Story as an Establishing Shot
I love my drone. The camera is amazing. Sometimes I just sit in the driveway and fly it straight up and rotate it 360 degrees to see the world where I live. On the ground, I can’t see where I live as fully as I can thru the camera’s 360-degree view at 500 feet.
Occasionally I’ll turn the camera lens down and find my small self.
Here’s a picture I took recently.
Can you find me?
In the world of movie-making, filmmakers can’t tell the story without using an establishing shot. An establishing shot is usually a long wide-angle shot at the beginning of a scene or sequence. It is intended to show things from a distance (often an aerial shot like my shot above) to identify and orient the locale or time for the scene and actions that follows. This shot is usually followed by a more detail shot that brings characters, objects or other figures closer.
Next time you was a TV show or movie look for the establishing shot; it’s a critical part of making the story make sense.
Story as a mental model is like an establishing shot for life.
It pulls us out the trees, reveals how small we are, gives us a bird’s eye view of our life and helps orient us for the action that takes place up close in the slow pace of life. Story, like an establishing shot, clarifies and focuses on the big picture while revealing the “frame” where life plays out.
We mentioned last week that the meta-narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, is
the mental model to rule all models,
the story of which all other stories are part,
the establishing shot for all history.
In other terminology, it is The world-view.
As Christ-following leaders, we need to live and lead out of this “view” of life and our calling in it. We are invited into this larger story, of which our little generation is but a chapter or scene in this story.
Last week, I mentioned four questions that arise out of the four chapters of the meta-narrative:
Creation – What ought to be?
Fall – What is?
Redemption – What could be?
Restoration – What will be?
Creation – Restoration (A Brief Thought)
As leaders, we should live and lead with all these four questions “ever before us.”
In this week’s letter, I’d like to focus on the middle two chapters of the story: Fall—What is?; Redemption—What Could Be?
But before I do that, a couple thoughts on the first and last questions.
Creation and Restoration, what ought to be and what will be, make up the beginning and ending of this Story of the Universe. There is much to say here, both in Creation’s Cultural Mandate and the imago dei and in the future Restoration of all things when Jesus sets everything right. We lead first from God’s call to exercise dominion over the earth, subdue it, and develop its latent potential, and from God’s image and design in us. But we also lead with a view to what will be, from that future day when Jesus fully rules and reigns.
I love how Tim Keller describes that day:
But Jesus Christ does not say he will give us consolation. He says He is giving us resurrection. What is resurrection? Resurrection means, “I have come not to take you out of the earth to heaven but to bring the power of heaven down to earth — to make a new heaven and new earth and make everything new. I am going to restore everything that was lost, and it will be a million times better than you can imagine. This is the power of My future, the power of the new heaven and new earth, the joy and the wholeness and the health and the newness that will come, the tears that will be gone, and the suffering and death and disease that will be wiped out — the power of all that will incorporate and envelop everything. Everything is going to be made better. Everything is going to be made right.”
Fall – Redemption
Last week, I adapted a quote about story-telling to leadership.
Aristotle said that a great story establishes what is and then establishes what could be thru the basic plotline of “beginning, middle and end.” The basic gap between “what is” and “what could be” is the tension found in every story.
As Aristotle explained, it is the storyteller’s job to close that gap and open a new one, over and over until the tale is done.
For our purposes, it is also the leaders’ job in the chapter being written for him or her.
Leaders close the gap between what is and what could be and open a new one, over and over until the tale is done.
In other words, leaders take teams and organizations from the status quo or current reality (What is) to a redeemed or new reality (What Could Be). In theological terms from Fall to Redemption. From brokenness to healing. From dysfunction to function. From death to life.
If you recall from our Foresight discussion, leaders always challenge the status quo and move others (or make decisions to move others) to a preferred future. Hopefully, you recall our friend the S or Sigmoid curve.
Where the mental model of story helps us is to see the progression “from what is to what could be” is natural to leadership. And as we shall see, the elements of story can enrich our ability to lead.
You probably noticed the “what will be” question in this foresight diagram doesn’t match the ultimate “what will be” future of Restoration. This foresight diagram challenges the leader in the now of today’s story to close the gap between what is and what could be and not to ride momentum toward a non-ultimate “probable future.”
What’s helpful and hope-generating in the meta-narrative is realizing that a day is coming when “what ought to be and what could be” will be “what will be.” In my favorite verse of the Bible, the day is coming when the angels will sing “The kingdom of the world had become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
How Story Helps Us: Leaders Think and Live and Lead “Diachronically”
As leaders, we’ve often tempted to only see leadership thru a synchronic or thematic lens.
Leadership is thus defined as a set of qualities I possess—courage, integrity, foresight, honesty, clarity. At a point in time, I possess or am working on possessing a particular set of qualities. Most of our training in leadership attempts to build these qualities into us—and rightly so.
For example, I taught a leadership model in the past which describes the leader by his or her relationships, roles, responsibilities, results.
Here’s a picture of that model:
Now, there is nothing wrong with this synchronic model. Qualities like integrity or skills like change agent are the means, the power behind our leadership. It’s as if we look at leadership as a carpenter would analyze a piece of wood–across its grain. Here’s one layer, here’s another. Here’s one quality of leadership we need, here’s another.
What is missing, however, in this synchronic or thematic approach to leadership is the meaning, the purpose of our leadership. That requires a diachronic approach.
Here, when we look diachronically at leadership we are like a carpenter who admires a piece of wood and works it by looking with the grain or along the grain. Now here’s the rub. Every carpenter knows, the beauty of wood arises from working with and showing off the grain.
By embracing Story as a mental model, we work with or along the grain, or diachronically across time.
Leadership as more than a set of qualities or skills, but as something with historical direction or intent. The best leaders, possessed of qualities and skills, employ them for a purpose. There is intent in their leadership–a movement somewhere.
In other words, great leaders lead from a sense of “what was right and/or wrong” about the past, from “what could be true in the future” while retaining an unrelenting commitment to “act in the present.”
Thus, to live and lead “diachronically or along the grain” is to lead with a historical/existential/eschatological flow.
Abraham Lincoln and His Historical/Existential/Eschatological Flow
Abraham Lincoln serves us again as an example. Recall our L&L letter about his ambition. But this week, let’s just glance at the Gettysburg Address, the most famous speech in American history.
It has this basic story flow from beginning, middle, end; from birth, death, rebirth; from what is to what could be:
The Past: Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth this nation…
The Present: Now, we are engaged in a great civil war . . . It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . ..
The Future: — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Offended by the injustices of slavery (“if slavery isn’t wrong, nothing is”–Lincoln) in the past, Lincoln also believed that America could find the better angels of its nature by tough, committed magnanimous leadership in the present — constructing a new and better nation for the future.
That future hope was worth any sacrifice.
Leaders of movements that “change the world” always lead from this historical/existential/eschatological sense of the flow of time. They step into the river of time and call other people to join them. That’s part of the reason they can call people to do great things (always envisioned in a new more glorious future), while wrestling with the weight of the past through strong, future-oriented exertions in the present.
Story, as a mental model, for leadership drives us to lead somewhere.
Story tells that you can’t be a leader if you don’t lead from where you and your team are to where they need to be.
Power must wed purpose.
With the establishing view of story, no matter how small I appear, I can’t just sit in my driveway. The tarps next to the barn need to be picked up. The grass needs watering. Some trees are dying. The driveway is keeping the Kingdom from coming to where I live.
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Next week: Story Part 3: Leadership and the Golden Ratio–its connection to Story, to the language of leadership, to the aesthetics of the universe.
