Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership and Differentiation: Part 1

Leaders have a number of key tasks if we are to operate out of high level of integrity. These include: 1. Confronting myself. Am I calm and clear about what God has given me to do? Where am I doing the easy thing, not the best thing for those around me? Where am I abandoning my own values? How am I allowing fear to cause me to ignore problems? 2. Mastering myself in the face of anxiety. When we don’t, we end up looking for validation from other people. We end up using the people we aim to serve. 3. Tolerating discomfort. There is never a good time to change things. In fact, it is impossible to create change while maintaining stability. To kindly bring up hard things others want is one of our critical tasks. 4. Getting clear on my goals and steps. This is hard work.The alternative, however, is much worse. Once. Read more.

Self-Identity as the Key to Discernment

Augustine once said that God is always trying to give good things to us but our hands are too full to receive them. Roslyn H. Wright, a Director of Field Education at Whitley College in Australia, visited me in NYC recently. The following are reflections out of her work with seminary students around “Incarnational goal setting”: 1. God’s calls us to courageously lead out of our ‘true self.’ “The problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self” (Thomas Merton). God gives to each of us a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” with a unique working out of that gift in the Body and the world. The forces, internal and external, that move us away from that place of leading from within are enormous. 2. Prayer, particularly the Examen, along with a trusted community, is the foundation for. Read more.

The Ancient Future Church: Learning from History

“He who does not learn from the past is condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana This applies to all of life, especially to leaders called to discern the movements of the Holy Spirit. The following is an 11-minute church history lesson. It is intended to encourage us to learn from streams in the global church that are vastly different from our own. Take a look.

If Christians Could be Honest about These 10 Things (Part 2)

What would happen if Christians could be honest about: Why there is so much religious pathology in the church. (There is quite a bit of pathology in all fields – from business to athletics to academia to construction workers.) Why so many young people leave the church. (Our spiritual formation often does not prepare them well for the doubts that come with leaving the “nest”. Yet this can be, at times, a healthy differentiation process for their development.) Why so many Christians don’t deal with their own “stuff”. (It is the same reason many non-Christians do not – it is very difficult.) Why we don’t live what we believe. (Few people in all walks of life do. This takes great integrity and awareness). Why life is still hard. (“He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” Matt. 5:45. This will not change this side of heaven). Why there is so much hypocrisy in. Read more.

If Christians Could be Honest about These 10 Things (Part 1)

What would happen if Christians could be honest about: Why there is so much religious pathology in the church. Why so many young people leave the church. Why so many Christians don’t deal with their own “stuff”. Why we don’t live what we believe. Why life is still hard. Why there is so much hypocrisy in the church. Why betrayal eventually visits every Christian. Why racism, classism, and sexism persist in the church. Why so many people in churches are judgmental. Why the church cannot meet all our needs. A friend of mine, a literary agent, asked if I could write a book responding to questions that she had struggled with for so much of her Christian life. I’m not interested in writing a book on the answers but I did expand and edit her list. I don’t find, however, that these questions are indictments on the church. Understanding the answers, actually, is key. Read more.

Prayer and the Healing Waters of the Love of Jesus

Prayer is carrying people, paralyzed by life, to the healing waters of the love of Jesus. We meet a man in John 5, paralyzed and suffering for 38 years, who has been unable to get to the healing waters of the pool. Fred Craddock notes that, perhaps, this was because able-bodied people with headaches, sunburn, and fever blisters continually beat the lame, the blind, and the paralyzed to the pool. What kind of community would allow someone to suffer 38 years without once helping him to the head of the line? At our NLF staff meeting last week, we symbolically created the “pool” through placing a blanket in the middle of a circle. We then invited individual staff to step into the “center of the pool,” representing people paralyzed by life. The rest of us in the circle then picked up the edges of the cloth blanket and gently ruffled it, “troubling the waters.” We. Read more.

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