Church, Ministry, Preaching

The Church and Leadership

There is a giant gap between leadership and management.  This truth is ever more important as it pertains to the church.  The main difference between a church leader and manager is that a leader has people follow them, while managers have people who work for them.  I have had personal experience with both.  The very nature of the person that would be person up front can well be defined as having one of these two styles.  The issue is there are few that would characterize themselves as leaders and in doing so their influence in making positive change is severely limited. The primal cause of this situation is the church, in its efforts to be relevant in today’s society is trying to emulate the societies norms.  Managers are good enough. Any church, no matter how large or small must find and build up leaders; managers are not enough to make a real lasting difference in the church.  It is a good thing if the person of influence holds both characteristics if leadership and management, but settling for the latter is a shame.

Leadership is about getting people to understand and believe in a vision and to work with the people to achieve visionary goals while managing is more about administering and making sure the day-to-day things are happening as they should.

I know that a plethora of materials and data exist on personality assessments and characteristics.  And I have discovered many great sources.  There is a common tread to most of them.  There are some distinctive traits that make up a strong leader.

  1. Leaders believe they are leaders: I have seen leadership become management just because of the lack of self-confidence. It is easier to minimize risk than to take one.  It is easier to do a thing right than to do the right thing.  It is easier to be reactive than proactive. It is easier to set plans around constraints, than to set direction and lead toward that direction.  Leaders have an inward confidence in what they are and what they can accomplish.
  2. Leaders make a difference through vision. Leaders have a vision, believe in that vision, and know that vision will make a positive impact. Leaders know where the church is and where the leader wants the church to be.   A leader goes out and enrolls the body in charting a path for the future. The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is a defining competence of a leader.   If the church can’t see a leader’s vision, there is little hope in them following. The leader must be confident in himself.  A leader must believe in leadership.
  3. Honesty & Integrity: are crucial to move people to believe you and buy in to the journey you are taking them on. What does it take for others to believe in a leader?    It has been said many times, and it bears repeating again.  In these times when even those in the church are becoming more and more cynical about leadership and institutions, it has never been a more important than the character of the leader is believable.  The church must know what the leader has committed himself to do and be.  They must know and see what the leader values.  If the leader of a church values only that the bills are paid and the grass is mowed, there is little value to the larger picture or the greater vision. Either lead by example or don’t lead at all.  Leaders have to keep their promises and become role models for their vision, values and actions.
  4. Inspiration: The church needs to be stirred. A leader no matter how well trained and gifted, no leader ever accomplished anything extraordinary without the talent and support of others. Going out on a great visionary journey without others is nothing more than walk around the block.  Leadership is a team sport and for your team to be all they can be each must understand their role in the bigger picture.   They have to be inspired in more than just a destination but are enthused by their part in the journey. Managers are all about work to be done, leaders only about leading people through vision.
  5. Trust: If you can’t do it alone and rely on others, what is needed to make the vision happen?   Trust is the social glue that holds individuals and groups together. It is directly proportional between the level of trust and influence.  A leader has to earn trust of any one is to follow.  The leader must give trust before expecting any in return. A large part of this trust is based upon honest and complete communication. Keeping the team informed of the journey, where you are, where you are heading and share any roadblocks you may encounter along the way is the best way to earn trust.
  6. Challenge: Exemplary leaders, the kind of which people want to follow, are always associated with changing the status quo. Great achievements don’t happen when things are kept the same.  Change invariable involves challenge, and challenge test everyone.  Change introduces everyone in the church to examine themselves inwardly.  It brings each member face to face with their personal level of commitment.  It forces each to dig deep into personal values and belief. Change changes everyone.  The goal of a manager is toward stability and for a leader is change.
  7. It is a matter of the heart: Leaders who love their followers are great leaders. Leaders that have empathy for follower’s pain are followed. Leaders make others feel important and are gracious in showing appreciation. Love is the motivation that energizes leaders to give so much to the vision and those following the vision.  Managers see the flock as subordinates and leaders as fellow followers of the vision. Managers are motivated by the head and a leader by the heart. The wonder of it all is that leadership, great leadership, driven by first and last by love.

What do you think?  Add a comment.

Bible Study, Life, Personal

The primacy of destination

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My wife and I are diametrically opposed in our concept of traveling.  I prefer to set of in a general direction of a destination and am quite happy to just see what is to been seen.  I like to read the signposts, billboards, and advertisements as I go and let them provide hints where the next turn will be.  I get excited in finding new roads and even trails that I haven’t been on before.  If I have to sleep in the back of the Jeep, that’s just fine. Sometimes I would like just to go, take the nearest road and just explore.  It is a discovery, a grand adventure.  Never-the-less, my sweet wife would rather know in advance what the road is going to be like.  She needs to know what hotel we are going to be in.  She has to know what are the places we are going to visit.  Every restaurant must be checked out prior to even leaving the front step or turning on the car.

Most readers may also be divided into two types.  Some skip the introduction and by looking at the table of contents, jump to what has the most interest.  I was taught in sixth grade in a class on speed reading, to go to the last chapter and read it first just to see where it goes.  Others will start from the first word and dissect the introduction to ending.  Making sure nothing is missed.
Likewise, we go to church and some will just listen to the sermon expecting to learn something.  Others take notes and analyze it with all due diligence.

Both of these methods or mindsets are  nothing more than a preference of style.  In some areas one style may well be better than the other.  The issue is when the holders of preference do not allow for the preference of the other.  I teach a class on the Book of Romans.   We have been working through, making sure we do not miss something that God would have for the class.  We have had sixteen sessions so far and we have just entered the fifth chapter. This preferential methodology of study may not be for everyone.  I realize that some would rather have the notes and let it go at that.

For me it is the difference between hearing and understanding, between reading and study, between milk and meat.  The church needs deep things.  Every Christian needs to dig deeply into the Word of God.  The Bible is more than a tool for defining how we should live.  I does have great maxims of living a godly life, but if we are looking and reading just to find these guidelines, ruled, laws, suggestions, and even forbiddings, then we are missing the mark.  The Bible is for finding God.  The Bible is for feeding the soul.  The Bible is a revelation of a loving God.  As A.W. Tozer once said, “Our spiritual need is not the rock-lined pit for which a traveler longs, but the sweet, cool water that flows up from it. It is not intellectual knowledge about God that quenches man’s ancient hear-thirst, but the very Person and Presence of God Himself.”

Doesn’t really matter your method of traveling, it is about the destination, the direction and the why of the trip.

Music, Preaching, Worship

Let the Church sing

Everything that God does is to music.  I was blessed to have an amazing encounter with a professor in my college days.  T. C. Mitchel was much more than a dry lecturer that my fellow students would try to understand.  He made thing more than just an intellectual understanding of scripture.  He was a cut from the cloth of many great English preachers.  Rev Mitchel made clear that which was quite muddy at times.  To that end I found a recording of one of his best sermons.  It speaks about how the church has always been full of song and amazement. It is well worth the 17 minutes to listen and have your heart strings vibrate with the song of God.

It is called “The People of the Spring Sing“

Life, Personal, Theology

Quote of the day

It will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages, while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. But it will pay in the long run and the true Christian is not much interested in anything short of that. (A.W. Tozer)

Life, Personal, Ramblings

War and peace

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I have owned at least twenty lawn mowers in my war on grass.  I had a push mower that never seemed to cut well because it was not sharp and I really did not know how to sharpen one.  I had a mower left in the garage of a house I bought in Colorado that refused to start unless I sprayed the carburetor with very flammable spray from a pressurized can.  There was one mower that would only run on denatured alcohol.  Some of my war tools had pull starters, some had electric starters.  One was self-propelled.  I have permanently loaned two of my latest weapons of grass destruction to my son.  I had one that smoked so badly that the EPA could well classify it as a gross polluter.

Each one, to a machine, was designed to cut the overgrowth of grass down to a perfect two and one-half inches.  Very few buy a mower just for its aesthetic value My goal with each and all of these spinning contraptions was to create the perfect lawn. You have seen those lawns.  Not a blade of grass out of place.  The uniformity of the turf could well be described as a carpet of luxury.  Never-the-less, the next day, no matter how good the mower was and no matter how contentiously the lawn was edged, there would be little blades out of place.  Perfection lost.

The typical keeper of the lawn has a number of choices: Let it grow until the city comes by and leaves you a nice compliance note, stop watering and let it all die all in the name of water conservation, or hire someone to do it for you.  Since I have loaned my last mower to someone that needed it more than I, the local landscaper comes by every two weeks and cuts my lawn.  No more fighting the battle of the lawn.  It still looks a little ragged by the second week but I have learned that there is a peace in letting someone else take responsibility for my lawn.  I can simply give up and give it to someone else.

There is a parable in this missive.  Sometimes, if not all the time, we need to just give up and let God do what he does best.  God doing the lawn work of my life.  If a little blade seems to be out of place, then my responsibility is to let God show to me how to take care of it.  His response may well be to instruct me to do something about the errant grass, His response may well to let him handle it, or He may provide a new tool to do the work.  But I have given my personal life to God. But the most important and most gratifying of giving my life to God (including my lawn) is that He gives peace.

Peace is a gift from God.  We do not make peace with God.  We receive peace as a boon when we come to a penitent trust in Him.  He is my peace.

Life, Theology

Thought about Justification

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Confessing Christ with one’s mouth is not something that a person does to be justified; it is something a justified person does.  Those who are justified are ashamed of their sin and proud of their Savior!   Just as it is natural for a newborn baby to open its mouth and cry, so it is only natural for a sinner saved by grace to open his mouth and give full credit to Christ.  “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!” (Psalm 107:2).  “Saying so” is not something that a person does to be redeemed; it is something a redeemed person does!”

Life, Personal

Still my favorite Poem

Robert Frost

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

Thank you for indulging me, it is my birthday.
Life, Personal, Sermon Illustration

A little piece of heaven in the middle of hell

We go through our days and there are few opportunities to make big choices.  I believe we are creatures of free choice. Never-the-less most of choices we make are small and make little difference.  Paper or plastic bags at the local market, English muffin or toast for breakfast, brown pants or blue for church, and thousands of other small seemingly small and unsubstantial decisions.  And in the same old, same old life we live, the big hard things that really will make a difference to ourselves or even the world around us rarely come up.  So we go ahead and live our lives making as few decisions as possible; mostly because we feel that each little aggravating decision really doesn’t matter.  We even get a little frustrated when the the waitress has at least five options to complete your order of eggs and bacon.

In Sunday School we studied the story of the S.M.A boys.  You know Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They were faced with one of those few and far between decision points in their lives.  It didn’t start out as a turning point type of decision.  They simply remained standing when they were expected to follow the crowd.  They were given the choice to bend their heads and kneel when the orchestra played to a 19 foot statue or keep standing.  Oh there were consequences.  But the first decision was not to go along with the crowd.  I don’t really know if these three thought very long or even realized the importance of their doing nothing while everyone else was doing something.

Nebuchadnezzar escalated the offense and made it about a competition between his grand statue and the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I have related this because some may need to know the reasons behind the what the title of this is all about.

The King bound the three up and cast them into the furnace which had been prepared for any one not following orders.  But for the SMA boys it was made expectantly hot.

Now here is the part that struck me.  The king looked in and saw the three unharmed and walking around with someone that seemed to the king as godly.  Think about it.  There is the picture.  There is the smile.  There is the sweetness of God’s care.  In the middle of Hell was a little piece of Heaven.

Instead of terrible pain and obliteration it was party time.  The heat was on but they were in the very presence of God.  Walking around and I can almost see these four with the biggest smiles.  Their little choice led to a big choice and that choice was to allow God to be their deliverer.  Their choice was not to go into the furnace; that was the King’s decision.  Their small, “toast or English muffin decision was to simply stand when the music played.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

Life, Theology

Greater is He….

What is it to be a true Christian?

What does it mean to be united to Christ?

What happens when we are accepted by the Creator Beloved?

To start with, it is not simply Christ stepping in the way between God’s justice and God’s Love.  He does not just step into our world and settle our debts.  He does this act of mercy and love but there is so much more.  He comes into our lives to give us a perfect picture, a divine example, of what we should be.

Jesus is the perfect personality.  It is not for us to make an imitation of that perfection.  It is not for us to copy.  Any effort at this will only lead to frustration, discouragement, defeat and utter failure.  It is only when we allow God to be God that He will duplicate Himself in us.

Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.

If my God lives in me, if he is part and parcel of my life, then I am another Christ.  No error here, I am not like Him, but I have a same mind set.  I am not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of my mind.  Christ develops in me a new life. I have heard many times that man can never be perfect.  We all fail, we all fall short of God’s perfection.  But never-the-less, this quandary should not stop us from moving forward toward the high calling that is in Jesus. We must take God’s provision for our failure and rise above it through His grace.

We must take Jesus as a substitute for our miserable selves. It is not me who lives but Christ in me. Our lives are a constant giving up.  We must give up that which is bad.  And just as important if no more so, we must give up the good as well and take Him instead. It is hard for us to learn that we must relinquish even the good in order that we will depend upon divine impulses rather than even our best attainments.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

 

Life, Theology

Belief and Faith

We live in a “Christian Nation”.  I have heard this statement thousands of times.  Christianity is the most adherents at 31% of the world population. Many of these people say with confidence, that they ‘believe’ in God. Many of these same people think that this is enough to guarantee that their sins are forgiven and gain them admission to Heaven. However, is this simple ‘belief’ in God enough? Is this ‘belief’ the same as the ‘faith’ spoken of in the Bible? I wanted to share a few thoughts.

True faith is more than simply ‘believing’

Faith absolutely includes an element of belief. But they are not the same.  As I used to tell my kids, “if they are not spelled the same they are not the same.”  A belief in something or someone is required before faith can be manifested. I believe that Grand Canyon is still deep, even though I am not on its edge right now.  I can believe in things that do not affect my life.  I don’t have to worry about the depth of the Grand Canyon grabbing me up as I set at my desk. I can believe in things that do not affect my life. I can live my life without this great hole in the ground because of my belief.  So also you may well believe in God but if that belief does not directly affect your life it is not faith.  It will not save you, it will not justify you, it will not bring God’s favor on you.

To have faith is to put trust in that someone or something.  And who or what you place your trusting faith in is what has far-reaching, even super-natural, eternal, effect.

Story here:  A pastor and his wife was scheduled to attend a very large denominational meeting on the other side of the nation.  Pastor’s wife had never been on a plane before and was very frightened.   She believed that airplanes can fly.  She was terrified. Her husband trying to console her quoted scripture, you know the Bible says, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”  After a moment of thought she replied, “LO I will be with you.”

We can well say that I believe a plane can take me from here to there, but if I’m afraid to get on it, I reveal that I have no ‘faith’ in that plane. Also, if I do not get on the plane, I have no reason to expect it to take me anywhere. I must exercise my ‘faith’ in that plane, by boarding it, if I am to receive the benefits it offers.

Faith results in changed actions

I am not one to judge anyone’s faith or belief.  Never-the-less I have personally seen those who claim to be followers of Christ but their lifestyle remained the same.  They still

I have heard of, and have known, some people who claim to be followers of Christ; however, their lifestyle remained the same after they became Christians as it was before they became Christians. They still lived the same way, talked the same way, and had the same mindset as they did when they were living in rebellion to God. Were they exercising true faith? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), meaning that our actions will reveal the change our heart has gone through when we became His true followers. Conversely, if our lives do not exhibit a change of allegiance from self to Jesus, we have good reason to doubt our salvation is real at all. John writes, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (I John 2:3). True faith is evidenced by a change in the way we act.

Faith results in changed priorities

If anything in our lives is more important than God, our priorities are misplaced and we should examine ourselves to see if we have truly given our lives to Christ. If our lives are focused more on our jobs, our favorite sports team, the next new technological toy, our love life, or anything else that diverts the center of our attention away from God, we should question the validity, or at least the maturity, of our faith.

Conclusion

The mindset of belief can well be simply a passive mental acceptance that amounts to nothing.  Belief must affect your life. Simply to say “I believe in God” means very little if it is merely coming from the lips and not from the heart. People can, and do, say that they ‘believe’ in God, but their lives never change at all. However, when one has true faith in God, one’s life cannot help but reveal this truth. True faith, dependence/reliance/trust, in God reveals itself in our actions, our thought life, and our priorities. If we claim we are Christians, but this is not the attitude of our hearts, it would be wise to ask God to search our hearts, cleanse us, mold us into the people that He wants us to be, and strengthen our faith.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.

The Study of God and Life