[10 short lessons delivered as one of my final addresses to St Hild College]
I remember the day the whole College Principal dream felt like it was collapsing around my ears. We only had a few months to go to the launch of a new theological centre. I had just two students signed up. ‘That’s not a college’, I told myself. I was on the phone to my third potential student who said, ‘Mark, I don’t think I’m going to come’. I remember sitting on the train and weeping quietly, my calling in question, my ego a quivering leaf.
But by God’s grace, 10 years later, I finished my time as Principal of St Hild College having seen some wonderful things. We did it. We built a college of over 140 students, managed a merger, sent out over 300 students, launched a Centre for Church Planting, came through Covid and built a culture of partnership and hope.
Now, pretty much every day of the experience for me was a learning journey, including many things I got wrong. And that learning is certainly continuing for me in my new role. But when the incoming Principal, Dr Daniel McGinnis, asked me to set down some lessons, I thought I would gather my learnings together and present them.
In a Nutshell: Set Sail
If I was to strip it back to one thing (in the awareness that I then have the luxury of unpacking it as ten things!) it would be this: set sail. Way back in 2015 when the initial theological centre had been launched and I interviewed for a post that would lead to a new chapter in the work, I showed a picture of a coracle – the lonely vessel in which Celtic monks set sail for mission. With it was a quote from Hans Kung that has been a guiding principle: “A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not constantly strike camp, is being untrue to its calling”.
“A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not constantly strike camp, is being untrue to its calling”
Hans Kung
But how do we set sail? What does it mean for us today to try our faith on the waves? For me, my first lessons in senior leadership have come down to the following principles.
Lesson One: Get Your Feet Wet
I was talking with my friend Phil (who blogs here) about the whole leadership question before all this began. Do I have the right qualities? Am I a ‘number one’ or a ‘number two’ leader? How will it all work out in practice? In great wisdom (and perhaps a little exasperation) he said to me, ‘Mark, it’s is a bit like crossing a stream; you can talk about it all you want, but at some point it’s just a question of stepping out and getting your feet wet’. He was right. The first thing for me has just been about being willing to offer myself and have a go. When you step out, then you’re in a position to start learning.
Lesson Two: Follow Your Call (even if it means selling everything)
That’s a dramatic heading, but it recalls a real experience. I had completed two church roles in London and the way ahead wasn’t clear. Time had run out in the place we were staying and the ‘right’ job hadn’t materialised. I remember saying to my wife Ailsa, ‘There are some straightforward pastoral jobs out there – I don’t feel a sense of call, but we could do that for maybe 5-7 years…?’ But she was adamant. ‘I’d rather put things I storage and go to live with your parents than offer to serve at a church you feel no sense of call’. In fact, we couldn’t afford the storage, so figured it would be cheaper to just sell our stuff and start again. Now, as it happens, a job in the North of England came up just in the next week or so; and from that job the College grew. So I can’t say selling everything is something we ever did. But I do think that God was teaching us something about being willing to follow his call. And I am so grateful to Ailsa and our parents for the love and support I’ve received from them over the years.
Lesson Three: Listen to God and to Others
When the new job in the North came up, I went to visit the church. During the worship in the evening service, I felt God gave me a vision. I saw lights streaming down from heaven across a dark northern landscape and starting little fires wherever they landed. This vision actually became a guiding prophetic word for what we built at St Hild and even for my next role. But it wasn’t a question of just following prophetic hunches: I’ve been there before and unfortunately neglected the advice of others. Leadership is about listening to God but it also includes careful attention to wisdom and warnings, especially for those of us who love the allure of a new project!
Four – A Good Name is Worth More than Riches (so guard your culture)
It feels like we picked a good name when we chose St Hild for our college. Northern, bold, missional, generous and prayerful – one of the few theological colleges to be named after a woman (though Hild was busy doing this sort of thing in the 7th Century!). Leadership isn’t just about naming, of course, it’s about building the ‘name’ in the deeper sense, shaping the culture that makes us who we are. Yes, ‘culture eats strategy of breakfast’ (Drucker). So the principal task of organisational leadership is to name that culture and embody those values – I couldn’t have done this without our two brilliant Vice Principals, working out together what it means to (in Wills’ phrase) ‘be more Hild’.
Lesson Five: The Closer to Christ, The Bigger Your Vision
I used to imagine that the closer we got to Christ the more single-minded and narrowly focused we would become. But working with a diverse team and college community has taught me different. As Christ is the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all things were made, the closer we get to him the bigger our vision becomes! We learn to receive him in new gifts, to see his face in new ways, to pursue the mission of God in all its multi-faceted glory.
As Christ is the image of the invisible God, the closer we get to him the bigger our vision becomes!
Lesson Six: Don’t Be Afraid of Big Prayers
Half the time I can’t keep up with God. Often I end up saying, ‘Father, thank you for that wonderful gift you’ve just given – I wish I’d had the initiative to ask for it first!’ But from time to time God does give us the grace of praying a big prayer. I once felt I should pray for five big projects (I thought of them as five ‘houses’): a PhD, a new church merger, a new Centre for Church Planting, a new house to live in and a new partner for our college. It felt audacious at the time, almost greedy. But God was stretching my faith. He fulfilled four of the requests. As for the final one (or some kind of positive outcome in that area) it hasn’t arrived yet, but you never know…!
Lesson Seven: Know your Limits – or Find Them!
Starting and then merging a new college was an awful lot of work. I rejoiced in the challenge at the time. But there also comes a time to lay your pen down, close the laptop, shut the office door and go to bed! God has been increasing my freedom in this area and showing me the boundaries I need to honour in order to work more sustainably and well. As one great colleague said to me in his exit interview, ‘Mark, sometimes 80% is good enough’.
Lesson Eight: Drip, Drip, Drip
‘The thing with you’, someone told me a few years back, ‘is drip….drip…drip’. I have to say it’s not the very best compliment I’ve ever received. But over time I’ve realised it was a bigger compliment than I first thought. Leadership is a a question of turning up, again and again, sticking it out for what you really believe. A bit more subtly, it requires going at the same problem one way, then another, then another, until you find the way forward.
I think sometimes when we receive a prophetic word or vision, we imagine that we’ve been given a digital image of the future and that obedience means setting a straight-line heading in that direction. When things don’t go to plan, it’s then easy to get stuck between fantasy (holding onto the dream that was) and despair (giving up on it all). [As it happens, these two options are exactly what Naomi considers in her speech to Ruth; but then God shows a redemptive way forward through Ruth’s faithful tenacity (Ruth 1:11-14)]. But obedience to God is neither simply spectacular nor merely mundane. It’s often a question of pressing on in the messy middle, making adjustments as we go, creating the path step by step. We only really see God’s redemptive presence when we look back and see how far we’ve come.
Lesson Nine: Right Time, Right Team, Right Task
Sometimes you have a good idea but the time isn’t right. To launch a Centre for Church Planting, we had to have several rounds of meetings which initially came to nothing. But then the time came, and the right person (which is crucial), then we could set about confirming the task. The alignment of time, team and task is crucial.
Lesson Ten: Follow Your Gut With People
There is more to appointments than following your instincts, but not less. I’ve learned to trust my instincts with people. It has helped to have an amazing senior team, all of whom were well worth the trust placed in them. I’ve also learned through trusting our students – many of the best things we’ve done have been student-led. My role has was just to listen out for good ideas and back the many gifted leaders we had in the community.
Someone reminded me the other week that a senior church leader had once told me, ‘St Hild will never happen’. They were wrong. Not only that, they ended up on our management board when it did! This, and a hundred other little things remind me that we never know what is possible in leadership. Until we set sail.
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