Entries Tagged 'Personal Growth' ↓

Lifelong learning is a core value for us (see my post called Lifelong Learning). While our doctor of ministry programs, which have been a major part of our lifelong learning for the last 4.5 years, are just about over, we will continue to seek out new growth opportunities.

Besides getting back to our reading pile, which has grown even bigger since my post last September (see Reading Pile), we will also seek out high quality growth opportunities. Right now, we’re in the process of making plans to go to Leadership Institute, a 2-day conference for leaders hosted by The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection (COR), which takes place October 2-3, 2008.

COR is an amazing church located in Leawood, Kansas (Kansas City metropolitan area). Started just 18 years ago, COR now has more than 14,000 members with 8,000 people in weekly attendance. Adam Hamilton is the founding and senior pastor of COR (check out Adam’s blog).

We have 3 books by Adam that we may try to read before we go to the event in October: Leading Beyond the Walls (Joleen has read this one), Selling Swimsuits In The Arctic, and Unleashing the Word.

Adam’s teaching at the upcoming event is called “Ten Great Ideas … Ten Leadership Principles,” representing 10 of COR’s newest leadership ideas from the past year. We look forward to his teaching.

We are also impressed with the wide selection of workshops. We only wish we could attend more than 2 of the 80+ workshops offered. To maximize our learning, though, we’ll go to different workshops and share what we learn with each other.

• I’m planning to go to “Building a Process of Discipleship” and Joleen plans to go to “Connections Ministry from Front to Back” (both are described on this page).
• Our second choices include “Equipping Volunteers to Care for the Congregation” for me (see this page) and “Missions – Across the Street” for Joleen (see description on this page).

There are also a few pre-institute intensive workshops available. We will each attend one …

• I’m signing up for “Leadership Essentials: Practical Tools for Leading in the Church.”
• Joleen is signing up for “Building Community, Making Disciples: Strategies for Launching and Growing a Life-Changing Small Group Ministry.”

We’re excited about learning from those whom God has used in a big way. The teaching looks to be very practical, stuff that can be applied and implemented in any context.

Of course, we will be blogging about the event, reflecting on what we learn, so be sure to check back in October!

One of the things I look forward to as a parent is raising Ethan in the context of a leadership culture. Leadership is important to us; we’re both leaders. While we don’t yet know what gifts God has given him (and others God may develop in him in the future), we certainly want to provide an atmosphere where God can grow him to be a leader in whatever areas he discovers his giftedness.

In the Scriptures, particularly with the leaders in the Old Testament, there are so many examples of children following in the footsteps of their parents. Often when the parent was a bad leader, the child was also a bad leader, and vice versa. There were exceptions, of course, but they seem to be few and far between. The challenge for us is to provide the best environment we can so that Ethan will be an effective, godly leader.

Role Models
Everybody needs good role models. As parents, we’ll automatically be role models for Ethan, and that will include modeling leadership. We’ll also ensure that he is exposed to other good leaders so that he can learn from them, too. Having good role models is essential for learning leadership!

Opportunities to Lead
Learning leadership from others is necessary, but it’s not enough. You can’t develop leadership without actually leading. IOW, leadership skills are best developed on the job, putting them into practice. That means we’ll need to give Ethan opportunities to lead as he grows and matures (although we’re not exactly sure what that will look like yet).

Again, we don’t know what God has in store for Ethan, but everyone, regardless of giftedness, can benefit from a strong leadership culture. Everyone leads in some capacity — in school, in the workplace, as a parent, or any number of other contexts. May God help us to take our task of providing a leadership culture for Ethan to heart!

Well, this is part of a series of posts written in preparation for bringing Ethan home. Previously, we’ve written about shaping a God-centered culture, a learning culture, and a high AQ culture.

One of the best things you can do is to learn from other people’s experiences, including their mistakes. Learning from others and their mistakes is certainly a good and necessary habit for leaders.

Someone put it this way …

Learn from the mistakes of others — you can never live long enough to make them all yourself.

But while we want to learn from the mistakes of others, it would be a big mistake to miss out on some of our greatest potential for learning — our own mistakes. “Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.” (Tom Peters)

Now, I don’t like making mistakes, but the reality is, I make (and will continue to make) a lot of mistakes. That’s life. Hopefully, though, I will also learn from my mistakes. If I do, what I learn may very well be some of my best learnings.

Learning from my mistakes will help me to grow and develop as a leader. And if I don’t learn from my mistakes, I will miss out on a lot of learning.

A quote by Tom Peters has challenged me for years to be willing to making mistakes in order to learn and move forward …

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

Too often when we fail we quit, but if we would keep moving forward, and make adjustments based on what we’re learning in the process, we will be much more likely to succeed.

What kind of culture or environment do we want to create for our child? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves as we prepare for parenthood. So far, we’ve talked about cultivating a God-centered culture.

Another component of the culture we want to create is a learning culture. We believe that all of life is a classroom. Learning isn’t just something that happens at school or at church; learning can and should happen everywhere. “Learners have a hunger for growth.”

But learning isn’t automatic. Unfortunately, we can go through all kinds of life experiences and miss a lot of learning opportunities.

It’s no small thing, we believe, that followers of Jesus are called disciples (i.e. students, learners). Followers of Jesus must be learners throughout their lives. For Christ-followers to continually grow, there must be a learning culture.

Some thoughts on the kinds of learners we want to be and the kind of learner we hope to raise …

Hunger. Learners are curious and have a hunger for growth. They ask questions. They read. They learn from other people and from life experiences.

Creativity. We wrote about creativity in our review of the movie, “The Astronaut Farmer.” Basically, we want to encourage our child’s natural creativity, not stifle it. Most people lose their natural God-given creativity before they reach double-digits. We want to do our best to cultivate and encourage our child’s creativity!

Wisdom. Learners do more than simply gain knowledge, they develop wisdom and discernment (i.e. knowing what to do with information and knowledge). IOW, learners develop the ability to process the information they learn.

Application. Learners apply what they learn. Frankly, knowledge doesn’t do a whole lot of good if it isn’t ever applied or put into practice.

Learning is important, but again, it’s not automatic. For learning to happen, there’s gotta be a learning culture.

The books we want to read have been piling up!

If you’ve been following our doctor of ministry journey, you know that our personal growth time has been somewhat tied up. As a result, our reading time/schedule outside of the program is pretty limited.

So, as you can imagine, the pile of books that we want to read someday have been piling up for quite a while. We’ve included a photo of our current future reading pile. Most of the books are leadership books. Others are for spiritual formation and/or personal growth.

It’s pretty daunting, isn’t it!

At this point, we’re not sure when we’ll get to dive into it. It will definitely be after graduation. But with adoption coming soon, it might have to wait a bit longer. Then, there’s completing our ordination process. By then the current list of 76 books (plus any others that may be around the office or house) may be a lot bigger!

Helpful resource for leaders who love to read!

In a previous post, we talked about the importance of lifelong learning. If you’re a leader, you must be a reader.

If you need help knowing what to read, a great place to start is 800ceoread. This resource includes a daily blog, an excerpts blog, a podcasts blog, and a recommended books section.

For a while, 800ceoread operated InBubbleWrap where they gave away books to random winners most weekdays. While it ran, entering the daily contest was a part of our daily routine (we got 11 free books out of it!). We hated to see it end!

BTW, this post introduces a new category on our blog: Resources. The Internet is loaded with helpful resources for leaders. We’ll try to highlight some of them, occasionally.

Leaders value learning.

Lifelong learning is essential for leaders. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and The Purpose Driven Church, says, “All leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading.”

I love to read the book of Proverbs. Once while reading in the CEV, I was surprised by a powerful statement on the importance of lifelong learning: “If you stop learning, you will forget what you already know” (Proverbs 19.27). Wow! The only way to keep what you have gained is to keep on learning and growing!

What are you doing to cultivate continual growth in your life?