Part of a series ‘Leadership at Large’.
Sarah Kuswadi: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what brought you to your current role(s)?
Rory Shiner: I’m the senior pastor of Providence City Church here in Perth, Western Australia. I also have a role in our church network encouraging the other pastors and supporting church planting. And I chair the The Gospel Coalition Australia Council. I’m married to Susan, and we have four boys.
My path to full time ministry began at the University of Western Australia. I got involved in the Christian Union, had my life turned upside down by Jesus, and entered the Ministry Training Strategy under Tim Thorburn straight after uni. I went to Theological College in Sydney, then returned to Perth. Back in Perth I did student ministry then church-based student ministry, pastoring at St Matthew’s Shenton Park. While there we were involved in planting an international congregation as well as pastoring the student congregation.
Around 2013 I was asked if I would take up the senior pastor role at Providence, which I did in June of 2014. And that’s where I’ve been ever since.
What does leadership look like in your current role(s)?
I’ve just got back from long service leave in the UK, actually, which means I’ve been reflecting on my role a bit lately. First, when you start something, you’re hustling: you’re getting to know people, looking for opportunities, trying to create opportunities, saying yes to most things. But pretty soon in leadership, you move from trying to generate opportunities to needing to triage them. There comes a point where almost every available part of your time has at least, I don’t know, five? seven? legitimate claims on it. Where should the next hour go? Should I be meeting with my staff, preparing a report, following up a new or not-yet believer? Recruiting new leaders, working on the next sermon, taking the opportunity to say something about Jesus on local radio, or should I just go home and wrestle with the kids in the lounge room?
The problem is they’re all good things! So the decision isn’t between good and bad, but between one good thing and another good thing. You have to start exercising judgement and work out prayerfully what the best thing is given your role, your gifts, your time, energy, obligations, and capacity. And then, when you say yes to that, you’ve necessarily said no to everything else. I find that challenging.
Part of the process I’m working through at the moment is to ask questions such as, what are the non-delegable roles in my life and work? I can’t delegate being a disciple of Jesus, a friend, a father, or a husband. All of that needs time, space, and energy. So, what I can do in my ministry role is curtailed by these other roles. I still need to be a disciple, husband, father, and friend. And all of these happen in space and time, and limit my space and time for other things. In my ministry role, there are also things I can’t delegate. Sometimes because of the nature of my role itself, sometimes because of unique gifts or opportunities God might give me.
Another question I ask is what needs my attention right now? Because the demands never end it can be tempting to attend to the most insistent person, or the thing I find most personally agitating or irritating. But that’s not a good way to allocate my time. Instead, I have to assess what impact giving my attention will have and how it will serve the whole.
Or again, where could I, in my role and my gifting, make the best impact for Jesus? I’m hurtling toward fifty. One of the good things about this stage of life is that the jury is more or less in on what you’re good at. So the trick is to accept what God has given you, acknowledge your limitations, and get on with using what you do have for his kingdom.
What has God been teaching you about leadership?
I think of myself as a B-minus leader. Sometimes I say that I speak leadership as a second language (LSL). I came into ministry because of the great impact excellent Bible teaching had on me. I figured if I could teach the Bible, it would be a life well spent. But I’ve discovered that so much of the job is leading! Leading teams, leading people, decision making, delegating, training, equipping, and so on.
Some say leadership is innate. That’s a little bit true. There are people who are gifted natural leaders. There are others whose personality and gifting is not and will never be suited to senior leadership. But under the word leadership is a nest of gifts and abilities; it’s a very rare person who has all of them. As a friend of mine says, you need about ten gifts to lead effectively, and most of us only have about three.
The good news is that much about leadership can be learned, just like learning a second language, or writing with your left hand. I’ve learned how to lead effectively, but I really need to concentrate. I’ve read a bunch, got a load of coaching, and learned wherever I can. If I meet someone who exercises leadership in secular contexts, I’m like a vampire: I draw out everything I can. I suspect some people avoid me at dinner parties for this reason.
Further, as our church is growing, I need to keep reinventing myself and my role. Often, the ways I’ve operated, which were part of what God used to get us to this point, can be the very things that, if I keep doing them that way, will stop us from getting to the next point.
About three years ago I had a significant burnout experience. I was off for a month of medical leave and had probably eight to twelve months of walking wounded. Early on, there was about four to five weeks when I thought I’d broken something I couldn’t fix. If you’d asked me in that window of time, my honest answer would be that I did not think I’d be able to return to ministry. That was a little bit scary. People asked at the time, “Why didn’t you say anything?” The honest answer was “I didn’t know!” It just sort of grabbled me and tackled me to the ground. I didn’t see it coming.
Part of what I learned out of that is that you really need to know yourself. Lacking self-awareness is a dangerous thing in leadership. It’s dangerous for you and it can be dangerous for the people you lead. You can end up theologising things that are really just part of how you are wired. You can end up being inattentive to how you respond to certain people or situations. You can blame others for what you are responsible for, or blame yourself for things that are beyond your control. You can expect things of yourself that are, in all honesty, just not things for which God has given you the gifts or capacity.
The whole burnout thing taught me a bunch of lessons. It wasn’t just to work less hours—I think I work about as many hours now as I did then. It wasn’t how much I was working so much as what I was working on, how I was processing (or not processing) the endless disappointments of ministry, and the extent to which I had not maintained strong physical, emotional, and spiritual supply lines.
Is there a Bible verse that you often come back to for encouragement?
I really love Mark 10:51. Jesus has just come off a run of often insincere people trying to trick him, trap him, catch him, or get something selfish from him. Even his disciples have just foolishly asked if they can have positions of glory in the coming kingdom.
And then blind Bartimaeus shows up. And with blind Bartimaeus, it’s Jesus who approaches him with a question. Jesus says to him “What do you want me to do for you?” Imagine Jesus saying that to you! “What do you want me to do for you?”
And he says, “Rabbi, I want to see.” No pretense. No show. Just a dude asking Jesus for help. That’s where I want to be in the end. Just a guy asking the magnificent and kind Lord Jesus for his help.
