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Tag Archives: time

Leadership's First Task: Monitoring Your Heart

Geri and I were in the car last weekend driving in beautiful upstate New York, taking one of our daughters to look at colleges and began talking about the dynamics of leadership. Soon, we realized we had stumbled upon a simple, but powerful process of leading well – at least in God’s church — that is now helping us quite a bit. 1. Monitor Your Heart.  Whether it is preparing for sermons, reading a book on strategy, sitting through a staff meeting, or deciding on priorities, I am guarding my heart.  Is my motive really God’s glory or is this about me?  Am I anxious? If so why, and how is that impacting my decisions now? Am I avoiding a challenging reality? a confrontation? Is the content of this sermon I am preparing simply head knowledge? How does it speak to my life? Am I really living what I am preaching?  This of course requires. Read more.

Learning to Lead: Part 2

“If there aren’t specific goals and steps to follow in sequence,  there won’t be a goal, only a wish.”  Michael Yapko         My greatest growing edge in both maturity and spirituality (as if they could be separated) revolves around thinking. Yes – thinking and not following my emotions as I lead NLF, parent, and make decisions.          This is, I am finding, easy to understand, but quite challenging to do. It takes time, prudence, patience, and character especially if it is done prayerfully and before the Lord. Proverbs is full of insight on this. It is the sacred, holy work of leadership.         Few do it well. It is not simply a skill but a level of character that is required so that I can do appropriate introspection as to motives and past material in my life that is impacting the present. It all comes out in the pressure cooker of leadership.           For example, as. Read more.

Learning to Lead: Part 1

I think I am finally learning to lead. I am humbled to say that but it is true. I spent the last two days leading our pastoral staff (eleven of us in total) on our yearly Fall retreat. What was my learning? Simply, it takes a lot of time, thought and prayer to lead an excellent meeting.  One can’t skim on preparing.  I know. I did for years. This was our best staff retreat in 21 years. Why? I think Ed Freidman said it well:  “The overall health and functioning of any organization (or ministry or sub-ministry) depends primarily on one or two people at the top, and this is true whether the relationship system is a personal family, a sports team, an orchestra, a congregation, a religious hierarchy, or an entire nation… It is rather that leadership in families, like leadership in any flock, swarm, or herd is essentially an organic phenomenon. And an organism tends to. Read more.