Tag Archives: church leadership

Connecting Our Inner and Outer Lives as Leaders

A tree with a shallow root system may still look beautiful on the outside, but it is incapable of supplying the water and nutrients for fruitful, long-term, and upward growth. This becomes a significant problem when our ministries and organizations grow larger and faster than the depth of our roots can sustain. Deep and wide roots anchor a tree, allowing it to draw up plentiful water and nutrients from a larger and deeper area of soil. In many cases, the root systems of our spiritual lives are inadequate for the challenges of shaping and leading a growing church, organization, or team. At the same time, it seems logical that a deeper inner life should lead to good organizational practices. Sadly, however, it often does not. There is a disconnect when we fail to apply our spirituality with Jesus to such leadership tasks as planning, team building, boundaries, endings and new beginnings. Too often, we. Read more.

Four Unhealthy Commandments of Church Leadership

As I have been finishing the final small edits of The Emotionally Healthy Leader (Zondervan, July, 2015), I have been reminded again of how deeply in our bones many of us carry the following four deadly, faulty beliefs: 1. It’s Not a Success Unless It’s Bigger and Better Most of us have been taught to measure success by external markers. And let’s be clear—numbers aren’t all bad. In fact, quantifying ministry impact with numbers is actually biblical. But let’s also be clear that there is a wrong way to deal with numbers. When we use numbers to compare ourselves or to boast of our size, we cross a line. The problem isn’t that we count, it’s that we have so fully embraced the world’s dictum that bigger is better that numbers have become the only thing we count. What we miss in all this counting is the value Scripture places on internal markers as. Read more.

WHY EMBED THE EHS COURSE IN YOUR CHURCH?

Have you committed to embedding the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Course into your Church or do you need help convincing your leadership to integrate the course? Here are 8 great reasons that you should embed the EHS Course into your Church: 1) Offers long-term sustainability for EHS in a church so it is not dependent on the senior pastor. 2) Provides regular testimonies of life-change. 3) Enables leadership to maintain the quality/DNA to newcomers and members to the church. 4) Raises up new leaders and “water carriers” of EHS throughout the church. 5) Serves as a call to deep, beneath the surface, radical discipleship in the church. 6) Cements members in the core values of the church. 7) Moves people from being “consumers” to servants/leaders. 8) Provides a bridge for people into the larger EHS vision found in “Characteristics of Churches Transformed by EHS“.

Christian and Secular Leadership – What is the Difference: Part 1

Much of church leadership today is more secular than Christian. We learn from the best practices and strategies from the most successful global leaders and then do our best to implement them. We “manage” to lead without God. We “do so much so well by ourselves that there is no need for God,” even if we do engage prayer and worship. We believe that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with our efforts. As one Japanese CEO remarked, “Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man in touch with another world. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager at home only in this world like I am.“ (Os Guiness, The Call). All truth is ultimately God’s truth so there is a great deal we can learn from best secular leadership practices. It is very helpful to learn from excellent models, insight, and research in books such as The 12 Bad Habits that. Read more.

Christian and Secular Leadership -The Difference: Part 1

Leaders that Sabotage Themselves: Part 1

According to Robert Hogan, an industrial psychologist and professor, two-thirds of the people currently in leadership will fail; they will be fired, demoted, or “kicked upstairs.” The most common reason will be their inability to build or maintain a team. (Hogan defines leadership as “the capacity to build and maintain a high-performance team.”) Why? Certain dysfunctional tendencies, which lie outside their awareness and are invisible, only reveal themselves when people are under significant stress or lack rest. These deeply ingrained personality traits cause smart, well-intentioned leaders to act in illogical ways — making poor decisions, alienating key people, missing opportunities, and overlooking obvious trends around them. I have seen many church leaders rise and fall over the last three decades. A friend who teaches leadership at Harvard and Stanford recently introduced me to the research around this theme. See Why CEOs Fail (Dotlich and Cairo). Every leader has significant vulnerabilities and derailers. Great ones. Read more.

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