“Taint what you do, it’s the way that you do it”. So sang Ella Fitzgerald in 1939, and the infectious tune has been covered and re-used many times since.

If the song has a message it is that how we do something communicates at least as powerfully as the thing we were trying to do. If you have ever witnessed someone addressing an issue “in love” while speaking in a way that is jarringly unkind, or pursuing a missional endeavour in a way which fails to reflect the heart of the gospel, you will know this to be true. And if it is true of how we live, it is also true of how we lead.

This week the OMS leadership team were seeking to make a decision regarding the expansion of Collectives. Nothing too radical you might think, but we all felt a keen sense that we want to lead by discerning God’s will and doing it, not just by bringing our own insights, experience, and opinions to the table. We all have experience of seeking God’s guidance at a personal level, but too often when teams actually get together it looks more like a board meeting with a perfunctory prayer at the beginning and the end.

To help us we tried following the practises of discernment laid out in Ruth Haley Barton’s book “Pursuing God’s will together’. Practises like leaving our distractions at the door, honesty before one another regarding our own opinions, waiting on God in silent attentiveness, and seeking to let His wisdom rather than our own prevail. I know quite a few people who have read the book but relatively few who have attempted simply and directly to put it into practise. The results were a beautiful mix of challenging, uplifting, humbling, frustrating, joyful, and hopeful.

I sometimes say that I don’t want to live a day without a miracle (the alternative being to live as if it didn’t matter whether God was there or not). Far too often I fall short. But in refusing to lead without putting discerning God’s will at the very centre, we are acknowledging that the way we do things as an Order matters at least as much as what we do. Just as our vows of radical obedience (and Ella’s catchy ditty) would suggest.