Grace as an Organizational Paradigm

Every once in awhile you will have someone on your team that is just … amazing. They come to the table with all sorts of talents, strengths, skill sets and experience, and a good attitude. The problem is, even with great team members, great team dynamics, cohesion and engagement, sometimes there is miscommunication, misunderstandings, and misperceptions. Sometimes there’s just a miss.

The reason is that even the best people are broken. Even the greatest asset on your team is … incomplete. The reality is, working with people is often messy, fraught with difficulty, and even painful.

All of the difficulties stem from the fact that each of us has a limited perspective. We have limited perspectives because we are incomplete. We are not all-sufficient. We are not all-knowing. We are not all-powerful. We do not have inexhaustible brain capacity. We are …finite. Therefore, our ideas, our opinions, our perspective, our judgments, are partial and incomplete at best.

This is also why we need each other. We need the perspectives, the opinions of others in order to be informed and to have the fullest view. Leaders who assume they already have all the answers and do not need the input of others are short-sighted. But make no mistake, filtering through their personalities, their own limited views, and their one-sided opinions can be really difficult in order to get you there can be really difficult.

The only way to have a pain free, difficulty free, organization is to have one that does not include … people.

The scriptures make it clear from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the book that we are designed to need each other. For example, God created Adam by forming him out of the dust and breathing life into him. But, he created Eve by taking something out of the man. The moment God performed this supernatural surgery Adam became …incomplete. And what he was missing was only to be found in another … human. This is why when they came together the bible says, “for this reason a man shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one” (Genesis 2). They went from being separate to being a unit. They were incomplete, now complete. They went from two parts to one whole.

Each of us is designed to be incomplete without the strengths, the gifts, the abilities, and even the weaknesses, of others. And maybe this is why God, in His vastly superior wisdom, instituted the concepts and principles of forgiveness, of mercy, of Grace – because He knew we would need it to garner relationships.

The reality is I cannot fully appreciate or tap into the gifts of my fellow man if I do not simultaneously operate in grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Because, the strengths of my team members are encased in their own brokenness, their own respective incomplete nature, and their sin.

So, even superior teams can be difficult at times. Even the most loving families can be hard to love. Even the closest relationships often require grace. But, without them we are deficient, impaired, and limited.

“Put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes. Don’t be proud. Be gentle and patient. Put up with one another. Forgive one another if you are holding something against someone. Forgive, just as the Lord forgave you. And over all these good things put on love. Love holds them all together perfectly as if they were one” (Col. 3:12-14)

 

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