Entries Tagged 'Leadership' ↓

As I mentioned a few days ago, Leadership Network held a free online leadership event today called, Aha!, a 4-hour (plus) series of videos from around 40 different presenters talking about their aha! moments.

I had the event running on my computer (to the TV) the entire time, but I didn’t catch nearly all of it (other tasks and/or kids). But I think the quote that struck me most came from Pete Briscoe (Bent Tree Bible Fellowship), who shared his aha! moment …

I am no longer working for Jesus. I’m walking with him.

This was a great reminder that our call to serve and lead must always be grounded in a relationship with God. Nothing is more important than our relationship with God!

Dale Dawson talked about passion and stated …

And Jon Ferguson (Community Christian Church) offered six great questions for coaches/mentors to use with people they’re coaching/mentoring …

1. How are you?
2. What are you celebrating? Where are you winning?
3. What challenges are you experiencing?
4. What do you plan to do to solve these challenges?
5. How can I help you?
6. How can I pray for you?

I’m sure there were some other impacting statements as well, so I’ll try to catch some of the videos after they are posted in the near future. I’ll edit this post to add the link when it’s available.

I am grateful for my time at Asbury Theological Seminary for the doctor of ministry program (2004-2008). It was certainly worthwhile … and formational.

One of the statements that has shaped me the most came out of one of the three required courses, “Theology of Ministry,” taught by Dr. Stephen Seamands (author of Wounds That Heal, among others).

Seamands taught the following statement (subsequently published in Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service) …

I have entered into the ministry of Jesus, to the Father, through the Holy Spirit, on behalf of the world.

It’s a great statement. It’s both humbling — it’s God’s ministry, ultimately — and motivating. It’s been a great reminder over the course of the last six years!

(Incidentally, I think the fact that this statement is so memorable/impacting, speaks to the importance of “sticky statements”; see One-Point Preaching for more on sticky statements.)

Last fall, Leadership Network offered a free online leadership event called, The Nines (see my posts, The Nines Marathon and More on The Nines). Now, they are offering another online event called Aha!.

Aha!, which is expected to last about four hours, will focus on fresh ideas in the church coming from about 40 different presenters. The free event will take place Wednesday, March 3, 2010 beginning at noon Eastern.

According to the site, pre-registration is required. This time around, you can pay $20 for some extras, including full speaker notes (in advance).

It should be good.

Picking up where we left off five months ago (due to parental leaves), our Covenant Groups resumed last night (see Simple Church 1.0).

Our Covenant Groups (a requirement of our ordination process) are discussing Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s book, Simple Church. Since we had only read chapter one for our September 2009 meeting, we basically started over and covered the first two chapters this time. At this rate, we should be able to get through the book by the time we’re ordained! We meet every other month until ordination in June 2011.

The premise of the book (which grew out of an extensive research project) is that, “simple churches are growing and vibrant” (14).

Here are some quotes from the first two chapters that stand out to me …

To have a simple church, leaders must ensure that everything their church does fits together to produce life change. They must design a simple process that pulls everything together, a simple process that moves people toward spiritual maturity. (26)

To have a simple church, you must design a simple discipleship process. This process must be clear. It must move people toward maturity. It must be integrated fully into your church, and you must get rid of the clutter around it. (26)

Chapter two presents case studies of two different churches — a simple church and a complicated church. As expected, the simple church was the growing church. We’re reading chapter three for our next meeting (in April), but because this book has huge implications for our current work work with Five Practices, especially Intentional Faith Development, I’m reading ahead — and there’s lots of good stuff, which I’ll write about later.

A few sections of the book can be read online at Google Books.

There’s sort of a common joke among church leaders that pastors write many Monday morning letters of resignation. Along these lines, I once heard Rob Bell use the term “pastor’s hangover” in a sermon, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Perhaps it’s because I know what it feels like (although, mine are normally mild).

If I remember correctly, Bell stated that during a pastor’s hangover, the pastor wonders, “Did I really say that?”

The classic illustration for the pastor’s hangover is Elijah. After confronting the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel and leading people toward tremendous transformation, he runs from Jezebel, hides in a cave, and prays that God will end his life.

Well, that’s a pretty extreme form of a pastor’s hangover. But then the transformation experienced among the people was pretty extreme, too.

Hangovers come after times of great boldness (boldness isn’t static). I think the areas where I feel the most bold are (1) praying, (2) writing, and (3) preaching. But it’s only after preaching that I sometimes experience a pastor’s hangover.

When I experience them, I can feel the boldness wearing off on Sunday afternoon/evening, especially if it was an extra-intense day, as yesterday was.

I imagine it’s a much more intense experience for those who battle depression. “Hall of Fame” preacher, Charles Spurgeon, battled depression, I believe. I remember reading a story about him where he once prayed that he would break a leg so that he would not have to preach at a particular place. And that was *before* the sermon!

Fortunately, my hangovers are generally mild and short-lived. Sleep does a lot of good. Normally, I’m ready to dive back in by Monday morning. And I haven’t written any Monday morning letters of resignation, so far.

But this underscores why pastors — people who are called to transform people and shape culture through the preaching of God’s Word in the “life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels” (Ephesians 6.12, MSG) — need prayer. See Praying for Pastors for a good prayer guide.

Well, your comments are always welcome. I especially invite preachers to share their experiences of pastor’s hangovers.

Following up on yesterday’s post, Personal Growth Plan, I’ve been thinking about the things I think I need to be doing (virtually) every day (while similar to a post I wrote a year and a half ago, Routines, this post focuses more on the *everyday* routines).

I came up with a list of five daily must-dos …

• TWG: Time With God (prayer and Scripture, primarily)
• TWF: Time With Family (quality and quantity time)
• Reading & Listening (leadership, ministry, and/or spiritual formation)
• Sabbath Time (I’ve heard that the root word for Sabbath means, “to catch your breath”)
• Exercise (walking and weights)

I certainly haven’t mastered these five daily must-dos. And I’m not even sure it’s possible to do all five equally well everyday. Some days it’s hard enough just to do most of ‘em! But it’s a *reminder* of the important things that I need to be doing, that if done as consistently as possible, will make a big difference over the long haul.

TWG keeps me connected and growing in my relationship with God. TWF strengthens family relationships (including the ongoing bonding with Ethan and Sarah) and maintains a healthy living environment. Reading (as well as listening to leaders/communicators via podcasts or DVDs) stirs my heart and mind and also keeps me learning and growing. Daily Sabbath time (perhaps my biggest challenge on this list) will provide some healthier balance and will make the other daily practices more effective. And exercise releases stress and gives me energy (I include “weights” here even though it’s been a missing component since bringing Ethan home two years ago; hoping to change that soon, though); exercise creates a healthier environment where learning and growing can happen more effectively (in other words, it fills my tank; see Tank-Filling Activities).

What are your daily must-dos?

I have written about the value of learning and personal growth before. See Shaping a Learning Culture, Lifelong Learning, and even Still Learning from last week.

One of the people I’ve heard talk about having a personal growth plan is John Maxwell. I don’t remember where he writes about it — maybe Developing the Leader Within You or The Success Journey — but the idea is that learning isn’t accidental; it has to be intentional!

John Wesley was a huge proponent of personal growth. I remember reading somewhere that he challenged his preachers to read/study five hours per day. That’s pretty intense!

And as I’ve quoted before, Proverbs 19.27 says, “If you stop learning, you will forget what you already know” (CEV).

Recently, I jotted down the things we try to do intentionally for personal growth, including …

• Books, journals, and online resources.
• Leadership Summit DVDs (we recently picked up a few collections from previous years on clearance from Willow Creek).
• Various continuing education opportunities for leadership/ministry development (next up is the How to Reach Unchurched People in Your Community in a few weeks).
• The Provisional Membership process that we’re in is a required part of our growth plan.
• Audit Classes at Asbury Theological Seminary (probably after ordination in 2011).

Personal growth is important for everyone. It’s vital for followers of Jesus, who are “disciples” (a.k.a. students, learners, apprentices). And personal growth is absolutely imperative for leaders, too. I’ve always loved Rick Warren’s statement that “Leaders are learners; the moment you stop learning, you stop leading!”

In the next few days (hopefully), I plan to write a couple posts on (1) Daily Routines (those few things that I believe I *must* practice every day (or at least most every day), and more immediately, (2) a specific growth plan for the season of Lent, which begins next week on Ash Wednesday.

I realize some of us are more planners than others, but what do you do to make sure that you continue to grow?

At last week’s Bishop’s Retreat, Gilbert Rendle talked about the change that’s taking place in the world and in the church as well as the leadership that’s needed, as a result of the cultural change.

At the end of his presentation on Tuesday evening, Rendle challenged attendees to discover the “ten percent” (the amount of content most people can absorb from a seminar) that they needed to take home with them. After some reflection, here’s what I think I’m taking away from the retreat.

I thought the presentation on cultural change that’s going on both in the world and in the church was helpful, but I want to focus on the content from Rendle’s presentation on leadership, that is, how to lead change in the midst of a changing world.

Leadership vs. Management. Rendle talked about the difference between management and leadership. While both are necessary, most leaders were simply trained to be managers, to keep things running smoothly.

Management is primarily responsible for the present moment, for doing things right. Leadership is responsible for the future and change, for doing right things. While there’s been a growing amount of emphasis on the importance of leadership in recent years/decades, Rendle noted that …

We are asked for leadership at a time when we are rewarded for management. But you cannot do leadership without disrupting management.

So, while I certainly want things to run smoothly, I also realize that part of my job is to “stir the pot” (see my 2006 sermon for more on Stirring the Pot).

The Leadership Challenge. There is a disruptive component to leadership that makes leadership especially challenging. Rendle stated …

One of our tasks is to make people appropriately uncomfortable.

Of course, not everyone will go along for the journey, so Rendle offered a warning …

If you have a ‘no person left behind’ policy, you have already determined that you’re not going to do anything!

Leaders and churches must be willing to do the right things even when there’s resistance, because the alternative is simply to do nothing, or at least nothing worthwhile or life-changing.

Rendle also offered four leadership skills in his final session. But before I reflect on those, I need to review the video of the sessions, which are expected to be posted to the conference website this week.

We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church.

We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get settled in and to relax (we also posted some learnings from the retreat).

This year, we chose not to come a day early because we were concerned about how well Sarah would sleep here. We figured two nights would be better than three, at this point (although next year, I think we’ll come early; it’s more relaxing). We did arrive in town a few hours early to shop at the outlets before checking into our room just in time for the opening meal (followed by the evening session).

Ethan was with us last year, too, and this year, it’s a first for Sarah. Ethan hasn’t always handled being dropped off at child care in these kinds of “strange” gatherings very well, but we were hoping that having Sarah (a familiar face) with him would make things easier this time. Such was not the case. Last night, as we arrived at the door to the child care room, we experienced his worst ever response (too bad I didn’t have the video camera ready ). I had to chase him (while he cried loudly) down the hallway. I caught up to him at one of the exits. Of course, he continued to cry until shortly after we left. He was fine then and had a good time. This morning, we experienced a much less eventful drop-off, leaving two more drop-offs to go (this evening and tomorrow morning).

Since this is a “retreat,” we get Tuesday afternoons off. For us, that means trying to get the kids to take a nap. We gave up with Ethan and Joleen took him to the pool (which caught up to him later; see photo below). Fortunately, Sarah, who did not get much sleep last night (she went to sleep very late and woke up very early), had a good (up to) hour-and-a-half nap.

Last year, Ethan’s favorite spot was the fountain (which Ethan calls “mountain”). That’s still true this year. This morning, on the way to dropping him off at child care, we stopped at the fountain for a quick look. When we got to the child care room, he immediately started telling the child care workers, and everyone else, about the fountain (and how the water goes “up the pipes,” something I had explained to him yesterday).

Well, I’ll say more about what we’re learning from Gil Rendle, the speaker at this retreat, a little later. For now, I’ll simply say, there’s a lot of good stuff on leading change to chew on. Both the communication and the content are very good.

Here are some images from today …

 

New Year’s is one of my favorite times of the year, and the week between Christmas and New Year’s — the last week of the calendar year — tends to be a time of reflection (looking back) and refocusing (looking ahead).

And the fact that it’s our first week back after family leaves, makes it even more of an important time for reflecting and refocusing.

When I do the work of reflecting and refocusing, I begin with Scripture. As it relates to leadership/ministry, two passage always come to mind …

Acts 6.1-7 — Early church leaders had reached a point where they were being distracted from their primary task. As they refocused their leadership, they recommitted themselves to prayer and teaching the Word.

Ephesians 4.11-13 — The Apostle Paul states that the purpose of church leaders is to equip people to do God’s work.

Ultimately, the primary task of pastors and church leaders is transformation. As United Methodists, we’ve said that that’s our mission as a church, too:

The mission of The United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!

If the mission of the church is transformation, it makes sense that the leaders’ primary task is to equip the church for the work of transformation.

But it’s easy for us — the church and its leaders — to get distracted, isn’t it? Problem is, the things that distract us are often good things. In Acts 6, it was a food distribution program. Yes, the food distribution program needed to continue, but fortunately for the church, they found a better way.

Today, similar good things can also distract church leaders from their primary task. While these ministries must continue and even grow, we too must find a better way. Incidentally, the food distribution program grew when church leaders handed the ministry off to capable people who could more fully devote their time and attention to the ministry. There’s an important lesson here!

One of the areas I am refocusing on this week (something that I’ve been wanting to refocus on for a while) is preaching, or more specifically, sermon preparation. Since preaching (teaching, equipping) is part of my primary task, and because it’s easy to get distracted by the “tyranny of the urgent,” preparation is something that constantly needs attention and focus.

I’ll try to write more about this later in the week as I continue to reflect, refocus, and put into practice what I’m thinking.