Entries Tagged 'Doctor of Ministry' ↓

Today was the last full day of class. We talked more practically and more specifically about mentoring, which has been a real emphasis of the entire class, actually.

I have had a candidacy mentor since 2000 for which I am grateful. And over the next course of the next few months, Joleen and I hope to enter into another mentoring relationship with a leader in our Conference. We always want to be learning and growing by interacting with other leaders who are more experienced than us.

But it’s certainly not just about us receiving from others; it’s about us receiving and being formed so that we can give to others and pour into their lives.

One thing that really struck me today was a statement that "dumping tasks" was not necessarily the same thing as "delegating tasks." It’s an attitude. Some leaders simply want to dump the tasks they don’t like to do, while others want to expand the ministry by sharing the ministry with others.

I believe I am in the second camp — I want to develop others for ministry and share the ministry with them. It’s not really about lightening my load!

I share that because many of you know that I intend to involve everyone in ministry. I hope I always make it clear that it’s because I believe the ministry will be better if you are involved, not simply that I’m trying to get others to do my work. Make sense?

If you’ve been reading along, you may know that this is our last class before we begin the dissertation-writing phase (in January 2007). Early on in the program, I had one idea that was fairly short-lived (I satisfied that particular desire with a research paper I wrote for one particular class).

But about one year ago, I developed the idea of writing a dissertation (project paper) on something within the context of "spiritual leadership." However, this class has caused me to rethink the direction for the paper.

Basically, I’m not really sure how I feel about the phrase "spiritual leadership" anymore. As I understand it, there’s no word in the Old Testament for "spiritual" or "secular."  It’s just life; all of life is to be lived for God. So, all leadership, regardless of where it’s practiced, can be "spiritual."

I’ve been thinking about this over the last couple of days and I shared my thoughts with Dr. West during one of our breaks today. In sharing this with him, I said I was thinking about some sort of connection between "developing a leadership culture" and "transforming community." In other words, what is the role of creating a leadership culture and transforming community?

His response was very helpful. In fact, we’re planning to talk more about it before we head home tomorrow after class. I will share more about this, and probably flesh it out with all of you, over the course of the next few months, as well as the next year or so, as we work on the church-bsed project paper.

Well, if I get a chance, I will write one final reflection piece after tomorrow’s session. For now, I want to thank you for reading and for praying!

Today was another good day of class.

Each day, a different student leads devotion at the beginning of the day, and at the end of the day, another student offers a reflection on the day and a closing prayer. Today, I was the "reflector."

I asked the question, "What are you taking with you today to help you in this process of going deeper (personally)?"

I asked that because I felt the key theme for the day was maturity. And I believed we talked about that maturity on two levels: 1) leading ourselves deeper, and 2) leading others (i.e. our churches) to go deeper.

During the day, the professor (Dr. Russell West) shared that a mentor told him early in his faith journey, "Start in Matthew. Read to the right, and read no faster than you can understand and obey." That’s great advice. Too often we simply read the Bible for informational purposes. But the Bible is not given to us primarily for informational purposes but for transformational ones!

Russell said at one point, "It’s the gospel that will take people deeper in the faith!"

One of the focuses of the day was a discussion on Paul’s cycle for developing churches:

Paul’s Cycle

• Evangelism (preaching the message)
• Establish (grounding new believers)
• Equip (equipping leaders)
• Expand (sending people)

I love that. It’s very similar to the three phases I’ve tended to talk about: Reaching, Teaching,  and Sending. In the cycle above, "teaching" is divided into a discipleship component (Establish - discipleship) and equipping component (leadership development). It’s a great way to understand the process; I will remember these as I lead the congregations I serve.

Today’s team-building activity involved two teams. Upon arrival, everyone received either a small or large bolt. Joleen and I (the only married couple in the class), had already each been given a small or large screw that matched the bolts that were given out. Everyone had to come to one of us to match bolts with the same-size screw. That’s how we devided into two teams.

Once divided into two teams, my team’s purpose was to transport a golf ball (placed on a "bull ring") using 8-foot strings that were tied to the bull ring. We had to meneuver the apparatus through a couple doorway. Once there, we had to drop the golf ball into a coffee cup on the floor.

To complicate matters, Joleen’s team’s purpose was to try to prevent us from being successful — placing obstacles in our path, standing in the way, placing obstacles around the cup, etc. To make matters worse, we only had a few minutes in which to accomplish the task.

We had a hard time figuring out how to keep the golf ball on the bull ring, but once we were able to do so, we were successful in the task. It was a good experience. We’ll have to see how some of you do with it at some point in the future!

It also nice to have part of the afternoon off. We ordered Chinese food and worked through lunch, then called it a day around 2:15 pm.

Joleen and I did take the afternoon off to enjoy some time together. We watched the movie "Click." It was both a good movie AND a bad movie. It was bad because it was typical Adam Sandler crudeness, unfortunately, but the message of the movie was great. The crudeness was absolutely unnecessary to the message of the movie; in fact, it got in the way, for us, anyway.

Well, one more full day, then a half day on Friday before returning home on Friday afternoon. We look forward to our remaining time in the classroom!

We’ve now completed two days. Normally, classes are from 8:30 am until 4:30 pm with 1.5 hours for lunch with a 15-minute break in the morning and afternoon. This class has followed a different schedule — 8:30 am until 5:00 pm with only 1 hour for lunch and shorter than 15 minute breaks in the morning and afternoon. But we don’t really mind the extra time — we’re here to learn as much as we can. Class ends Friday at noon at which time we’ll head home. BTW, we’ll have 3 months to complete our post-class work.

Our days are filled with a lot of variety — devotion, team building exercises (i.e. games), lecture and discussion, as well as a few video clips. The team building exercises come from the book, Teamwork & Teamplay. As I said yesterday, you’ll be seeing some of these in various places from time to time. They’re fun, but they’re also great ways to build teamwork.

We did three exercises during today’s class. We did very well on two of them, but awful on one. I’m hoping we get another chance at that one, because I have some ideas on how we might be able do it successfully. We’ll see how some of you do with it in the near future! :-)  (It involves a hula hoop and a bunch of people.)

We have wireless Internet access here on campus, which is nice (especially since we’re limited to dial-up at home). This time we even have access in the classroom (not all classrooms do, for some reason). I love being able to search Scripture at BibleGateway.com or for books that are mentioned in class at Amazon.com as well as checking email. Oh, during the morning break yesterday, I finally replaced my desktop images/screensaver from The Incredibles to images from Disney’s recent movie, Cars.

One of the more valuable pieces from today was a discussion on the many different types of leadership styles. When we think about leadership, we tend to think of one style. But there are really many different types of leadership. Here are the ones we discussed today. If there’s one (or a few) that you’d like me to attempt to describe, let me know in the "comments" section (click on "comments" just below this post).

• Doxalogical Leadership
• Missiological Leadership
• Apostolic Leadership
• Submissional Leadership
• Episcopal Leadership
• Pastoral/Poimenial Leadership
• Fiducial Leadership (Stewardship)
• Consensual Leadership
• Apologetical Leadership
• Polemical Leadership
• Prophetic Leadership
• Didactical Leadership
• Liberative Leadership
• Restorative Leadership
• Absolute Leadership
• Sacrificial Leadership
• Sapential Leadership
• Embassorial Leadership

Out of these, I tend to identify mostly with Episcopal (big picture, looking 2-3 steps down the road, etc) and Consensical (involving others in leadership, team effort, etc.) along with a couple others, perhaps.

We are really looking forward to tomorrow. This is the only class we’ve had where the professor is giving us part of an afternoon off (besides Friday, of course). We’ll have a working lunch then call it a day at 2:00 pm. Some of us are talking about going to watch a movie, perhaps Click or The Lakehouse, both of which Joleen and I want to see, either in the theater or on DVD when they come out in a few months.

Something to look for in the next couple days, weather permitting: I hope to take a couple photos around the campus and
post them here; there’s a great life-size statue of John Wesley in "John Wesley Square," my favorite place on campus.

Well, that’s it for Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

After worship services on Sunday, a quick lunch, and some final packing, Joleen and I headed for Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY around 1:15 pm. We made good time (good weather and traffic was not bad at all); we arrived in Wilmore about 10:15 pm. Needless to say, it was a very long day!

Our first day is now "in the books." We’ve been a little tired today (understandably), but it’s been a good day, too. Dr. Russell West ("Russell" from now on), our professor for this class, is a sharp guy; we look forward to the rest of this class.

Russell uses some creative approaches to teaching so this is definitely going to be an interesting and challenging week! In fact, you will probably see more of these approaches (I think we’ve tried to do some things along the way) played out in our ministries in various contexts — meetings, leadership development sessions, and even worship gatherings.

Yeah, some people won’t like it, but the same people wouldn’t have liked Jesus’ approaches, which were very creative and edgy for his day!

Anyway, we spent the first hour today playing a game — tossing around a beach ball, then several other fairly safe objects — at the same time! Actually, it’s a game we’ve used in youth ministry settings before; it’s a good way to learn names, if nothing else. Russell gave brief instructions and left us to play on our own and even make up our own game. The object was to help serious people to loosen up so they can learn. It took us a while!

Hopefully, we’ll do better tomorrow, and even better by the end of the week.

This is our 8th and final leadership class in this D.Min. program. Only the dissertation writing class remains after this one. We’ve enjoyed every class and they’ve all been different. This one looks to be a good class to bring together a lot of what we’ve learned up to this point.

The first day of class is usually a getting-to-know-you kind of day, a day where we’re all getting acclimated into the environment. Now that we’ve begun building this foundation, things should really start to get exciting around here!

I hope to write each evening this week, so be sure to check in from time to time!

We’re back from Phoenix. Our last day there (Sunday) was incredible — 82 degrees! We landed in Pittsburgh shortly after noon on Mondy as it began to snow. We drove home in light snow and 25-degree weather. Talk about a rude awakening!

One of our assignments upon returning from Phoenix has been to write and post a 300-word evaluation of the seminar (to the online classroom), lifting up ideas that we felt were helpful, things we disagreed with, ideas that inspired us and/or stretched our thinking. That’s tough to do in 300 words. I am posting my evaluation here (at 332 words it is by far the shortest evaluation posted so far). Preachers!

Some of these statements are so brief that they may only make sense to those who were at the seminar. If you have questions about anything, feel free to post a comment below (by clicking on "comments" at the end of this post).

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I enjoyed the Beeson module on “visionary leadership” in Phoenix. One of the most helpful presentations was Ed’s “the sway of the they” — a great reminder about staying the course, listening to the right people, and not getting sidetracked by the wrong ones.

I was also intrigued by the shakeup of Fellowship’s staff. Bold. Risky. Out-of-the-box. That’s the “confusion principle” (the weightlifting principle Ed mentioned in his second presentation) at work in one’s staff! They certainly won’t get in a rut!

I will remember the three common ingredients (in churches making disciples) that Walt discovered during his recovery from a massive heart attack and time of searching (after hearing God’s voice, “I’m calling you to build a community of disciples, not a community of consumers”) …

1) Serious work with the Word of God
2) Work of the Holy Spirit
3) Authenticity

I enjoyed Breen’s talk about the “operating system” of the kingdom. The church seems to be the operating system for many; Breen suggested that discipleship was Jesus’ operating system.

While I am wrestling with CCV’s narrow target of 25-45 year-old men (or the strategies involved), I enjoyed listening to CCV’s visionary leader, Don Wilson. He challenged churches to determine their core values, lamenting the fact that most churches are “personality-driven” while most successful corporations are “core values-driven.”

I was inspired by Wilson’s talk of sacrifice, particularly as he shared about his own sacrifice. And I loved the old proverb he quoted: “An army of sheep led by a lion will always defeat an army of lions led by a sheep!”

Kirbyjon, in a memorable way, emphasized getting the process right: vision, mission, objectives, and systems and structures — then people will follow.

I was inspired by Kirbyjon’s statement, “Just because we haven’t done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” And I loved what a staff member said about him in a newspaper interview: “‘Impossible’ to Kirbyjon simply means ‘it’s going to take a little longer.’”

Lots to process and implement!

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We very much enjoyed this event. We’ll be doing a lot more processing of the event next week during our next assignment — writing a 100-word response to each of the other 11 student evaluations that are posted in the online classroom.

Finally, we also enjoyed visiting Community Church of Joy on Saturday evening and Christ’s Church of the Valley on Sunday morning. While we enjoy leading worship 48 Sundays per year at home, it is always good to be able to attend worship 4 times per year in other settings. It is both a learning experience for us as well as a worshipful one.

See you all on Sunday as we begin our Lenten journey together. We will be focusing on the "7 Deadly Sins" and how to manage and overcome them!

We switched venues today, moving from CCV to Community Church of Joy (CCOJ) for the final day. We listened to presentations by Walt Kallestad and Mike Breen (pastors at CCOJ) in the morning followed by presentations by Dale Galloway and Cynthia Hale. After a dinner break, we closed out the conference at Phoenix First Assembly where Tommy Barnett and the church offered the closing presentation.

It was a good day and a good conference. One of the best things about the conference is that it created a lot of tension. There was so much contrast among the different speakers and their ministries

For example, after spending two days at CCV (an awesome new building with extravagant high tech capabilities) we went to CCOJ which is in the midst of a major transition. Walt Kallestad presented a transparent confessional talk about the personal transformation he’s gone through since his massive heart attack (and subsequent 6-bypass surgery) in 2002. That transition was written about last year in a major ministry magazine, which you can read here.

Kallestad talked about his personal transformation from making consumers to making disciples. It’s been a difficult process. In fact, several of his staff members are no longer with him, and they’ve lost a lot of attenders in the process. But I’m thankful to see this transition, even though it’s very hard for them!

Kallestad was followed by his new partner in ministry, Mike Breen, who shared about our purpose as Christ-followers, using the "operating system" (OS) metaphor. It was very well done. Breen noted that too often our OS is the church, but he argued that the OS should be discipleship. It was a very thought-provoking morning! I definitely need some time to process it all!

Closing out the seminar at Phoenix First Assembly only added to the event’s contrast. It’s another huge megachurch, and part of their presentation involved special music presented by their various (huge!) music groups. They showed a couple videos of their Christmas and Easter pageants, and ironically, they were the kinds of productions that Kallestad has abandoned in the last few years.

So, as I said, this event has created a lot of tension. In the coming days, I’ll have to try to process it as much as I can in order to come to some conclusions for my on life and ministry.

But that just about wraps it up for now. Joleen and I (after we complete the first round of papers for this class in the morning) plan to head up to the Grand Canyon. We’ll return to Phoenix for the Emerging Worship service at CCOJ Saturday evening; we may also attend at least one Sunday services at CCOJ and/or CCV. So I may have more to say about what’s
happening there in the coming days.

God’s best to you!

We had the local news on this morning and the weather forecaster consoled the viewing audience, "It’s going to be a cool day. Only 66."

Can you believe that?! Well, it wasn’t so bad!

The bad news for the local area weather-wise, though, is that it has now gone 127 days with no rain.

The host church (CCV) has a cafe, which provides our lunch this week, and they have a lot of seating outdoors, so we ate our lunch today outdoors; it’s an incredible setting. That was very nice, especially since we have to spend most of our time indoors.

Well, there’s way too much to process from today, but I’ll try to briefly summarize each. Today was a lot of fun! Both Ed Young and Kirbyjon Caldwell were amazing. I took a lot of great notes from both of them and will need some time to process all of it. I will especially be sharing a lot of this stuff with our "Adventure Guides"!

Ed Young, who is obviously and admittedly ADD, as well as highly creative, talked first about the "sway of the they." That’s when people say to leaders, "Well, they (or so-and-so) said …" The "they" is usually a few. And listening to the "wrong they" will always get you off task and off course.

In his second presentation, Ed talked about asking questions. Growing leaders are always asking questions. And the key is to ask the right people the right questions to get the right answers.

Kirbyjon Caldwell talked, in a visual and creative way, about getting our priorities right — Vision, Mission, Ojectives & Strategies, Structures & Systems, and People. IOW, when we get this stuff in order, good people will follow. Kirbyjon strongly emphasized having a vision for the home, asking, how can you have a vision for God’s house if you don’t have a vision for your house?

Well, there’s lots more to process, but for now, though, I’ll simply note something that was a real highlight for me, personally: Joleen and I bought a copy of Ed Young’s new book, The Creative Leader so that we could get it signed. Ed Young is the founding pastor of Fellowship Church which currently runs around 20,000 people in worship each weekend. He has a weekly TV/radio program called "Creative Connection" (one of the few good Christian programs, IMO).

Anyway, we were second in line, I think, and since Ed had talked a little about mind mapping (he’s been mind mapping for 16 years, I believe), I showed him a copy of my last MapNotes (the term I use for my sermon notes which are in mind map format). I have been mind mapping for several years and just in the last year have begun putting my sermon notes in a mind map format (they’re a lot better now than they were a year ago, but there’s always room for improvement!). He asked if he could have it, and for the name of the program I use. That was cool. (FYI, here’s the PDF of the MapNotes I gave him).

I’ll post one more thing: Ed Young did something that alone was worth the entire cost (tuition, plane tickets, car rental, hotel, food, etc.) of coming to this event! Ed was making the point that you have to be who you are; don’t try to be someone you’re not. To illustrate that, he did a great impersonation of TD Jakes. Then to drive home his point, he did an impersonation of Joel Osteen impersonating TD Jakes (Jakes’ words in Joel Osteen’s style). It was absolutely hilarious! And a point well made.

Well, there’s much to chew on as I turn in for the night. One day to go. Tomorrow we go to be impacted by Walt Kallestad and Mike Breen (and a couple others). It should be another incredible day! May God help us (like sponges) absorb all we can!

Wow! Where to start!

It’s been a great day. The weather was great even though we spent much of the day indoors. And although a cold front moved in for the week, the 60 degrees (not to mention the sunshine!) we had today was a lot higher than the 37 degrees back in PA! (Each day is to be a bit warmer than the previous day, according to the forecast).

This was the day I knew the least about. While I am familiar with the people lined up to speak on Wednesday and Thursday, I was not familiar with the host church, Christ’s Church of the Valley (CCV), or their leaders (including Don Wilson, the senior pastor). But we have been so impressed with this place and Don Wilson (introduced as one of the most visionary leaders); in fact, we have decided to attend one of their services this weekend in addition to one or two at Community Church of Joy.

This is indeed an amazing place, with Incredible (and expanding) facilities located on 100 acres of desert. We took some photos and will try to post some of them when we return home next week (since we did not bring our USB cable with us). In the meantime, check out Google’s Satellite Image of the church here (this photo seems to have been taken before some of the construction, including road construction, was completed).

Here are some of the more impacting quotes and/or thoughts that I jotted down from today’s presentations/discussions …

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The problem with facilities is convincing people that they are the church on Monday through Saturday and not just on Sunday. IOW, ministry can and must happen anywhere, not just on church property.

Most new churches build their building too soon and too small.

Two essentials: "critical mass" and "momentum."

Lead by example.

Big vision attracts people with big vision.

Every time we go through building programs, we suffer big Satanic attacks.

Don’t plan too far out. No 5-year (or longer) plans.

Need to work on core values. Difference between successful churches and successful corporations — successful churches tend to be personality driven and successful corporations tends to be core values driven. We need to determine our core values!

Do more with less. CCV plans to cut out 1/3 of their ministries in the next year!

You are your greatest leadership challenge.

Your leadership style has to change at every level.

Old Proverb: "An army of sheep led by a lion will always defeat an army of lions led by a sheep." That’s a great statement about the importance of good leadership!

Sacrifice was a real focus today, and Don Wilson asked, how do you get people who don’t tithe to understand the concept of sacrifice?

90% of the things we pray about in our churches are things that Jesus never prayed about. Jesus prayed about kingdom issues.

CCV’s vision is to WIN, TRAIN, and SEND, and their priority is on the winning part.

Instead of the old "here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and here are the people," it should be "here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and release all the people."

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There are many people from around the nation (and world) who attend these Beeson seminars. Twelve of us are attending the seminar for course credit. During the seminar, attendees are assigned to "processing groups," and we break into those groups a few times during the event. Our class serves as a processing group. We’ve  had some good discussion in our group, so far.

We spent part of our break times today walking around the campus here — awesome place and location. At the end of the day we ate dinner at Abuelo’s, an upscale Mexican restaurant with four others, including our professor (who is a pastor from Oregon).

It’s been a good day. Now, I am going to get back to my reading. I still have one book to finish (then two papers to write), hopefully by Thursday morning.

Tomorrow we head back to CCV where we’ll listen to two main speakers. The morning presenter will be Ed Young, Jr. from Fellowship Church in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. I am really looking forward to his presentation where he’ll tell Fellowship’s story and talk about creativity. His book, The Creative Leader, was published recently. It’s the next book I want to buy and read!

The afternoon speaker will be Kirbyjon Caldwell from Windsor Village UMC in Houston, TX. I’ve been looking forward to his presentation ever since I heard he was going to be at this event.

Until tomorrow night, thanks for reading!

Greetings from sunny Phoenix!

The good news is that I’m writing this around 6:45 pm (MST), but the bad news is my body is telling me it’s really 8:45 pm (EST). And if you knew how much sleep I got last night (keep reading), you’d know that’s not a good thing!

Joleen and I arrived here a few hours ago, thankfully. For some reason we like doing things the hard way — we got up at 2:00 am to get ready and drive to the Pittsburgh airport (on less than three hours sleep) for a 7:15 am departure! Next time, we’ll go to Pittsburgh (or wherever) the night before!

We had a good flight, though, and now we’re ready for the week ahead.

(Let me insert a personal reflection here: my family moved from California to Tennessee when I was 11. I remember the long journey in a Ryder rental truck traveling along I-40. We spent a night in Flagstaff, AZ and the next night in Albuquerque, NM. I remember loving the land of the desert southwest, so it was nice to see NM and AZ from the sky today! And I look forward to seeing more of the area as the week progresses! And since we love Mexican food, it may be just about all we eat this week, for dinner anyway — there are Mexican restaurants everywhere!)

(And while I’m at it, let me insert a second personal reflection: Joleen and I went to the grocery store after arriving to pick up some stuff for breakfast this week and I suddenly realized something — this is the closest I’ve been to California since I left the state in March 1980. It was an interesting feeling. Anyway. Back to the topic at hand …)

Tomorrow morning, we’ll begin our seventh class (as part of our degree program at Asbury). The class is on "visionary leadership" and is being conducted at some cutting edge churches here in Phoenix (more on that as the week progresses).

The first two days of the seminar/class will be conducted at Christ’s Church of the Valley. Tomorrow will be primarily teaching from their pastor (Don Wilson) and staff. I’m excited about tomorrow’s lineup, but I am even more excited about Wednesday’s lineup. And as if it couldn’t get any better, I am most excited about Thursday (but I’ll talk about those days later).

So, check back later for reports on the events of each day. I especially want to reflect on things that are life-changing for me and how I think those things can impact what God is doing bck home in the Juniata Valley!

The seminar/class ends on Thursday night, and as you know, we’re heading back on Monday. We plan to go to the Grand Canyon on Friday and return on Saturday in time to attend the Emerging Worship service at Community Church of Joy. We may also attend one or more of their Sunday morning services (all different services led by different pastors).

That’s what the week looks like from this vantage point. Let’s see what God does!

Well, I have some homework to do now.

Fridays are half-days in the dmin program at Asbury. And today was very laidback. We began the day, as we did each day, with a time of devotion and worship in Fletcher Chapel. The worship time was a real highlight of the week’s experience!

After worship time, we talked about our final paper (due within the next couple of months), and we watched a video that’s in the process of being produced that talks about holiness in the context of hiking and backpacking up a high mountain in Colorado. The video featured Steve and some of his close friends making their way up to the summit.

Joleen and I left Asbury around noon and got home around 9:00 pm. It’s been a long week and a very long day. I’ll try to get some rest tonight, then spend the day tomorrow preparing for Sunday! And, needless to say, we are really looking forward to a day of rest on Monday, our day off!

It was a great week. The lectures and discussion were meaningful and stretching. Daily time spent in small groups was valuable. Shared meals with friends at area restaurants were nice. And I especially enjoyed and appreciated the international students that were in class with us, representing Nigeria, Ecuador, Nova Scotia/Canada as well as missionaries to South Africa and one on leave (who was in South or Central America, I believe). It’s always refreshing — as well as challenging — to spend time with friends and colleagues in such an intensive environment!

Well, I’m back on Sunday and we will continue with our series on Numbers 13-14, "Let’s Conquer the Land!" This Sunday, we’ll take a closer look at two important people of faith in this story — Joshua and Caleb. They were men of faith, courage, and integrity, even in the face of unfaithfulness and rebellion!

Wanted: Joshuas and Calebs!