Even the best of us can get caught in a bitterness of spirit, whether to an individual, a group, a type or even a whole church.
Category: leadership
With Steve Jobs you were only toast if you thought he was wrong but didn’t dare to say so. But I’ve seen pastors act as if disagreeing was an act of treachery.
Like you, your heroes are average at almost everything they do – you’ve just shone a light onto the brilliant bit.
If you want people to focus and contribute, you need to help them keep in the game. And that gets harder as the clock keeps moving.
Thermometers can tell you what’s happening, but they can’t change anything. Enter the thermostat.
You’re probably facing a series of leadership questions in your church, but it’s important to see that your role might not be the same in each circumstance.
‘Ghosts’ are the habits, practices, customs of the past that don’t have any present value, but the organisation (church, group, whatever) still carries on with them.
When you’re a leader, it’s all too easy to be the hero. You’re the one with the answers, the vision, the ideas. You’re the pack leader, the team captain, the one who’s first over the top. And you know as well as I do, all the things that are wrong with that ‘big hero’ style.
It’s not that this kind of leader want to be the only person in the room – Diotrephes needed that church he could control – but he needed to be the leader in the room. And he’d break fellowship with an apostle to win.
I’m sure I’m not the only pastor who dreads Annual Meetings. I’ve seen them hijacked by silly side issues, falling apart in blazing rows, or just quietly managing decline.
Each person in that nightmare was a Christian, serving and sacrificing. But somehow, that shared commitment did not become a shared commitment to each other.
Pastors can be so busy giving out, giving themselves away, that they don’t take the time to check what’s going on inside them, and ask, ‘What am I supposed to be doing here, and how do I keep on keeping going for the long haul?’
So I’ve written a new free give-away for subscribing to my email list. The Pastor’s Check-Up
LeaderBox is dedicated to getting you reading with focus, and then implementing what you learn. And there have been action points for me out of every book.
When I go painting (which I don’t do often enough) I spend ages choosing where I’m going to paint from, and where I’m going to choose as my vantage point. My first choice is not always the best choice, and I take time to settle. Other people in the painting class stand to sit, nearby
That awful white piece of paper is terrifying. No-one has an idea, no-one wants to go first, and if you’re not careful all you’ll do is write up on the board, one hour later, ‘Try (a different course).’
Someone, somewhere, has cracked the puzzle that’s causing your team long meetings and headaches. Or, if they haven’t cracked it, they’re a bit further along the path than you.
The culture sees independence as maturity, but for us that’s not good enough. Interdependence is maturity.
What are the good things social media can bring to a pastor’s life?
What happens to a pastor’s soul when we consume social media?
I’ve just watched a small team have a bit of a wobble. They didn’t crash – the event they planned went smoothly in the end, and no-one outside the team would have spotted that there was a problem. But there was, and it’s easily solved.
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