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 […]
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Leadership Courage Series # 32 In the home stretch of this Series, we’re considering the ninth characteristic of those who would lead well in a culture overrun with cowardice. Early in this series we examined why comfort-craving, security-seeking, spiritless stagnation is common to the Church. Sad, when you consider how we behaved in the Book
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Leadership Courage Series # 31 We’re looking at a ninth characteristic of courageous Christian leadership. A leader moves. She takes action. Rather than taking a straw poll to see what the prevailing opinions are, a leader will go first. And sometimes this means going alone… for a while. It’s nothing special. It what leaders do.
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Leadership Courage Series # 30 To the Church at Ephesus, Paul wrote: So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up… Yet, since the Reformation, the Church in the West has been
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Leadership Courage Series # 29 Could you imagine the impact of a largely leaderless Church for, say, 400 years? Well, look around… We’re heading for the home stretch on this examination of courageous Christian leadership. The impetus for my challenges and observations is Edwin Friedman’s wonderful book: A Failure of Nerve. Thus far, we’ve made
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