Distributed Leadership: The SBC Innovation Paradox

In "Back to the Future," a time paradox threatens Marty McFly's girlfriend Jennifer's existence. Similarly, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) faces its own paradox: revisiting their past identity could paradoxically benefit their progress rather than detract from it…if we don’t faint from it.

Many want to update the SBC with more streamlined and centralized leadership structures and approaches, not realizing that the shelf life of these approaches may be limited. Futurists and leadership experts today propose scenarios that increasingly see organizations moving toward "distributed leadership" models.

In his work on management innovation, Gary Hamel defines distributed leadership as a form of organizational governance where decisions are distributed across the organization rather than concentrated at the top. Bob Johansen introduces reciprocal leadership as a form of distributed leadership where no one is permanently in charge, and influence is reciprocated across a decentralized network. Linda Hill suggests that innovativeness is heightened when leadership is a collective activity distributed across many individuals who have the freedom to initiate change.

Imagine my surprise when, in searching for the future, I found the SBC's past. As organizations increasingly shift from rigid hierarchies towards more collaborative leadership models, the SBC finds itself uniquely positioned to embrace this meta-trend.

The principles of distributed leadership are not novel concepts but deeply rooted in the biblical foundations and historical Baptist traditions that have long been inherent to the SBC's polity.

The New Testament church exemplified the essence of distributed leadership through concepts like the interdependent Body of Christ, plurality of elders sharing oversight, the priesthood of all believers serving in ministry, and decentralized church governance.

Similarly, the Baptist distinctives of congregational autonomy, democratic processes, cooperative associations, and rotating lay leadership facilitated an intrinsically distributed leadership development and decision-making framework.

The SBC's funding model aligns with this future-oriented distributed model. The Cooperative Program funding model embodies distributed economic dynamics by sourcing voluntary contributions from thousands of autonomous churches, facilitating democratic processes for churches to provide budgetary input, pooling and redistributing resources through state/regional conventions, and enabling direct church/individual support for special offerings. Rather than control being centralized, the CP facilitates the distribution of economic influence, prioritization, and leadership engagement across the SBC's broad base of churches and members.

The SBC's current trajectory tends toward centralizing power, but signals suggest it would benefit more from pushing power outward through localized cooperation aligned with its historical roots. Embracing innovative distributed leadership means revisiting what the SBC used to be.

Rather than overhauling the convention’s systems, the SBC could optimize its distributed DNA, maintaining theological integrity while updating processes to be intentionally distributed. This could position the SBC for shifts foresight leaders anticipate.

SBC’s historical polity of dispersed authority, autonomy, and interdependent resourcing creates an inherently decentralized structure that aligns remarkably with the distributed leadership models proposed by futurists. This uniquely positions the SBC to reclaim these roots for organizational resilience and future innovation.

Returning to its past, therefore, is paradoxically a path to the SBC’s innovative progress.

Bibliography

Hamel, Gary, and Michele Zanini. Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

Hill, Linda A., et al. Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

Johansen, Bob. The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything. 1st ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017.