Leadership through the Lens of Indigenous Values with Jay Matenga

As our season draws to a close, I began to contemplate leadership in a wider context, beyond just Australia and parish settings, I was drawn to explore international issues of leadership in gospel work.

Jay Matenga, is Director of the Global Witness Dept. and the Mission Commission for the World Evangelical Alliance and Executive Officer for Missions Interlink NZ.

Jay Matenga, was raised with indigenous values in a predominantly Eurocentric society. Our conversation will explore Jay’s leadership  journey in the missions space, particularly Jay's approach as a narrative leader who underscores the importance of storytelling in spiritual connection and guidance. We look at the aspects of collective leadership, the importance of mentorship, and the adaptability ingrained in indigenous leadership styles.

Leaders today grapple with managing expectations and avoiding burnout, a challenge amplified in Christian leadership where echo chambers can be pervasive. We underscore the necessity of resilience, self-awareness, and the ability to identify when to step back. Jay offers insights into leadership accountability and the shift from performance metrics to a focus on values and overall well-being.

Join us to gain a deeper understanding of leadership, the role of missions, and the journey of self-authenticity amid diverse cultural landscapes.


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Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Chapters

• 0:05 Exploring Indigenous Leadership and Mission Work
• 10:22 Leading With a Collectivist Mindset
• 24:47 Narrative Leadership in Indigenous Groups
• 31:48 Leadership Expectations and Burnout
• 42:32 Christian Leadership
• 55:26 Leadership Accountability and Empathy in Missions

Transcript

Valerie Ling: 0:05

Hey, it's Valerie Ling. I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm your host for the clergy well-being Down Under podcast. I'm looking forward to interviewing an expert today to take you through my findings from my research where I asked 200 pastors down under how they were. Don't forget to subscribe, like and share. Buckle up and here we go. Greetings everybody to another episode of the clergy well-being Down Under podcast. I've got Jay Matanga with me. Jay and I really meet one another once in a while in the global mission member care space. The first time I met Jay was when he was playing his guitar and I had to accompany him on the keyboard as we led the singing for one of the sessions. Good day, Jay.

Jay Matenga: 1:03

Nice, yeah, thanks. Thanks for that invitation. I forgot about that, was it the one in Melbourne.

Valerie Ling: 1:09

I can't remember where we were, but you know there's maybe Kieran's, yeah. Yeah, and I just remember you were a one man band, jay.

Jay Matenga: 1:18

You had the guitar you had the lead Honestly yeah, it's something I just love to do is sing, play guitar, lead worship, particularly in that space. So it wasn't difficult, it's a privilege.

Valerie Ling: 1:33

And I'll get you to tell us a little bit more about you. But the thing that struck me about you, jay, at that point in time, was how open you were to actually seek feedback. You know, because you and I we didn't know one another and we just had to rock up and play music together, but just how open you were to you know, ask, get feedback, work through, you know the different styles, the different orientation, and then just how open you were to actually just sing your heart out for Jesus. So I figure there must be something that goes on underneath you, jay. So I've looked at your website and you are involved in lots. So, jay, would you mind introducing yourself and who you are and some of the roles you have, if that's okay?

Jay Matenga: 2:26

It would be my privilege. That website is JayMartzTangocom a little bit of self shameless self promotion. I'm basically Ed Hard on the ask her questions. Many questions, too many questions.

Jay Matenga: 2:39

But I come from a Maori background, an indigenous New Zealand Maori background on my father's side, on my mother's side, of variation of English, welsh and even some Aboriginal in there, from Melbourne in South Australia, according to the family narrative. But what struck me as I was growing in my formative years and particularly is coming to Christ as a 16 year old in 1984 you guys do the math and long time ago was a sense of living with a sense of dissonance because I was involved in a thoroughly what I would call a Eurocentric environment. But I found myself thinking quite differently than others. My value set seemed to be at odds with the value set that I was involved in Fully early in my walk with the Lord. I got involved in Pentecostal churches, in the new Pentecostal movements, set under a lot of the big names that are now notorious in the headlines, unfortunately, but being trained by this, and there was just a drive that I didn't have within me for a certain way of being, and so so I sat uncomfortably in that space for a while until I was able to figure it out, and it took a few decades to come to terms with why that was, and so that, all after back around to my indigeneity, that's how I express it Now. I express it from a position of being a person who very viscerally and very deeply feels a value set that I've since identified as an indigenous value set of the more of a collectivist peoples see life in that way, and so everything I do.

Jay Matenga: 4:37

I mean there's a various ways you could describe leadership, but one of the things that that worship leading actually taught me was to be highly collaborative. I know that some, some music teams, some bands, have a very strong music director and they my latest church I've joined the worship team and they was constricted to a click track and into backing tracks. You know, now you can, you can pull up and down the instruments you don't have in your band and they play, but you have to be constrained to the background music. Well, that feels very what I call industrial to me and not at all indigenous, and so me and the someone basically, and the Filipino drummer, used to get really upset with this click track because it had no life, no, no groove, no rhythm and so whenever I come into a space of leadership, I naturally fall back on the collective. Yeah, and this, this really surprised me.

Jay Matenga: 5:41

I've worked with many teams before and I've been pretty much put in that box of the las, a fear leader, and in some have. Some on my board have accused me of being a reactive leadership style. I prefer to say it's a responsive leadership style. That's two very different things. But rather than a lot of the fear I am, I tend to be a lot more collaborative and, in a Western style, thinking, if you're familiar with oh, I forget his name now one of the business leaders very famous for talking about this successful organizations. Anyway, he talks about getting the right people on the bus.

Valerie Ling: 6:31

Oh yes.

Jay Matenga: 6:32

And so I'm much more concerned about getting the right people on the bus, then pushing a particular agenda, and even though I have a very strong sense of direction or where I think we should go, the manitiae of planning is just not my forte. And so when I came into a role now and the roles I have after coming through involvement in mission, missionary recruiting, what we call mission mobilization, trying to encourage people to engage with God's world in proactive ways, particularly cross culturally so for five years I was the mission recruiter for work international in New Zealand. For 15 years I was then the director of pioneers in New Zealand so these are missionary deploying organizations and then in 2015 I transitioned from pioneers into missions, into, like New Zealand, which is the Alliance or the Association of Missions and outreach organizations parachuted organizations, if you will, in New Zealand and in fact, australia as well we're sister organizations and and then in 2020 I was invited and appointed to be the director of global witness for the world of Angelical Alliance, that's, the Department of Global Witness, and within the department, since the word of Angelical Alliance, mission commission. So I kind of lead both of those. The majority of my involvement is the mission commission, the department, probably in keeping with my lasso field, leadership, the department is a more attitular head of that, guiding that. And then the department sits the global evangelism network, the mission commission and now, just recently, the International Missionary Training Network, which spun off out of the mission commission and we're in conversation with the global media care network to become its own entity under the WA, outside of the mission commission, because they're very well established now. So all of these groups and all of the networks I'm involved in more or less they're full of very capable, competent people, so they don't need to be led.

Jay Matenga: 8:48

And very early in my, in my appointment to missions intellect, I was at one of the regional gatherings and somebody said to me why would you take on a role like missions into, like? Surely isn't it like herding cats? In a way? It can appear that way. We have 19 member organizations and they are. They range from world vision all the way over to a little mom and pop orphanage, supporting type minute and supporting indigenous ministry, so everything in between. And the Lord just really impressed on me An image I don't know if you recall this this YouTube clip from a Super Bowl advert where there are cowboys on the range and there's all these cats going wild and the cowboys all scratched and and it's an image of herding cats and so you can see it in your head and just suppose the cats for the cattle. But it was as if the Lord just took me up to the stratosphere and look down at this chaos on the ground of these cats and these wranglers, like the CEOs of organizations trying to get the cats.

Jay Matenga: 10:03

And the chaos the higher up I got. The chaos became a choreography and so it's like the Olympic. You know dance sessions on the Olympic Stadium. As the camera comes from the top down, you start to see the shapes merging. That looks like chaos on the ground. Very strongly felt the Lord say I don't need you to to to her or control anything. I need you to look and see what I am doing and then articulate back to my people what you see and so that then from there, that was early in my doctoral work and I started to identify myself as a narrative leader.

Jay Matenga: 10:44

Okay so now my role, I see my chief role, whether it's worship leading or global network leading. It's about how do we tell the story, what is happening out there in the worship set you have, how do we take people on a journey into that throne room of God? That is coherent with an act of worship in this 20 minutes space. Similarly, global networks, or all a leader of a big network can do is actually just tell and narrate the story that reinforces the culture, that enables or strengthens the forward movement to the vision you want to, you think as a group, as a collective, you want to achieve. And then I've since found that is a very collectivist way of leading very indigenous way of leading a group leading.

Jay Matenga: 11:43

So when I came to this role in 2020 with my executive coach, I recommend everybody get supervision and coaching If you're in any leadership position, because it's that sounding board is an estimate. It's fantastic. So she says, well, what I was looking to? Recruit a team, and some would argue or call it, but just a group of people, a community is the way I was seeing it around me, that was global. Then we could walk together into the future for the Mission Commission. And she says, well, what do you want them to achieve? And without thinking, I just responded I don't care what we achieve, so long as we go together and what, whatever we do, will emerge out of the collectors.

Jay Matenga: 12:31

And when I did the fourth year of my doctoral work and we studied the leadership applications of our work, all of the reading Well, in none of the reading I should say that I was doing by one indigenous leadership book. It's called Wayfinding by a New Zealander, shelly Spiller. They all were talking about leading from the front, not from the group, and so I was perplexed in looking at there's a potential gap there that hasn't been well developed. But because of all these leadership books were largely industrial. They were all based on a set of values that I didn't. I didn't align with and, in fact, our whole cohort. We had a Brit living in Australia, an Australian, two Papua New Guineans in myself and we were all like why are we reading these books, of all the books on leadership? Almost really to spit the dummy. But it was a great time of just tuning through and then we all had this aha moment that, yeah, the way we've been articulating leadership, the expectations of leadership, the systems that we're trying to lead For the one of better word toxic.

Valerie Ling: 13:59

Ask you, Jay, just back to how would you define supervision and executive coaching?

Jay Matenga: 14:06

Well, it depends on, I think, your role. Professional supervision would be for those more humanitarian people carers, I think, pastors the New Zealand Baptists have just mandated professional supervision for all their pastors, I think, in some ways to respond to some of your research and psychologists, social workers, etc. So I don't myself. I'm not heavily involved in people. Most of my realm is the realm of ideas and systems. So I didn't see the need for professional supervision myself. So I haven't done that.

Jay Matenga: 14:45

I have a good friend that is doing that, so I've learned from her passion. But executive coaching the executive coach I have is. It is a reflective process that I think is somewhat similar In my case, where I'm going to her with issues that I want to talk through, with the experiences that I want to have another perspective on, and then she will ask me what I hope to achieve going forward. And this is where the coaching comes in, where she'll help the design steps towards achieving this ultimate outcome and why. I like mine particularly. She's a South African with a lot of background in Indigenous Africa. She just gets the value set that I'm working with and the aims I'm seeking to achieve, and so she understands that. So, finding somebody compatible with where you're wanting to go and what you're wanting to do. I think it's important and I prefer a much more proactive person as a sounding board then a more client centered approach where you just do all the talking.

Valerie Ling: 15:58

Yeah. So, joe, I'm with you on the industrial format of when I did my masters of leadership. I have to say that that's one of the things that really struck me that the study of leadership does come from the history of what you're producing. So you know, if you're producing cars, if you're trying to get people to lead them to make cars for quality, if you're trying to get people to write things for accuracy, there's a particular outcome, and so the leadership style that you adopt has got to do with what outcome are you trying to get from the people that you lead, right? So how does that work in ministry? Are there outcomes? Is there a framework that we look at that say, ok, well, this is what we need from the people at the end, and so, therefore, this is the type of leadership that is required.

Jay Matenga: 16:49

I prefer to see leadership as influence, influencing a group of people toward a common good. So there's a definition, if you will, so particularly in ministry. So in industry, your common good is productivity. It is whatever you're seeking to increasing your profit, your viability of your organization, etc. In ministry, you have to define the common good with your people, so there's a communal aspect to it.

Jay Matenga: 17:19

One of the issues, I think, is that sometimes our common goods clash. So a pastor comes into a church with an idea of the common good for everybody tries to drive them in that direction, and this is particularly bad in better circles or congregational circles. You can get away with it in the more authoritarian, more authoritative one man band Pentecostal city, where there's a very much that don't touch the laws anointed. They know where we go and we're all and we stay in the congregation because we like to be lead in the direction that they are going. We were like, likes to belong to whatever it is that they're seeking to build. But in a more congregational setting you get a power base. There's not the senior leader, it is the board of elders, it is, it is people who have taken on positions of power within the congregation and that can become problematic when their idea of good clashes with the leaders idea of good. So you got dissonance intention there. So in ministry you need to to reconcile what is the good we're seeking to achieve I said, thankfully, 3,000 feet above most of the fray and what I'm doing in thinking systems, the big systems and global networks, etc. But ultimately we have to come down to this base of.

Jay Matenga: 18:46

In my view, I think we've lost in this pathology of common good that is compelling enough to hold us together as the people of God and whatever communities we've formed, and part of the problem we have is that we've institutionalized those communities too much such that they become industrial. So you've got a certain set of productivity outcomes you're having to achieve bums on seats, tithes coming in to keep the lights on all of. You've got a production you have to try to maintain. Within this, overall what I call the industrial hegemony, I see the only two types of people in the world. For me there is indigenous and industrial. There's the western slash, individualistic, which I put in the industrial value set, and the indigenous, collectivist group, oriented. That I call indigenous. But it's more than just people of the land for me, but it's a value set there and there's some very clear assumptions and both of those big groups that we seeing them clash right now in Australia, you seeing them clash In New Zealand, we've set with the clash for a long, not longer, and we keep coming around with these value sets are clashing.

Jay Matenga: 20:12

Well, in scripture we see a very collectivist assumption of value set, assumption that has been reinterpreted into the industrial, individualist value set, and I think we in doing that it's brought out many good things, but it's also obscured a lot of stuff that we need to recover. And so in ministry I keep falling back to reminding people even though I'm not good at it myself necessarily but it's all has to be about the people, it has to be about the, the community and our habitats. So I'll add creation care in there as well. It has to be all about actually not the people, relationships with the people, with our habitats, and the common good needs to flow out of that, what's a very important vision. How are we nurturing a group of people toward that vision within the uniqueness of this community and the value sets that have emerged from within the community? So that's as much applicable to a mission agency or a micro missions group in a particular context as it is to a local church or even a denomination.

Jay Matenga: 21:31

You belong to these organizations in terms of groups of people that are organized Not necessarily institutionalized, but organized and those that organization, that group, starts to form its own set of its own culture.

Jay Matenga: 21:48

So, instead of values based on, maybe, beliefs that are common across Christianity but there's a unique grace in that group I like to see that God is working with that group for this purpose. And you know we easily knock the grace that others focus on, like Hillsong's a big one at the moment is easily not, but God has given them a particular grace to develop and to lead in worship, provide pathways for people to connect with God, and the fact that people are and do can't be denied in spite of all the institutional stuff. So I think we need to be a lot more honoring of the grace. So it's a leader of any ministry. I think it becomes problematic if you're feeling undue pressure to perform in order to produce a certain outcome, because the Spirit of God doesn't always. Sometimes I love it when a plan comes together, but more often than not it doesn't. So how do we lean in to the rhythms of the Spirit? How do we learn to lead from, as Peterson says, the rhythms of grace, the unforeseen rhythms of grace.

Jay Matenga: 23:05

And in your research I see a lot of forcedness, a lot of dissonance, creating tensions that are difficult to resolve because we haven't provided either an eschatology, a framework of maturity that sees trauma. I mean, that's what a lot of this is resulting from. Trauma is an opportunity to be processed well, to grow in the leader and in the congregation.

Valerie Ling: 23:34

This is the midpoint break for the podcast. If you want to put a pause and walk away and come back with it, make sure you do check out the description for all the various downloads that we have for you, including my full report, research and reflections, and you might also want to remember to like, share and subscribe. So stop now or keep going. James, how do we sustain the narrative approach? You know, if you have a group of you know you're pushing past 200, past 400. How does that work in your view? You know you're saying there's the individualistic and then the industrial and the indigenous. How does it work within an indigenous context when you're scaling in the size of the group?

Jay Matenga: 24:24

Indigenous wouldn't scale.

Valerie Ling: 24:26

Hmm, interesting.

Jay Matenga: 24:28

Because it's. I mean we would scale in on an event type manner. So I mean you get them together. I mean it's, and any event is very ad hoc. There are hierarchies that are honored and seen and honored and recognized, so in place. But beyond that, the this chief aim of such a large gathering of micro groups. So in a Maori concept, you have your hapu, your family group, which can consist of your just immediate extended family, but usually of a cluster of extended families. So you have your hapu and then multiple hapu would make up an iwi, which is a much larger tribal group or clan, and then you go up from there.

Jay Matenga: 25:20

So whenever people came together say for instance, on the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the chiefs came not to speak on their own, they were representing a lot of discussion. That has happened in the groups in the micro level coming up, and so there's that. And then if multiple groups come together, it's very much more a celebratory thing than it is an agenda driven thing. So it's about making relationships. You talk to anybody about a funeral and the chief aim of the funeral is not actually to bury the person that's past, is to use that person's narrative to reinforce the narrative of us. I am because we are the whole Ubuntu South Africans. Bantu idea or value set is very common across Indigenous peoples and so it wouldn't be a regular occurrence to come together in larger groups. So those larger groups wouldn't need to be led in a routine institutional style. That need to be guided and there's a lot of assumption that is common.

Jay Matenga: 26:32

When people get together, A lot of talking goes on, but when it comes to a coherent narrative now I'm using the word coherent deliberately rather than cohesive so in an industrial thing they want everybody to be on topic, on, on task, and the idea of team is a very deeply entrenched assumption in an industrial world, whereas family is the more assumption in an Indigenous world. So when you got team, you've got everybody working towards a common goal. And it's not to say the Indigenous don't do that, it's just the common goal is much further ahead. It's like seven generations ahead. It's not the immediate productivity is how are we building a better world for the seventh generation of our children's, children's children? So there's that sense and team, everybody has their task and you know we're all working together towards that common goal.

Jay Matenga: 27:41

And there's often an enemy and you need an enemy in order to. We're an opposing team and so we get a lot of this enemy talk quite prevalent and there is for Indigenous is a lot more about harmony and relationship and so it's more about okay, where do we want to go, what do we want to do? And there are stronger voices than others and they will be recognized, but the group can easily pull down a stronger voice If it doesn't cohere with the will of the people. As the American would say, it's a nice idea, but at a very large level it's harder to achieve. So we're cohesion is that everybody needing to stick to the same plan and strategy and work together, etc. Coherence is more about where does everybody see themselves in the narrative of us and our story and what our tribe is going to be known for.

Jay Matenga: 28:48

And that's became very deeply what one of the massive Baham movements was. Moments for me was meeting my biological father when I was 42 for the first time, all of this turning in Indigenous values in me. I couldn't explain, couldn't defend, and I let my father, whose father was full Maori and my father was a Mormon bishop. By that stage he had planted Mormon churches but not grown up in that whole spiritual environment. His grandfather, my great grandfather, was a spiritual leader, a Tuhunga Maori priest or shaman, who had manipulated the spirits in less than honorable ways at times, but I was able then to articulate my story in Jesus that actually had a connection with my ancestors, stories that was finally redeemed. This is my narrative.

Jay Matenga: 29:52

And it makes sense. So a narrative leader is a leader that makes sense to the group that are being appointed to lead, and we actually see this done very well at a megatrush level. They're forever reinforcing the values and the identity of the church. They're forever making sure people know who they belong to, know what they're a part of and for all the negative stuff that can go on with with scale, they've learned to do that very well and that attracts people. It helps them that they develop their own liturgies, their own protocols, their own identity, their own value sets very clearly value driven, their own sense of mission. Where are we going? So it's not so different. And so these big CEOs, while they might be driving and productivity oriented and creating more and more stress for themselves, they are very good narrators in terms of who are we and therefore, how do you fit in this scheme of things.

Valerie Ling: 31:09

And so, jay, you were saying that you use the term laissez-faire leadership which, as I know and I don't know if you're using it the same way, but as I've now studied that actually means something in the theory base of leadership. It's not always looked upon well, it probably isn't looked upon well. Do you embrace that or do you say that it's not laissez-faire leadership, it's organic? I think you said it. It's responding to the story that's emerging.

Jay Matenga: 31:45

Yeah. Yeah, there's the absentee leader model that is criticized for the laissez-faire. It's just somebody's drifting along, but that's problematic if the leader's not really casting a vision or communicating. And I say this even as I'm convicted. I mean we had a big global conference, global consultation, in January. I still haven't communicated to my network the outcomes of that. I'm working on that now. What I was February was six months later almost, and there's been this block of silence, and so I've got emails from people oh, what's the latest? We haven't heard anything, et cetera. And so there's pressure coming in that way as I've been juggling too many balls. So there's that, yeah, okay, we're being stretched too far, so the leader's not doing anything, and just there's no productivity. I mean, one of the things that I can't be accused of is lack of productivity, because I'm writing, publishing, producing magazines, doing other things that my board is very happy with.

Jay Matenga: 33:01

But, it's not necessarily communicating with the wide, much wider network, so it can appear to be much more absentee. So I sit with that tension. But if a board finds a leader that isn't acting on the board's recommendations, that the expectations aren't being met by the church teacher, that can be problematic and needs to be sorted out. But those expectations, that is a key issue in IC and all of the responses you got.

Jay Matenga: 33:40

I would nail it to. Apart from the fact that it's a system, that systemic issue, is this expectation issue that creates the biggest conflicts and tensions, and to live with those expectations and not know how to negotiate or renegotiate expectations can be a deep cause of burnout. I love the quote from Alcoholics Anonymous that expectations are premeditated resentments.

Valerie Ling: 34:13

Interesting.

Jay Matenga: 34:14

So the narrative leader needs to continually come back and acknowledge expectations and reform it and create and craft the expectations for themselves so that they can sit in those unforced rhythms and they're not being forced by others to lead it according to a pace or productivity expectation that they can't actually perform.

Valerie Ling: 34:40

Well, it's closely related to how we then define effectiveness. So your expectations of yourself and what others expect of you also comes from what we would assume effectiveness is. What does that mean? That you're churning out stellar sermons that other churches are streaming for their pastors to learn from? Is it that you're able to retain newcomers beyond the three weeks? Is that effectiveness? What are your thoughts on that?

Jay Matenga: 35:14

Again, that's the point of negotiation, and if we were to follow the line of positive psychology you want, I think Marcus Buckingham says you want your leaders to be working in their best strengths at least 20% of their time. I've been very fortunate to have found roles where I've been able to craft the CEO role according to my best competencies, and those competencies have been wanted by boards and organizations within the capacity that that organization has had financial and the resources they've had. So in missions you have to do a lot with a little, and so, on the one hand, one of the biggest criticisms I got running this global consultation almost single-handedly, which probably says a lot about my leadership style as well but we hadn't quite formed a coherent team enough yet to delegate roles, administrative roles, and I don't have an administrator, so I was default administrating this whole thing, and the biggest criticism was that I wasn't, I was doing too much. I was up there, I was playing guitar at the beginning, leading communion. I was down in the sound desk doing the PowerPoints and at times when we the hotel couldn't provide the sound operator, I was working the sound desk. I was introducing people, I was making sure the technology was in the work, the breakout group rooms, et cetera.

Jay Matenga: 36:55

Because in my context in New Zealand, that's just what you have to do. You just you're a kind of a one man band. You don't have the resources to hire staff to do things. And so people, some of our colleagues, older colleagues from the big country to the northeast of us, north America, they were saying, well, the biggest criticisms we have is that you weren't acting like an executive director and you weren't passing these roles on to people, et cetera. And for Kiwi, probably at OZ as well, you know that was like a compliment, not a criticism. It was like, oh yeah, you are one of the one of the crowd, one of the grunts, not not thinking of yourself higher than you ought, tall poppy syndrome and all that. But then I have a I always remember a US colleague who came out of a big US office, went into Singapore to run a very small micro office and he was just a gas that he had to collect the mail himself.

Jay Matenga: 37:58

So there were these just big differences of expectations and they can be a shock until you you work them through and you have to align yourself with can I meet these expectations as a leader or not?

Jay Matenga: 38:14

And if the resources simply aren't needed to achieve what you're expected to achieve. If you need to either say, well, I can't do this and that's one of the reasons why I left Pioneers in 2015 is because the board would say we want to see this achieved I said, well, you know, with all the data I have at hand and with the resources I have, I can't do this, so you better find somebody who can or is willing to. And they said, okay, so you know what choice do you have? And to, okay, resign. And that's a bold statement. I think sometimes, as leaders, we leave it too long before we come to that conclusion, and I love there's been some work done on on failure and and giving up, and the healthiness of seeing stuff is not of giving up, not as a failure, of giving up at the right time in order to move on and flourish and something else, and so so that's it's kind of a narrative.

Valerie Ling: 39:21

It's kind of a narrative we say to ourselves too. It's, it's, it's the next chapter, for yourself as well as for the people that you're moving away from and moving towards. How about well-being and burnout? Has this factor into your thinking from as an, as a narrative leader, from an indigenous perspective? What? What does that look like?

Jay Matenga: 39:45

I think it looks like one of the first things you said it was loneliness was a big issue.

Valerie Ling: 39:51

Yeah, you must say that.

Jay Matenga: 39:54

I think the lack of community contributes a lot, the lack of not necessarily a, a, a yes, you're the greatest support of community, but a community you, you feel like you belong to. So one of the things this, the industrial leadership style, does is elevate the leader above you know that whole CEO mentality rather than doesn't it.

Jay Matenga: 40:18

Yeah, and so you, you don't feel like, and I've this has been a problem myself. I am like you acknowledged at the beginning, as a worship leader. I'm open, I try to be transparent, I'm very I I embrace a lot of the talk about vulnerability in leadership and I try to model that and it backfires if, if those expectations and then it can come back and haunt you. So my attempt at being vulnerable with one of the boards that I was that, that I was accountable to it, became problematic because they didn't want me to process my concerns and and what they saw as excuses that I saw I was trying to rationalize or explain why things weren't happening. So there were a certain number of board members who were much more productivity and metrics oriented who were saying we don't want to sit listening to these excuses, we want solutions and it was like, okay, and then then this raft of almost they pulled out minutes of what I'd been saying in the past in my vault attempt of being vulnerable and they became evidence for the prosecution.

Jay Matenga: 41:47

So, it was very uncomfortable time sitting as a leader through one of these very, very traumatic process In fact, this happened at a Christmas dinner, so I just given the board all these gifts and put on this big dinner for them and then got this bearer. One board member resigned as a result was a gastric edit, but it had been brewing for a long time and I hadn't seen it brewing. In my naivety I was, but it just, it just. I walked away thinking, yeah, I'm in the wrong place. I'm not meant for this type of organizational structure. This will ruin me if I stay here, and I sort of decided from that point on to look for pathways to exit. And I still sit very uncomfortable in some of the spheres that I'm working in now because they're still dominated by a much more Eurocentric perspective and to bring an indigenous or majority world voice into those.

Jay Matenga: 42:46

It feels like you're just the one always being the problematic. But instead of this it can become exhausting. So being retreating into a much more like minded group of indigenous networks would be a lot easier. But you know somebody needs to be in that mix. So loneliness is a danger. So you need to really surround yourself and I think resilience theory has this web of relationships aspect to it. The more relationships you have that are actually related to each other, the more resilient you're likely to be. And I mean, if that's not a tribal collectivist mentality, I don't know what it is. And that's why indigenous love to retreat to their group frequently just to feel like you're okay.

Jay Matenga: 43:45

And I remember Kea admissions, when we used to go to the big conferences that would gather and then we'd split off into our sending country groups. That was like a lifeline to the missionaries that we'd set, because they were able to talk with people like minded, like themselves. They could talk about the other cultures and their frustrations in a safe environment and then the leader as a leader. I was then tasked to help sort of sort of message those perspectives and put them in context and help them grow from that and not sit in that frustration. We're not a firm. The potential toxicity of doing that echo chamber. But this is the perfect reason why I think in scripture, with the reading into the Jews and Gentiles narrative, the pulling down the walls of hostility, the whole New Testament arc is this reconciling the diversities of the peoples of the world and the people of God and Christ. This is our key witness to the world.

Jay Matenga: 44:52

You need to be willing to sit in that tension of difference, because you can't have harmony without tension. Harmony exists through to tune tension. So any ideal, any expectation that the Christian life, the unity of the Christian life, is going to be absent of conflict or tension or trials or troubles you just read James one he's talking about in the community, not persecutions. There it's to mature us and it's to the shalom. Harmony is created from the sitting, in the tensions and like a yeast, fermentation happens, that we are transformed by the renewing of our mind in that process and I think the burnout is thinking oh, wouldn't it just be nice to be an easy, everybody agrees context. Well, it's never going to happen. So we rely, realign our expectations to this really hard members meeting or this really toxic feedback from a problematic member of my congregation or missions group. These things it's a little bit of a platitude to say these things are there to shape us, but these things they do.

Jay Matenga: 46:15

Interpersonal neurobiology shows us that we are shaping one another continually. But then attachment theory you've done that will show the absolute necessity of feeling like you belong to something, to God and first and then to a group of God's people. That may not always agree, but there's a certain loving one another, compassion and persevering with one another that comes through it. But this sense of purpose, this overriding sense of where are we going? What is our eschatology? What is Christ doing in the middle of all of this turmoil? The spirit is at work there and we need to see it positively rather than pathologically. A lot more so if we can rearrange ourselves and have tools to process conflict, process trauma, really well, I think, as leaders, equipping them with these tools may help create a much more healthy leadership style.

Valerie Ling: 47:20

I suspect too. I think it's great that you brought up the attachment and the neurobiology. I suspect, too, that followership needs to understand that when we use the levels of conflict, where we're using rejection, we're actually attacking a personhood. That is significant impact on leaders and it's actually unnecessary. When you're disagreeing with one another. That's the sort of thing that absolutely destroys a sense of belonging.

Jay Matenga: 47:51

I would go so far as to say it's demonic. There is a spirit of the age at the moment that is fueled by the one who just exists to steal, kill and destroy, and that's relational. Satan exists as the accuser and the opposer, I believe, first and foremost to grow us, to mature us, but also it's there as a counter to what God is doing in order to strengthen the body of Christ. But if we're leaning into it, if we're leaning into destructive relationships and we are responding as you've just said, then we are on that side of the fence and we're not Galatians 5. We're not evidencing the fruit of the Spirit, we're not standing firm in the armor of God. So when we start to see these concepts in Scripture that Paul brings out from a relational frame rather than from a productivity frame. So missions has got caught up in the task. We've got a task to achieve. Well, the New Testament doesn't speak in those terms at all. We've got a witness to be, and that witness is a harmonious, loving community in Christ that isn't shy of difference but also doesn't dishonor. It guards the dignity of others and it seeks the good of others, not to destroy them or cut them down. Again, this is the stuff that we need to see coming out of Scripture and a scripturally led vision of the good that we can then lead people into.

Jay Matenga: 49:39

So, yeah, if there are people that have got to the level of toxicity where they are ripping down and they're accusing and there's just that malice and hate, there is absolutely no biblical defense for that. It is and I say it advisedly demonic part of the strategy of the enemy that won't survive or won't stand. We don't need to fear that or necessarily combat it. And I love what Ding Sherman, a spiritual warfare teacher and why we're back in the day, used to say that our response to trauma is our best weapon, spiritual weapon. So when something happens to us that is bad, or somebody comes at us, as we respond with the character of Christ, we're combating that demonic affront, and Jesus did it with Peter.

Jay Matenga: 50:42

So it's not saying that those people are demon possessed. It's saying that they're allowing themselves to be used as a tool of the enemy and our only response is not to combat. We're not wrestling against flesh and blood. We're to come with compassion and loving, kindness, with a sense of peace, gentleness, faithfulness, self control, those things. So this is the character Christ is trying to form in us and if we have that idea of good we could be better off. But I'm not diminishing it in any way, the tough context that a lot of these leaders are finding themselves in, because it's a brutal world at the moment. Out there trying to lead people, there are a lot of influences coming from left, right and secondary.

Valerie Ling: 51:38

And so, jay, just to conclude, if there was a leader, a pastor, or even someone from the missions community we don't know who might be listening to this but a Christian leader. What's one thing you'd like them to walk away from? Listening to us?

Jay Matenga: 52:00

I have a hashtag on the end of my blogs I always put stay on mission, and mission can be perceived as completing the task, et cetera. But I have it much more in the mind of the missio day, because the missio day is creating communities. I explained it this way recently that whenever we gather together in Christ, we should be creating a trailer for the movie that's to come. So this kingdom now not yet. Whenever we gather as the community of God's people in Jesus Christ, as we go out into our communities, wider communities and societies, into our habitats, we need to be giving people a glimpse of what's coming. So we may not be perfect but we should be aspiring to that.

Jay Matenga: 52:51

Stay on mission really speaks from James. One again where James talks about it consider it joys when you're getting hassled by your congregation or your mission's team or the expectations of your donors or whatever those troubles are that James refers to. Remember James is talking to in-house, it's not external to the body. Whatever they are, consider it great joy that they're happening, because if you hold the faith and persevere, you will mature. And there's a spiral aspects to what James is talking about there and in his context it was the rich Jews versus the poor Jews. That was where the tension point was, and the powerful, chatty, loose-lipped people who were gossiping, et cetera, et cetera. But he says just hold the faith of the community, hold together, work it through, because in that perseverance of what I call perpetual reconciliation, you'll mature, and when maturity, when it's done its work, you'll be completing nothing.

Jay Matenga: 53:58

That is our aspiration. That is why we're staying on mission and we need to get a sense of an eternal purpose to help us stay in the fray. Now. There will be times where you'll perceive it becomes overly abusive. You just can't stay there for your own well-being, you need to find another community, but that should be an exception rather than the rule, if we're all committed to that sort of same outcome. But we still work in progress.

Valerie Ling: 54:35

And so if there was somebody within a church community listening to us, what's one thing you would want them to walk away with?

Jay Matenga: 54:43

Yeah, give your leaders space. They've got a lot going on that you know nothing about. It's not just, it's not all about me, it's not about you. So, again, from a collectivist background, we've intuitively perceived this it's about the well-being of the group, and our individualist society has given us the sense of self-authority that says it should be, my needs should be being met, whereas the collectivist orientation is how can I contribute to the well-being of the whole? And so that reorientation is very important, not that we well actually denying yourself taking up your cross and following me. I read that, interpreted through Paul's Philippians 2 attitude of Christ, that is canotical canosis, that is the emptying yourself, and it's giving up your privileges in your rights and your need to be fulfilled and investing it in others.

Jay Matenga: 55:46

And I think I'm not a formal counselling training but I've done enough counselling reading to realize that as people come out and start contributing, a lot of this sense of loneliness, a lot of this sense of worthlessness etc. Etc can be restored in development. People want to be able to give back, something to reciprocate, so not like for like or value for them.

Valerie Ling: 56:30

My connection's got a bit weird. There Are you with me? My connection got a bit weird, so I'm going to try to throw in one last one. If there are decision makers, policy makers, can you hear me still?

Jay Matenga: 56:44

Yes.

Valerie Ling: 56:45

Yes, decision makers, policymakers, board members, you know what's one thing you'd like them to walk away with Jay.

Jay Matenga: 56:54

Yeah, don't hold your leaders vulnerability against them. It would be one thing, but yeah, also I think empathy is a very strong aspect. One of the things I've deeply appreciated coming into missions, into link and even the mission commission globally, is that I'm working with CEOs who are my board members, ceos of other mission agencies, and there's just this level of understanding and empathy and a level of gratitude for what I do from these ones, because I've been there and you know why we need outside input from people in different spheres law, finance and business, etc. Etc. On boards. It's really tough for them to fully understand the organizations we're seeking to lead the congregation. Maybe an eldership board is a little different because they're part of it, but even that has its own peculiarities because they become ones that you're also trying to lead and may hold you to a higher account. But empathy would be a big one and just the willingness to see themselves as the point of accountability for a leader to see themselves as part of this and part of the narrative and to be hugely influential in their narratives because they get to decide what they release resources for, what they would hold the leader accountable for One of the things.

Jay Matenga: 58:28

Just in closing, I sit on the as a board member. I sit on the council, the International Council of InterServe, and one of the first things when I first joined the board it was very presumptuous of me, but I was sitting there watching a majority world international director and Indian give a report or an account, an evaluation report based on a whole heap of metrics, and it was really quite struggling to do so. According to you know, outcomes based stuff they were literally called out performance outcomes and there was me and an African, latin American, a couple of others on this. New to this council was why is why are we asking him to report on these type of things?

Jay Matenga: 59:19

So we, I put a proposal in that we shift and we change the reporting process to we meet twice a year to two aspects of a values set values and wellbeing set. So now he reports the first half of the year on how the activities in the organization, international organization, are aligning with the core values of the organization and then, on the other hand, what's the narrative of the wellbeing of the organization?

Jay Matenga: 59:52

So how, where are the threats, where are the? So it's not so much outcomes or performance, it's about wellbeing and life, about giving, breathing life into what the organization exists for. So I think if we can get boards to I mean just financial metrics and other things we do as well. But from the CEO's accountability point of view, is she an effective or she an effective CEO on the basis of the health of the organization? And there's a lot of reasons, ways around that, and it depends on the organization as to what health looks like. But in ministry, health should look like healthy relationships, healthy people, healthy contribution and people feeling like they're part of something, a community that is providing them life even as they give life to it.

Valerie Ling: 1:00:51

You've given me a lot to think about. Thank you so much for spending the time with me, jay. It's been such a joy and hopefully we don't have to wait to see you in another couple of years. We are, josh and I, are hoping to get to Kenya next year. Maybe we'll see you there. Yeah, I'll try to be there. We shouldn't be here. Thanks for your time, jay. You're welcome.

Jay Matenga: 1:01:17

Thank you.

Valerie Ling: 1:01:22

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