Leadership Courage Series # 39 The fourth trait to lead effectively in a Church caught in a culture of cowardice: Stand, as an exemplar, in the sabotage and backlash that must come. A Christian leader is not simply someone who gets things done or who gets others to behave in desirable ways, in a religious […]
Compendium (part five) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 38 We’re reviewing nine traits essential to lead effectively in a Church caught in a culture of cowardice. Three: Promote healthy differentiation within the church or system you lead. Healthy differentiation means to take full responsibility for your own being and destiny. Pastor, this means that you will discard the ministerial
Compendium (part four) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 37 We’re making a brief, final lap through nine traits called for from pastors and influencers in the Church in North America. The second is: Take full responsibility for your own emotional being and destiny. Pastor, more than you know, you are the model of what maturity in Christ is. Regardless
Compendium (part three) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 36 Nine earmarks of courageous leadership were proposed in his blog series. As we wrap, here’s a review. The first is this: Courageous leadership is not about skill, technique, or knowledge. It is, most of all, about the presence of the leader as he or she moves through life. Since Christian
Compendium (part two) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 35 This series on Leadership Courage began more than a year ago. Inspired by Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve, I set out to do two things. First, to establish the context: the Church in North America is, as they say in the South, “eat up” with anxiety. Chronically anxious, the Church
Compendium (part one) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 34 Last time, I used the phrase “do what’s right because it’s right, whether it works or not.” I learned this from a friend, who says he learned it from the Lord. His wife had lost both her parents to cancer. One after the other. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. The impact was devastating.
Go First! (part six) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 33 As with much of this Leadership Courage Series, I’m indebted to Edwin Friedman’s excellent book A Failure of Nerve for this ninth and final leadership trait: Go first! Friedman says “To be a leader, one must both have and embody a vision of where one wants to go. It is
Go First! (part five) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 26 Edwin Friedman in his stellar work A Failure of Nerve challenges his readers to “disengage from an unreasonable faith in reasonableness.” It seems that the Church in North America is reasonable if it is anything, and that reasonableness has got us stuck. “Syncretism” is what scholars call it. I call
The Unreasonableness of Being Reasonable (part two) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 24 Here’s a final look at the 80/20 Rule and its connection to the culture of cowardice in the North American Church. And, it may be hard to hear. Could it be that a distorted substitute for biblical grace has taken the Church? Consider how little the Church asks of Christians…
Undermine the 80/20 Rule (part three) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 22 Why is it that 20% of the people in our churches are doing all the giving, all the serving, all the ministry? What if we who lead have actually established the culture that reinforces 80/20? What are we communicating such that the vast majority of church dwellers feel great about
Undermine the 80/20 Rule Read More »