Christian Community

Every day brings to the Christian many hours in which he will be alone in an unchristian environment. These are the times of testing. This is the test of true meditation and true Christian community. Has the fellowship served to make the individual free, strong, and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it taken him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him uneasy and unsure? This is one of the most searching and critical questions that can be put to any Christian fellowship.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

What kind of community are you building? - Ed

Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a
battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two
"wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false
pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:
"Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

I don't know the source of this story, but it seemed not inappropriate at Christmas. - Ed

Leadership Intuition

If you try to lead by everything you’ve been taught about leadership, you will likely fail. At all times we must be open to the possibility that what we thought we knew is wrong. Instead, trust your gut. Intuition must be a component of decision making, especially in complex or chaotic situations, where it may be more accurate and reliable than rationalization based on past experience.
-- Leonard Sweet, Summoned to Lead

This works best when your "gut" is solidly grounded in the faith. (Sorry about the mixed metaphor.)- Ed

Saying "Yes"

Moses spends forty years answering the Voice that spoke out of the bush…Nowhere does the Bible romanticize mystery or exalt religious experience for its own sake. What remains central in each instance is the response of the person to what beckons through the mystery. And the essence of faithful response is the willingness to be drawn forth completely by what calls from the heart of the mystery. What matters supremely is the “yes,” the letting go, the yielding to a whole new way.
--Steve Doughty, To Walk in Integrity

Vision Without Guilt

The pastor needs to believe that God’s Spirit is at work in the lives of congregational members. This means the pastor is always seeing the congregation in its best light, hoping for the best, and telling stories of those who are doing things well. Individual and congregational confrontations will come when systemic change is attempted. However, vision never takes root in people when it is communicated through guilt, or acts of warfare. Vision is always cast in a positive light.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Good leadership and Vision

A congregation is desperate for leaders who are filled with passion, have already demonstrated courage, see flexibility as a virtue, are missional because of their passion, are wise, really believe God expects them to win with a whole groups of saints who feel the same, and who take bottom-line responsibility for what God will do through them.

Vision does not necessarily start with the pastor. However, most pastors who arrive to lead congregations that lack vision, hope, and morale will find that if they do not generate vision, no one else will. Committees, vision communities, or people exploring vision as a short-term project do not generate visions that produce systemic change.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Vision and a Warning

Vision is derived from the passion of a leader who has a prophetic fire burning within the soul to accomplish something significant for God. Groups may take this vision, help produce congregational ownership, and delineate its implementation, but, without prophetic fire to begin with, there are no images of preferred futures that produce systemic change. If pastors are not clear about either their role or that of the Church, most congregations will remain dormant, irrelevant to life change, and in decline.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Transformational Church

Is it any wonder then that people live in a state of confusion over the identity and calling of the church? Loren Mead says that the church today exists within a context of ambiguity. The culture is a mixture of openness, indifference, confusion, and hostility toward the church. It is my experience that most people enter the church not knowing just what the church is and its purpose—its identity and calling—or the notion they have is misinformed. That we live in an age of ambiguous cultural perceptions toward the church within a reality of religious pluralism means that the church has to work very hard at being clear about its own witness to the world.

The task of a transformational church in a consumer culture is to assist people to discover their gifts, assume greater ownership of the congregation’s life and mission, and do what works for them. Discipleship is not to exhaust people or fragment families because they spend too much time doing “church work.” Discipleship is putting one’s passions to work in ways that promote wellness and wholeness in the whole of life and in all arenas, in the church and the world, for the sake of Jesus. From the days of the infant church until now, the baptized live in the world among all walks of life.
--Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Flush from a mighty victory over Baal’s prophets at the contest on Mount Carmel, Elijah frantically flees Jezebel’s wrath, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (1 Kings 19).

So, the only person surprised when self-pity seizes Elijah’s soul and takes him down into the pit is Elijah. In this sad state of the soul, all his marvelous intuitive, spiritual strengths are turned against him, and he actually begins to believe the devil’s lie that God has abandoned him. Self-pity opens us to enormous self-deception, doesn’t it?

But the moment of our importunity is often God’s opportunity. The still, small voice ministers mercy even while posing the question: “What are you doing here?” What is he doing indeed! What Elijah desperately needs and longs for but cannot name in his muted and defeated condition is the healing of the purpose of his life. This healing of purpose happens only when we are pushed up against the reason for our existence. Only when God begins to ask the core questions of our lives can we hope to recover any sense of the Divine calling upon our lives.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Leadership Character

Spirit Leaders don’t need to have a heavy-duty ego stake (“See, I told you I was right!”) in the outcome of personality clashes. They don’t even need to hear an apology because they choose to live on the Easter side of the cross, where the selfish self is dead, buried, and out of the way, so the deeper self that is aligned with Christ may rise to faithfully serve.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Walk with Integrity

Those who walk with integrity heed the call to repentance. Their longing for wholeness will not let them do anything else. They know their own weaknesses. They understand that even if they have committed themselves to an upright life, the old capacities for lust, greed, sloth, and pride remain. Their honest humility is in no small part born of knowing that they, like all others, have fallen short of the glory of God and, no doubt, will continue to do so.

Those who walk in integrity act with humility. In the midst of crisis, the completeness that speaks through their lives sounds a very different tone in our world than the arrogant boast, the power-asserting threat, and the proud claim to absolute righteousness.

To act with humility is in no way to cower or to hold back. Indeed, when it comes to acting on difficult issues, the humble often become the boldest. Knowing their limitations, they stand free of any need to pretend to be more than they are. Knowing their finite place in relation to the One who reaches toward all, they open to God and others in a way that pride will never allow.

--Steve Doughty, To Walk in Integrity

Healing and Forgiveness

How many times have you heard someone say, "Even if God could forgive me, I could never forgive myself"?

I thought of the apostle Peter and how he denied Jesus. (See Luke 22:61-62.) What if Peter had been so full of self-condemnation that he had languished for the rest of his life, refusing God's forgiveness because he could not forgive himself? A life of valuable witness and all that Peter did in the early church would never have come about. But Peter, despite his failures, accepted God's grace and moved forward.

Lack of forgiveness can keep us from serving God. For that reason we are called upon not only to forgive others but to forgive ourselves.
--Taken from the Upper Room Daily Devotional

To be an effective leader it helps to have as little unfinished business as possible. Forgiveness is one of those things we tend to push to the back. As a result, this unfinished business saps our energy, drags us down and even unconsciously distracts us from the current work before us. To not forgive ourselves when God has forgiven us is to set ourselves up as a higher court than God. Finally,there is strong evidence that when we have not forgiven ourselves of something, we become more judgmental of others. From the Kingdom point of view, a judgmental leaders is an ineffective leader.

Holy Spirit Healing

Part of the inner journey of growing in Christ is allowing the Holy Spirit to peel back the layers, heal the underlying hurts, expose our pride, and show us how to make creative and redemptive responses to things that happen in the external world. As we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this work of inner transformation, the ego’s false-self weakens; and the true self in Christ emerges.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Listen to Your Life

We cannot live our lives constantly looking back, listening back, lest we be turned into pillars of longing and regret, but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music. Sometimes we avoid listening for fear that we may hear nothing at all but the empty rattle of our own feet on the pavement. But “be not afraid, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” He says he is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for him. Listen to the sweet and bitter airs of your present and past for the sound of him.
Frederick Buechner in Sacred Journey

Desire

What would it feel like to lay your head on your pillow at night and say, “You know what I did today? I teamed up with God to change the world”?
The desire to be a world-changer is planted in the heart of every human being, and that desire comes directly from the heart of God. We can suffocate that desire in selfishness, silence it with the chatter of competing demands, or bypass it on the fast track to personal achievement. But it’s still there. Whenever we wonder if the daily eight-to-five grind or our round-the-clock parenting tasks are all there is to life, that divine desire nudges us. Whenever we feel restless and unsatisfied, the desire whispers in our soul. Whenever we wonder what a life of real purpose would feel like, the desire calls us to something more.
--Bill Hybels, The Volunteer Revolution

Taks this seriously and listen more carefully to the deeper longings of your heart.

The Mind of God

The story is told of St. Augustine that one day as he was walking along the seashore, his mind deep in thought, his reverie was interrupted by the sight of a little boy running to the water with a seashell in his hand. The little boy filled the shell with seawater, then poured it into a hole he had made in the sand. “What are you doing, my little man?” Augustine is purported to have asked. “Oh,” said the little boy, “I am trying to put the ocean in this hole.”
Augustine immediately “got it.” “That is what I am trying to do; I see it now. Standing on the sands of time, I am trying to get into this little finite mind, things which are infinite.”
--Leonard Sweet, Summoned to Lead

It is possible to get a sense of what God is up to. However, if you think you understand the mind of God, you had to shrink God seriously to get the Lord to fit your thoughts..."Now playing at a mind near you: 'Honey, I Shrunk God!' (sic)"

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

Vision and Passion

Vision is derived from the passion of a leader who has a prophetic fire burning within the soul to accomplish something significant for God. Groups may take this vision, help produce congregational ownership, and delineate its implementation, but, without prophetic fire to begin with, there are no images of preferred futures that produce systemic change. If pastors are not clear about either their role or that of the Church, most congregations will remain dormant, irrelevant to life change, and in decline.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Vision and Effective Congregations

Effective congregations are led by pastors and a team of leaders who are clear about their mission and focused on achieving a vision. Unlike the majority of congregations that are either on a plateau or declining, effective congregations are healthy, growing, committed to reproduction, and open to changes that will move them from one level of effectiveness to the next...Vision does not necessarily start with the pastor. However, most pastors who arrive to lead congregations that lack vision, hope, and morale will find that if they do not generate vision, no one else will. Committees, vision communities, or people exploring vision as a short-term project do not generate visions that produce systemic change. .
Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Thoughts on Vision

There are dangers connected with not having a vision. Here are three.

Without a coherent vision...
1. energies of leaders go in many different directions and produce little benefit;
2. leaders feel like they are competing with each other for the available resources;
3. leaders are more vulnerable to the attacks of the forces in the congregation that are opposed to change.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Being Present

God dwells with us. He is always at home within us. But alas, most of the time we are not home.
--M. Basil Pennington, OCSO, The Way Back Home

In order to pray, you have to stop being "too elsewhere" and to be
there. ... You have to care enough so that you will collect yourself,
move back into your own soul from the distant suburbs where much of
life tends to be spent, and honestly be there.
-- Douglas V. Steere, Dimensions of Prayer

Voice Recognition

Amidst the chaos and moral confusion, God raised up a new generation, mentored by Eli, who learned to distinguish God’s voice among the myriad of competing voices. A very unlikely young person learned “voice recognition” long before the technology was ever invented. The boy Samuel spent time in God’s house and quieted his soul enough to hear God calling in the night. Spirit Leaders are people trained to listen and distinguish the Word amidst the words of culture.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

How much time do you spend quieting your soul so you can distinguish the Lord’s voice from all others? Most people think that sitting quietly is a waste of time when we could be doing ministry.

Years ago one of my sons asked me how I distinguished the voice of God from the ramblings of my own mind. I said “Time and experience. I have spent a lot of time listening to God and a lot of time rambling around in my own mind and I’m getting pretty good at telling the difference.” When I like Samuel was too inexperienced to recognize God’s voice, I leaned on the Eli’s around me to help me discern God’s voice.

If we have not spent the time in quiet listening to hear God’s voice, then whose voice are we listening to as we do ministry?

Transforming Alchemy of Listening

[The world needs] the presence of empathic listeners:
—listeners who are interested and who really care about others,
—listeners who are willing to forego ego and the need to spout opinions,
—listeners who seek neither to add to nor to take away from what is being said,
—listeners who are patient and willing to withhold judgment for a while,
—listeners who can say, “Yes, I really hear you”—and mean it.
There is a transforming alchemy in such listening.
--George Leonard & Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given

There is a place and a need for leadership development programs, but before you spend big bucks on a program, try listening. See how much transformation comes from that.

As Dennis Miller used to say, “It’s just a thought. I could be wrong.”

What is your purpose for being?

Here is something worth spending some time reflecting on:

1. What would you say is the specific purpose for which God caused you to be born?
2. What do you think God wants to accomplish through you?
3. What is your specific, divine assignment on this “scratch”?
4. Why do you think God placed you where you are?
--Wayne Cordeiro, Doing Church as a Team

Response to Challenges

We have a choice about how we deal with life's endless challenges. We can react with hope or despair, with courage or fear, with enthusiasm or indifference.
--Maggie Pinkney, Pocket Positives for Living

A reader responds:
I choose Hope, Courage, and Enthusiasm, as undoubtedly Maggie does as well.

But to be Hopeful one must plan comprehensively and expeditiously, and execute effectively.

One can't help being Courageous in one's quest if one is Hopeful.

And finally, if one carefully implements all of the above in sequence, one's attitude certainly must be one of Enthusiasm!!

With that Enthusiasm under one's "utility belt," one has no guarantee of ALWAYS being successful, but it sure empowers one to keep on trying.... it gets a bit tiresome sometimes, though!! :) - José

Lovett Weems on faithful vs. fruitful leadership

"Faithful ministry," the watchword of my generation, was typified mostly by Mother Theresa’s statement, "We’re not called to be successful; we’re called to be faithful." I believe that, and I’ve said that. But I don’t say it anymore because it plays to a lack of accountability that many clergy feel. It’s almost as if faithful is more a condition. It’s part of being instead of doing.

Faithfulness is always directional. It’s not riding a stationary bicycle—it’s a Boston marathon! It’s faithful in a direction—faithful toward the reign of God. You’re faithful toward justice. You may not end up where you are headed. You may plant one kind of seed and another crop grows—God has that kind of sense of humor—but it’s not, "Oh, I’m not doing this. I’m not doing that. I’m being faithful." No, it is faithful in a direction. You are risking. You may make mistakes in that. You may not be successful.

John Wesley had a set of three questions: is there faith?, is there fire?, and are there fruits? The concept of fruitfulness led Wesley to do things that, in his mind, he really didn’t believe. He was not convinced, in theory, that women should preach—but it was the fruits of their preaching that led him to sanction it. He didn’t think that there should be lay preachers; but he supported it because he saw its fruits. In a sense, he was able to rise up above his principles by seeing the reality of what advances the gospel.

I’m not as concerned about thinking about fruitfulness as setting a goal so we’ll know if we’ve made it or not. I’m convinced that when you focus on the outcome, you make the journey. It’s only when you say we will do this program so that...that you know how to run the program.


The Reverend Doctor Lovett H. Weems, Jr. is Executive Director of The Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary, where he is also Distinguished Professor of Church Leadership.

Lincoln: Prayer and action in the little things

Prayer often clarifies our vision of what needs to be done, but we should not expect to emerge from prayer with a lightening bolt of divine insight. The interplay of prayer and action is usually more subtle. Usually the understanding of one’s task unfolds gradually as a sense of reverence, and prayerfulness starts to permeate our life as a whole.

Psychologist, Ira Progoff, relates an event in the life of Abraham Lincoln that reveals the subtle, yet profound connections between prayer and action. Lincoln had a rich prayer life and he’s regarded as one of our most spiritual presidents. In his early years he had intimations that meaningful work lay ahead for him, but that he would have to refine his intellect and acquire professional skills if he was to fulfill his destiny. In his frontier environment, however, few tools or opportunities for professional development were available and Lincoln feared that his hopes would never be fulfilled. One day a stranger came by with a barrel full of odds and ends and old newspapers and he offered to sell the lot to Lincoln for a dollar. Realizing the man was needy, Lincoln, with his characteristic kindness, gave him a dollar, although he had no idea how the barrel’s contents would ever be of use. When he later cleared out the barrel, he found among the junk, an almost complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. These books helped Lincoln become a lawyer, and eventually enter politics. The reverence Lincoln felt for others, which are often the fruits of prayer, created an opening for a life changing event, that otherwise might not have happened. You see Lincoln did not get zapped during prayer with a sudden revelation of his life’s work. Humble ingredients: a barrel of junk, a stranger down on his luck, a dollar, and Lincoln’s innate compassion, combined unspectacularly to help shape the destiny of a nation and affect millions of lives.

I suggest that Lincoln’s prayerfulness made him sensitive enough to respond to a nudge from the Holy Spirit to buy a box of junk. Who knows what God can do in a life prepared by prayer? Who knows what God could do in your life if you were prepared?

Don’t you sometimes feel an itch that begins with questions like: “Is there more to life than what I’m experiencing?” “Is the meaning to my life gone now that I am retired/my children are grown?” If you are looking for answers to questions like these, talking to your pastor is a good place to begin. There are also several good “itch-scratching” programs you might plug into like Sunday school, Companions in Christ, Disciple Bible, Emmaus walks, mission work and many more that can help you explore the changing meaning and purpose of your life. Maybe the itch you feel is to start a class or program that will scratch someone else’s itch.

One last thought, perhaps you have moved beyond the resources of your local church. Check out the seminaries in your area or the religion departments of your local colleges. Think about it, pray about it and act.

A spiritual practice

Here from one of the spiritual classics is a useful spiritual practice.

What is here urged are internal practices and habits of the mind. What is here urged are secret habits of unceasing orientation of the deeps of our being about the Inward Light, ways of conducting our inward life so that we are perpetually bowed in worship, while we are also very busy in the world of daily affairs. What is here urged are inward practices of the mind at deepest levels, letting it swing like the needle, to the polestar of the soul. And like the needle, the Inward Light becomes the truest guide of life, showing us new and unsuspected defects in our¬selves and our fellows, showing us new and unsus¬pected possibilities in the power and life of good¬will among men. pp.31-32

How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning of all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. p.38

A Testament of Devotion, Thomas Kelly

Nourishing Ourselves

If we don't nourish ourselves, joy will elude us.
We nourish ourselves whenever we enter into activities that build our energy reserves. Consider this list of common nourishment sources:
1. Music - What songs lift me?
2. Thoughts - What thoughts speak to me?
3. Experiences - What experiences rejuvenate me?
4. Friends - What people encourage me?
5. Recreation - What recreation re-creates me?
6. Soul - What spiritual exercises strengthen me?
7. Hopes - What dreams inspire me?
8. Home - What family members care for me?
9. Giftedness - What gifts activate me?
10. Memories - What memories make me smile?
Finding Joy, by Dr. John C. Maxwell

Symptoms of an undernourished soul

Leaders need to be spiritually mature and healthy. The busy pace of our lives can lead us to a place where we are not taking in enough spiritual food to keep ourselves healthy. Pastors are at greatest risk, because we can fool ourselves into thinking that our time spent in Scripture preparing for a sermon counts as devotional reading. It does not! Years ago Harvey Cox identified some of the signs of an undernourished soul which now describe our whole society.

The symptoms of an undernourished soul appear in countless ways: violence, lethargy, alienation, alcoholism, deterioration of the family. The shrunken modern psyche is “just as much a victim of industrialization as were the bent bodies of those luckless children who were once confined to English factories from dawn to dusk.”--Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools,

Lest we fall into despair, P.L.Berman offers this word of hope:
“It does not matter how long your spirit lies dormant and unused. One day you hear a song, look at an object, or see a vision, and you feel its presence. It can’t be bought, traded, or annihilated, because its power comes from its story. No one can steal your spirit. You have to give it away. You can also take it back.”
--P.L.Berman, The Search for Meaning

The work of the church is to bring back to life the souls of people who don’t even know they have a spiritual problem. This is one reason why churches need leaders who can do more than just chair a meeting.

Leading with Soul

Here are some quotes from Bolman and Deal worth reflecting on. - Ed

Perhaps we lost our way when we forgot that the heart of leadership lies in the hearts of leaders. We fooled ourselves, thinking that sheer bravado or sophisticated analytic techniques could respond to our deepest concerns. We lost touch with a most precious human gift---our souls. p. 6

The heart of leadership is in the hearts of leaders. You have to lead from something deep in your heart.

Like what?

I can’t tell you what’s in your heart, nor would you want me to. Would you want someone to offer you fruit but chew it up before giving it to you? On1y you really know what’s in your heart. p.21

The essence of leadership is not giving things or even providing visions. It is offering oneself and one's spirit. p.102

If you show people you don’t care, they’ll return the favor. Show them you care about them, they’ll reciprocate.
When people know that someone really cares, you can see it. It’s there in their faces. And in their actions. Love really is the gift that keeps on giving. p.84

Leading with Soul, Lee Bolman & Terrance Deal, Jossey-Bass Pub.

The Power of Intimacy with God

I hope you read and meditate on John 14:8-14; 17:18-23. These verses really capture a glimpse of the large view of the Christian life. We have the potential for developing an intimate relationship with God like the one Jesus had. In 17:21 Jesus prays for that very thing, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” It is out of this connection and unity with God, that real power for prayer and ministry come. If you are working hard at being a Christian, you are doing it wrong. Jesus didn’t work on his own either. Listen to his words in John 14:10, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

Anyone can be a superficial Christian in their own strength. It is even possible to be a work-a-holic “super-Christian”, burning ourselves out in self-righteous glory, in our own strength. But to be a healthy, empowered Christian requires listening, slowing down, more listening, opening ourselves to a deeper relationship with God, still more listening, and allowing God to do God’s thing in and through us. It’s not as easy as it sounds since most of us want to be in control our own lives. This is important for all Christians, but crucial for leaders.

The rhinoceros approach to spiritual growth

They say rhinoceroses have poor eyesight and small brains. Therefore, if while you are walking across the African plain, a rhino charges you, you should stand still. The reasoning is thus: If you stand still, the beast will have a hard time seeing you. Then because he has a tiny brain, he will forget why he is charging, his full gallop will slow to a walk, and he will look puzzled and just wander off.

Many of us are like that in our spiritual lives. We move toward "perfection” which is being formed into the likeness of Christ. Along the way we forget where we are going and wander off. Worldly concerns like family, work, health, and busy schedules sidetrack us. We forget where we are going on our faith journey because the way is long and the goal hard to see.

For more than 200 years Methodist bishops have asked pastors at their ordination, "Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?" While the expected answer is "Yes", once a young ordinand, in a graduating class of one, hesitated in his answer as he stood alone before his bishop and the community. His crusty old bishop peered over his glasses and said, "Well Bill, if it happens, don't you imagine it will be rather late in life?"

Perfection in love, if it comes, will probably come late in life because the way is long and the goal hard to see. This is why we need role models, spiritual friends, knowledge of the varieties of religious experience, a faith practice, and a Christian community which can help us on our way. Church was intended to be a community of soul support. It takes spiritually mature leaders to help a church become what God dreamed for it to be from the time he called it into existence. Therefore, who are your role models and spiritual friends and what is your faith practice to help you become the person and leader that God needs you to be?

Do you hear his voice?

Over the years I have taught a class I called Prayer 101. The first session is a review of common forms of prayer like Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication (Intercession and Petition). The second session focuses on how to pray for one another more effectively. The last three sessions will be a combination of lecture on and practice of meditative and contemplative prayer. In English this means learning ways to quiet our minds enough to listen to God and hear God speak to us.

Morton Kelsey, an Episcopal priest and author, tells this story on himself. Earlier in his life there was a time when he kept waking up in the middle of the night and was not able to get back to sleep. Concerned, he finally asked his therapist what might be going on. His therapist suggested it might be God and that the next time he woke up in the middle of the night, he should get up, put on his robe, go downstairs, sit in his comfy chair and say, “God, if that’s you, I’m listening.” To his surprise, when he tried it, Morton heard God say, “Yes, it is me.” Morton then asked, “God why do you keep waking me up in the middle of the night?” Again to his surprise, he heard God say, “Morton, you are so busy during the day, this is the only time I could get your attention!”

My thought is this, why wait for God to take drastic action to get your attention? Learn some simple skills to improve your ability to listen to God. As an added bonus these skills can also be applied to human relationships. Think of the possibilities.

Part of my early journey

The famous American editor, Horace Greeley, told of receiving a letter from a woman who wrote: "Our church is in dire financial straits. We've tried everything to keep it going: a strawberry festival, an oyster supper, a donkey party, a turkey dinner, and, finally, a box social. Will you please tells us, Dr. Greeley, how to keep a struggling church from disbanding?" Dr. Greeley wrote back to her a message in two words: Try Christianity!

While this is humorous, it is a painful description of too many churches. Part of the problem is that for generations in North American churches those activities have been the very description of being church and being Christian. Dr. Greeley's statement makes no sense to many people. He is pointing to a vision of Christianity that goes much deeper than the way we have been doing church for decades. When I was in my 20s, having grown up in church, I knew that in the first 3 centuries of church history believers willingly died for their faith. This puzzled me greatly because I hadn't seen anything in church worth interrupting one's social schedule for let alone dying for. Then I read the book of Acts and I got a glimpse of what was so important. That was the beginning of my adult spiritual journey. The next step for me in the late '60s was a program offered through St. George's Episcopal Church called "Christ and the Meaning of Life" produced by Rev. Edward Bauman pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church. This spoke to my questions in that era: "Was there a meaning to life and did Christ have anything to do with it?" The answer was a resounding "Yes!" Eventually this journey led me to seminary at UTS.

The purpose of Church

This is a vision of church worth building. - Ed

Barbara Brown Taylor in her recent book, Speaking of Sin, gives this description of the church. “The church exists so that God has a community in which to save people from meaninglessness, by reminding them who they are and what they are for. The church exists so that God has a place to point people toward a purpose as big as their capabilities, and help them identify all the ways they flee from that high call. The church exists so that people have a community in which they may confess their sin — as well as a community that will support them to turn back again. The church exists so that people have a place where they may repent of their fear, their hardness of heart, their isolation and loss of vision and where — having repented — they may be restored to fullness of life.”

Theological Education

An Excerpt from an Interview with Kitty Blackburn, Dean of Keymark Theological School (www.christianleaders.org)

Ed: What is wrong with the obvious goal [for theological schools] of making ministers? Isn't that why most students come to seminary, to become religious leaders of some kind?

KB: Well, that is what Edward Farley means by the "clerical paradigm." The clerical paradigm refers to the notion that the best way to teach ministers to be ministers is to teach them to be proficient at the skills and activities that make up a pastor's life. So, you teach them to preach, to counsel, to run a meeting, and to teach the Bible. And you assume that to the extent that they do each of these well they are good ministers. The problem, as Farley shows in tremendous detail, is that the paradigm does not actually work. If you only teach skills, you get lousy ministers. They have no heart. They are automatons that can go through the check-list and, say, preach a technically pleasing sermon. But they have, in the end, nothing to say. There is no depth of thought, no working through the crises of faith that make faith strong. They end up like the seed planted in rocky soil. They prosper initially but soon wither under the heat of ministry.

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Lay people have known for years that something was wrong with modern theological education, but they didn’t know how to articulate it. It usually came out as some variation of “our pastor is not very spiritual.” Pastors tended to hear this as a judgment on their more liberal theology and to react negatively. Both parties were wrong.
I think Ms. Blackburn has named the problem in the structure of theological education. This is an issue primarily in Protestant seminaries. Catholic seminaries have known for years that the spiritual formation of the pastor is a critical part of the process of preparing for ministry. When I started as a student at United Theological Seminary (Dayton) 37 years ago UTS was a pioneer in making “formation” part of the program. Although it was more psychological than spiritual in those days, the process was in place.
Today the concept of spiritual formation for clergy (and laity) has gained traction across many denominations and theological education continues to evolve. We have not yet reached perfection.

Overcoming Fear

I see churches paralyzed with fear because their numbers have been dwindling for years and they don’t know what to do about it. I see pastors and lay people frustrated because they have tried many of the quick-fix programs which don’t work. Quick fixes don’t work, but appropriate education and training for clergy and laity do.

We in the Pohly Center for Supervision and Leadership Formation, www.united.edu/pohlycenter are trying break the cycle of fear by coming along side congregations in consultation and in providing meaningful training to enable both clergy and laity to work together more effectively. See especially our Principles and Practices of Supervision July 21-25 http://www.united.edu/institute/rwsupervision0708.shtml and our Equipping Leader program July 28-Aug 1 http://www.united.edu/institute/rwequippingleaders1p0708.shtml

Fear cripples people & congregations

My experience is that fear cripples both people and congregations.

Leonard Sweet wrote in The Gospel According to Starbucks (not the best book he has written, but there were a few quotable lines)
“The greatest gift my mentor gave me was helping me learn to move through my fear and to embrace creativity and spontaneity. When I learned to trust God and act on the ideas, dreams, and passions he placed in my heart, that’s when my life and ministry took a new energizing and fruit-bearing direction. What would your life look like if you were no longer controlled by your fears of what others might think?”

2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

If only we would claim the power that is from God.

The Nature of Church

I have always felt that the purpose of church was much more than I had experienced in most congregations. There are several authors whose writings have helped me articulate this vision. Rick Barger is one of them.

“The church was born out of the Spirit of God. Its purpose was to witness to the saving activity of God, not as proffering a deal, cause, or spiritual assistance but to be a transparent sign in which and through which Jesus is encountered, experienced, known, and lives. The church’s relationship to Jesus is not simply to be identified with a historical person. The church’s identification with Jesus is its DNA. Jesus not only gives the church its DNA. Jesus also is the church’s DNA. Jesus abides or lives in the church (John 15:4 and others). Thus, Jesus can speak about his being “the vine” and the church being “the branches” (John 15:5). Vine and branch are of the same DNA. The church as the Body of Christ is more than just a metaphor. It is reality.”
--Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit

The church I grew up in had as it's theological framework Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. "Experience" wasn't even in the mix. I grew up not understanding what "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ" was all about. I have come to understand/experience that while the relationship is personal it is much more than just "you and me, Jesus." The longer I am on this journey, the more challenging it becomes.

Am I becoming who God calls me to be?

I think Straub and Turner point us in the right direction.

The most important question is not, “Have I found the ‘thing’ God wants me to do with my life?” The most important question is, “Am I becoming who God calls me to be in Christ?” Some indicators help us affirm that we are fulfilling our primary calling from God. We know this when we can say: I am...
• sensing and enjoying God’s presence more than I did yesterday
• trusting God more today than I did yesterday
• expressing more compassion and concern for the people around me than I did yesterday
• realizing I am more trustworthy today than I was yesterday
• caring less about what our culture values than I did yesterday
• caring more about Christ’s values today than I did yesterday
• devoting more of my resources to God’s work than I did yesterday
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

God's Dreams

I believe God has dreams for us. I have a personal problem with the “God has a plan for our life” language, because it suggests to me that God has planned out every second and every detail of our life. I don’t believe that is true. I do believe that God has dreams for our lives in a way similar to the dreams our parents had for us when we were born except that (with few exceptions) God dreams less about what our job will be and more about what our character will be and what our relationship with God/Jesus will be.

Jim Collins in Good to Great said:
"Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of (congregations) never become (vital), precisely because the vast majority become quite (complacent with the status quo) — and that is their main problem"

One of our problems is that we dream too small for ourselves and for our churches and God is dreaming the Kingdom of Heaven come on earth. Our task is to discern God's dream and move in that direction.

More on the leadership XY graph

Below is a chart that is a little more developed than yesterday’s.



The reason I like the XY graph is that it makes it easy to see the importance of these two qualities, (leadership ability and spiritual maturity). A person who is spiritually mature, but who is at the “Individual Contributor” or “Group Contributor” level is not ready to be an effective leader. Likewise someone who may be a high functioning leader in the marketplace, but spiritually immature, will not make a good church leader, if for no other reason than that the church operates by a different set of values and from a different world view than the marketplace. The church gets itself in trouble when it offers leadership positions to anyone who’ll take the job. Don’t give me the “We don’t have anyone else to take the job” argument. I have been a pastor in small churches. My experience that it is better to leave a position unfilled than fill it with an unqualified person.

Reflections on Church Leadership

As you can see from my bio I am a United Methodist pastor (retired). I spent 22 years in active service and another 10 hanging around doing good things. Before coming to UTS I spent 4 years co-teaching a series of 3-year leadership courses at Bethany UMC in Austin Texas. The program was developed by John Robertson (LeadershipID.com and PrepareGodsPeople.com) and also co-taught by our senior associate pastor, Rev. David Minnich. Because we are Methodists our program is Christian leadership grounded in the Wesleyan tradition. As a result of that work, in 2007 I was asked to head up the “leadership formation” portion of the work at The Pohly Center for Supervision and Leadership Formation which is part of The Center for Applied Theology which is part of United Theological Seminary in Dayton Ohio. (It’s not quite as impressive as it sounds.) After almost 30 years in Texas, this was an opportunity to return to my home town and the seminary from which I graduated in 1975.

I bring a varied background to my work in leadership. In this blog I will share my unique reflections on the subject including books I am reading and have found helpful and quotes from various authors. My particular focus is the vital connection between good leadership and spiritual maturity. My friend Alan Goldsberry, (ServantLeaderFramework.com) developed a simple XY graph to illustrate the relationship of these two factors.



I have suggested to pastors that they use this as a tool to begin the conversation with a member or staff person about personal growth. Simply ask the person where they see themselves on this graph and then ask them in what area they want to grow next.

Enough for now.