Dealing with backlash

During the LDC (leadership development course) we have a few days where we teach on the topic of leadership timeline. This involves looking back at the timeline of your life and identifying the different processes that God has used to develop you as a disciple and as a leader: times when your obedience or your integrity was tested; times when you learned to hear God’s voice or to trust Him for financial provision.

One of the process items that every leader will experience at some time in life is called “leadership backlash.” This happens when the team or church faces difficult circumstances and there’s a reaction of blaming and complaining against the leader. I came across an example of this in my daily Bible reading this morning.

At the end of Exodus chapter 4, the people of Israel are convinced that Moses and Aaron have been sent by the Lord, and they start to praise God for the encouraging news that He is going to deliver them from their slavery in Egypt. If you remember the continuation of the story, however, after Moses and Aaron have spoken to Pharaoh (in Exodus chapter 5)  he punishes the Israelites by insisting they make the same number of bricks as before, but refusing to give them straw for the task. As a result of this harsh treatment, the people begin to grumble and complain against Moses and Aaron, saying, “This is your fault. May the Lord punish you for this.”

That’s what we call leadership backlash.  Leaders not only carry the consequences of a chosen course of action; they also sometimes bear the negative reaction of the people who had supposedly agreed to that course of action.

In KKI, a ministry that I’ve worked with over the past thirty years, we have a couple of ministry values that seem to reduce this backlash just a little. One is the value that we place on youth ownership - involving the young people in hearing from God and being part of the decision about what we’re going to do. Another is our strong belief that everyone can hear the voice of God, even the youngest child in the team.

I remember a situation in Southern Africa where we had a time of prayer with our team of children and teenagers, asking God what was on His heart for our outreach that day. There was a strong sense in the group that God was asking us to bless a slum community by working with local young people to clean up their neighbourhood and pick up litter from the beach next to their home-made shack dwellings. One of the teenagers felt God saying that it would be challenging, but it would demonstrate to the people that we were coming to serve them and not to judge them.

When the time for the project arrived, the weather had suddenly become incredibly hot and the beach area turned out to be a lot more dirty than we had realised. It was a situation ripe for leadership backlash, for children and teenagers to complain that this had been a stupid idea, and to grumble about having such a hard and disgusting job to do.

But no one said a negative word. Not only did no young person complain; they actually carried out the task with joyful energy and with loud songs of praise together. Because this job hadn’t been the leader’s idea; it had been God’s idea, and the young people themselves were the ones who had told us that. 

No pastor or Christian leader can completely avoid the sting of leadership backlash. But I wonder if it would happen less often if our teams and congregations all learned how to hear from God and make important ministry decisions in corporate obedience to His voice.