one of them is that they are ruthless in the wrong direction.
They allow situations to become so bad, so toxic and so terminal, that everyone else suffers for the sake of maintaining the status quo at the top.
Now that status quo may be a leader, or it may be a vision of ministry that is costing more than its paying out in terms of people and culture.
Church boards – like losing political parties are wise during the event. Everyone’s a “Monday’s expert”. Everyone is wise in a self-interested way. Expert in keeping their mouths shut in order to keep their heads during the crisis. Which is not really wisdom or expertise, and is more cowardice than anything.
The result? A slow death spiral. A management into decline. No one has been encouraged to ask the hard questions. And no one really wants to because the personal cost is high.
The problem is that in such situations – whether political, commercial or spiritual -, this echo chamber – in which a problematic leader is not confronted – inevitably leads to further decline. You have one of two options: slow painful death, or deep painful change. The common factor is pain, so choose your pain.
That’s very hard to do, although easy to say. Wise-after-the-event leaders often rush around harrumphing the word “Change”, but doing very little that costs them personally to change anything. Why not? Because it’s not in their DNA, and if it ever was, it has been filtered out of them.
As a leader, you can’t take out of the bank what you have not put in. You need a seismic shift and a re-setting of the culture. And if that means people have to leave – if that means you have to leave, then you have to leave.
Orgs that can’t make that call are on the wrong side of the life-cycle. I have spent time talking teams through conflict, or listened to the teary stories of those who were ridden rough-shod over in Christian organisations And all too often the problem is exactly this: ruthlessness in the wrong direction.
Ruthless In the Right Direction
So what’s the solution? Ruthlessness in the right direction of course. Churches and para-church orgs often get away without much needed change, because unlike business and politics, their second tier leaders and lay leaders are not ruthless enough in the right direction.
It’s never a choice in the crisis moment of bad eldership to be ruthless or not be ruthless. The only choice is between who you wish to be ruthless to.
I know that sounds like it’s not gospel, but it is. It’s true of us personally with our own sin (Be killing sin or sin will be killing you – John Owen), and it’s true of us corporately as organisations with sinful leadership habits in play.
Church boards in the midst of leadership struggles get this wrong all of the time. They fail to heed the warnings of Ezekiel 34 about bad shepherds:
“‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.
This is reiterated in 1Peter 5. The prime mistake in Ezekiel is that ruthlessness is present – it’s just been outsourced. The leaders are ruthless towards the sheep. And too often the rest of the leadership allows it, for the sake of “grace” towards the problematic leader.
This occurs so often that there must be reasons behind it. One of the primary reasons is that the church, unlike politics, has a whole semantic field around the word “grace” that is employed to cover up abuses, when in fact it should be employed to deal with them.
Time and time again “grace” is the very virtue the poor or troublesome leadership has been incapable of showing to others. So perhaps it’s more important in the church than in politics in such crises to be ruthless in the right direction. The gospel is on the line, not simply commercial success or political power.
Which means this: you are not simply answerable to shareholders or the electorate. You are answerable to King Jesus. These are his sheep. Just because you’re sincere Jesus doesn’t have to ensure your ministry grows.
Jesus doesn’t owe bad or cowardly leadership a free ride. And he may, all things being equal, want to protect his sheep from your org or church.
In politics you can’t expect the public to somehow believe you’re all for change when all you do is switch the chairs and maintain the status quo.
When the election was on the line and you were not there, then it’s not time to switch seats, it’s time to walk away from the table. That’s the type of self-ruthlessness (aka, self-sacrifice) that’s required.
That is true of church as much as its true of politics. And if you demur at this, or feel it’s too harsh, then perhaps a read through some of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament would help.
We need ruthlessness in the right direction, because a primary Leadership 101 mistake is ruthlessness in the wrong direction. Don’t make the mistake the Australian Liberal Party is currently making.
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There is no guarantee that Jesus will return in our desired timeframe. Yet we have no reason to be anxious, because even if the timeframe is not guaranteed, the outcome is! We don’t have to waste energy being anxious; we can put it to better use.
Stephen McAlpine – futureproof
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