The leaders of a movement need to be fully prepared to receive no credit for their work.
Consider for a moment that the goal of a movement is to unleash in society an influence that will change social behavior. This movement is more organic than organized; it’s core message is caught more than taught, and it spreads like a virus - person to person. While a keen historian may trace the headwaters of a movement to a source influence, for the masses the movement “just is.” In the case of the Marriage CoMission, our hope is to stir up the created desire in men and women for life-long, healthy marriages and then to influence social institutions to support a couple’s efforts to grow a healthy marriage and to lead strong families. As the culture is affected by this movement, the unconscious “default” condition for people is the expectation to get married, stay married, and raise up the next generation. ¨
The leaders of a movement live the message (“being”) and act courageously (“take risks”) without seeking to find their identity in the work at hand.
Milton Friedman, in his book Generation to Generation, makes the case that great leaders are “well-differentiated and courageous.” By “well differentiated” he means that such leaders are not in a crisis of significance as reflected in a need to prove something to the world. Rather they know who they are (strengths and limits) and courageously live out this state of “being.” Jesus would lead the list of well-differentiated and courageous leaders who changed the world…He knew who He was and His message was congruent with the moment to moment behavior of His life. In a marriage movement how many people want to stand up and make the example of their own marriage one for everyone else to follow? The fact is marriage is the most challenging relationship most of us will experience in life, hence the most rewarding, and the majority of us have been sobered by this challenge and are often reluctant to be outspoken champions for marriage with so much failure in the background. As leaders in the Marriage Movement, we need the courage to follow our personal desire for a stronger marriage and allow others to see the reality that we are “wounded healers” ourselves. ¨
Leaders in a movement empower others to do their part.
In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell makes some keen observations about how social epidemics occur. In short, a sticky message that has broad appeal is carried into the culture by three types of people: connectors (people with the extreme talent of connecting others together), by a sales force (people with the extreme gift of persuading others to “buy in”), and by mavens (the people who distill the complex field of facts and ideas into a clear message). In the Marriage CoMission, we are in the position of calling out other leaders to pick up the marriage message and carry it out into the culture through the medium of their own talents, abilities, and resources. Let us work together as leaders to strengthen a fresh leadership culture that draws diverse organizations and people into an allied force with the aim of winning our culture’s vision for marriage. In the end, let it be credited to each person that each one was a good and faithful steward who led courageously and empowered others to succeed in the movement.
