Leadership that heals & doesn't enable?

From going through the process of adopting a older child, one of the most powerful things our family has learned is the idea of 'being an enabler'. We learned (sometimes the hard way) that some behaviors we thought were cute or loving were actually sometimes cute and loving, but sometimes they were actually good old fashioned manipulation used to avoid an uncomfortable situation that really needed to be dealt with.

To enable someone means you make it possible for them to be able to do a certain behavior or to think a certain way. Through how you interact with them, what you say, what you encourage or discourage in them, etc, you make it possible for them to grow in a good and healthy direction. The opposite is also true in that you can can also encourage them to move along a path that is unhealthy or even bad or sinful through what you say, do, accept, etc.

When you think about being a leader in the church, what are things that you see in yourself or in other leaders to that paves the way for (or enables) good following/followers? And vice versa, what are some things that you see that enable people in church to continue in a lifestyle of sin or perhaps at least 'ignorant bliss' about their non-Christlike lifestyle?

Work the process...

Few people like to do it - make decisions about vision, values, direction and goals for a congregation (or whatever organization) and then put plain steps together in a plan that people and groups can follow and know that they are moving toward the positive goals, etc. Many people like to speak in generalities and in 'glowing terms' toward a misty vision of how the church or organization ought to be & how it will work if only we'll all get behind it and work at it. Many times those things/goals fail and the organization finds itself switching horses mid-stream and eventually finds fewer people willing to make the switch over and again.

How do you think that process ought to work? How clear must the goals of a church or of a ministry, etc be before a group actually sets out with the desire to 'try it out'? How clear should the goals be? How vague should they be left so that a group has 'wiggle room' to reinterpret the results later?

AND NOW...flip it over!

What are the times when you've seen things work really well 'at church' and a vision was cast and people followed and it all seemed to click together like a puzzle? What do you think made it go so well? How was it communicated? How was dissent or apathy dealt with?

AND THEN, through it all...

How was God's Kingdom and God Himself shown through either of the above circumstances? How did people in the church refer to God's work or His presence through the process?