Did the title grab your attention? If so, why? I imagine for all sorts of reasons: perhaps you have an MBA but now am not sure if it was worth it; have an MBA and its been a tremendous investment; don’t have an MBA but would love to get one; ‘I don’t need to do any more formal study!’ etc.
Well have a read of this article in The BNET Report. It will get your brain cells ticking over – and don’t miss the comments to the article.
Leadership journal has published The Golden Canon Leadership Book Awards.
What are they? “…the ten books of 2009 most valuable for church leaders. The winners were selected by a diverse group of more than 100 pastors and leaders, including our contributing editors, who selected the best books in two categories: The Leader’s Outer Life, and The Leader’s Inner Life.”
The list is worth checking out. Notwithstanding that I kept the postage industry in business in 2009 with regular ‘little’ parcels from Book Depository and Amazon delivered to Melbourne, I have only one of the ten books! The other nine do look very interesting…..
Peter Corney, the joint editor of ‘A Passion for Leadership’ makes his second contribution in:
Chapter Eight: Leaders and Teams (Peter Corney)
Peter knows, through many years of leading large ministry teams, the challenges but great opportunities presented by team ministry. As Peter says at the start of this chapter, “The NT pattern of ministry is teams! Monoministry is nowhere to be found in the NT.”
Peter provides some useful tips on:
- recruiting teams
- recruiting principles. Eg. Don’t assess based on the CV – check references, thoroughly!
A useful diagram is provided summarising the changing role played by the team leader with increasing size of staff and organisation. A growing church requires the leader to spend increasing time on ministry rather than in ministry. The chapter does not elaborate on the tensions that this typically produces, especially for the congregation (s) but also sometimes for the leader. This is unfortunate as the author has a large reservoir of acquired wisdom in leading churches. Peter does summarise what ‘on ministry‘ includes:
- vision casting
- strategising
- planning
- creating structures for empowerment of others
- recruiting and training leaders
- motivating and communicating with key lay leaders.
He concludes with nine ‘wants’ of team members from their leaders. You can check out your own list against those identified – chapter eight is actually provided on the author’s own web site here.
As Peter says, if you find this article useful, purchase the book!
Have you had the painful experience of being asked to take on a ministry task without adequate training? Christian leadership is demanding even if the leader has the necessary competencies. Without such competencies, it is daunting, resulting in many casualties – for the leader and those being led.
Essential to leadership growth is leadership evaluation. Sandy Jones, the Managing Director of Leading ConneXions, deals with leadership evaluations in:
Chapter Seven: Leadership Evaluation and Mentoring (Sandy Jones)
Sandy is a debrief consultant for the 360 degree leadership evaluation Leader360. Having analysed the data from hundreds of leaders reviewed with Leader360, Sandy makes these observations:
- In the Reformed traditions, there is a “strongly critical phrasing.” For the leader, this represents two challenges: dealing personally with critical input, and developing strategies to transform a critical and judgmental culture.
- In the Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions, there was much affirmation. The downside was limited feedback on where the leader needed to be stretched.
- Despite significant progress, the Australian church landscape still needs to embed a culture of leadership accountability and development, with positive acceptance by the leader and local church of the evaluation process.
Sandy then identifies:
- how evaluations help a leader;
- leadership ‘trip-up’ factors; and,
- various leadership resources, developed specifically to address the learning curves identified by leaders.
Last night, we completed a near year long course on ministry leadership – Growing Leaders.
Fifteen ‘youngish’ leaders from four different churches participated. Ten two-hour training seminars were held on a monthly basis and each participant also regularly met with a mentor.
In the format we used, the Course material needs a fair amount of tweaking. The content is perhaps strongest in the first part of the Course focussing on ‘firm foundations’ in Christian leadership.
Undoubtedly the highlight of the Course was the open sharing time in our final session. Each participant shared their ‘Personal Life Statement’ – essentially a vision statement of where they believe God is leading them. It was such a privilege to journey with this fine group of young Christian leaders and to see so clearly the gracious work of the Lord in their lives, as He continues to mould, transform and inspire them for continuing Kingdom ministry.
Two reflections as we turned the lights off in the seminar room: what a gracious God we worship and what a privilege to be involved in developing the next generation of Christian leaders.