Category Archives: Uncategorized

10 Reasons Successions and Transitions Go Poorly

Robert A. Caro’s towering biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, offers a penetrating insight about power and leadership: Although the cliché says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said, but what is equally true, is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary: to hide traits that might make others reluctant to give him power, to hide also what he wants to do with that power; if men recognized the traits or realized the aims, they might refuse to give him what he wants. But as a man obtains more power, camouflage is less necessary. The curtain begins to rise. The revealing begins. (xiv). Nothing reveals our character like succession and transitions. It reveals not just the character of the Senior Pastor or CEO, but the Board, the senior staff, and the congregation. Why? Power always reveals.. Read more.

Lose Your Life to Find It

Jesus said we must lose our lives to find it. One essential way we do this is by learning the art of interior silence. This choice to turn away from internal and external noise in order to be with Jesus is work…a difficult work. Externally, we face the unrelenting pressure of our culture– the noise, the clutter, the grasping, the confusion, the distractions, the excessive amount of information – all of which make it difficult to hear ourselves think. Internally, our stillness and silence muscles are weak. As beginners, we have problems focusing attention and facing the normal distractions of body and mind. Just like we cannot simply read a how-to book on running a marathon and run, so we must build up muscle and stamina slowly over time. Maggie Ross, in her Silence: A User’s Guide – Volume 1: Process, argues that the tradition of silence was handed down unbroken from the time. Read more.

The 4 Questions of Emotionally Healthy Supervision

Every year at our Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference I am asked: “How is supervision in an emotionally healthy church different? What makes it distinct?” In emotionally healthy teams, role expectations are openly talked about and agreed upon. We evaluate how we are doing. But that is not enough. How people care for their inner lives is also important. The question is, “How important?” The answer is: “Very important.” Minimally transformed leaders will always result in minimally transformed teams doing minimally transforming ministry. How could we expect it to be any other way? As a result, there are four areas that we ask about on a regular basis: 1. How is your walk with Jesus? In other words, tell me about your rhythms of being with God and doing for God. How are you living out of your Rule of Life in this season? How has God been coming to you? I was so blessed. Read more.

The Few

I believe in the indispensable place of building the local church, preaching sermons, and speaking at conferences. The problem is we can do these things and still not make disciples who make disciples (Matt.28:18-20). That involves focusing on a few. It is one thing to know about Jesus’ plan of discipling the 12 over a three-year period for the sake of the world; it is another thing to actually follow Him in a similar strategy. I think I am finally getting it. Geri and I drastically shifted our global strategy in our trip to Korea and Singapore this August. Instead of doing large EH Leadership conferences, we chose to invest ourselves in a small group of highly committed people in both countries. This picture below is Geri and I speaking last year. (We are the little dots on the stage). Are you impressed? Don’t be. Now this picture below is Geri and I speaking. Read more.

The Power of The Genogram in Building Healthy Teams

Building healthy leadership teams and cultures is one of the most important tasks we engage in as leaders. In this unique podcast, Pete and Rich share how understanding genograms has served as a powerful tool to create a healthy, transformational, team culture at New Life over the last twenty years. Click below to watch the video or the link to listen to the audio file. LISTEN HERE Save Save

Enough

One of our greatest temptations as leaders is to want to be more, have more, or do more than God has given us. We discard the gift of God’s limits and take charge. We try to do things only God can do and attempt to fix people and situations only God can fix. This has consistently been my greatest spiritual challenge. When we cross over the line of God’s limits, symptoms such as the following surface: anger, tiredness, anxiety, frustration, judgmentalism, a lack of compassion, and discontentment. When we go beyond our limits, we end up in the Evil One’s territory and the consequences are severe. (Consider Genesis 3). Our loving union with God is disrupted and, like Adam, we end up hiding behind our over-activity. When we let go and surrender to God’s limits, however, we meet Him in surprising ways. I recently implemented a new practice that has served me to prayerfully. Read more.

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