Here is one way to handle attacks in the ministry. This presentation was made from Bob Roberts post here. This is a fun program. It is interactive so you can click on arrows and the like or just advance by using your arrow keys on your keyboard. I am planning to improve the presentation but here it is for now.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I came across this quote from Goethe
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
More and more as I lead and consider leadership I see the vast importance of putting people first and accomplishments second. Gathering people with the same desires together to accomplish a task and then building them up as best you can, that is what will make a mark in this world.
I really like what David Allen said in his most recent “Productive Living Newsletter.” The topic was helping people to change their habits. He said:
If you want to be good at getting other people to change, ask yourself: “Who got me to change?…and how did they do that?” Bring to mind the three people in your life you would say were most effective in getting you to improve, learn, stretch, and grow in a positive way. What was common to all three?
For me, there was only one common denominator about those people in my life. Whether it was the sweet little old teacher in the 4th grade, or the coach that ran my tail off in high school—they all held a vision of my being and doing better than I was currently doing, they held that as a standard when they related to me, and they cared enough about me to hold me to task when I fell short. (They also all did it lovingly, though it didn’t feel like it sometimes!)
Really want people to change? Try that.
That is good advice.
Recently our car was driving a little funny, so Paul took it in to see if it needed an alignment. The problem was actually the tires, not the alignment, although the symptoms were similar. A car that’s out of alignment will pull to the side, or shake as you gain speed. As I think about the Christian organization, it seems that alignment might also be a sign of health there, just like in my car. But a new article on Harvard Business Review suggests the opposite: too much alignment is not necessarily good for us.
We may think the best way to succeed in our purpose is to cultivate a culture of loyalty and agreement. In such an environment, those who speak out or speak up about different ideas or potential pitfalls are often quickly silenced. Such an approach may look like harmony but in reality stifles creativity and growth, as the article explains.
Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:
“The problem is that a lack of discord looks like harmony, even happiness, which in turn suppresses constructive conflict further.” The more we push for external conformity and agreement, the less we benefit from sharpening one another.
“The challenge is finding a level of discord that raises legitimate concerns, without overwhelming workers.” No one wants to live in a world of constant conflict, either! We need to seek the middle ground.
“But especially now, when we are facing unprecedented change, too many leaders instinctively seek alignment as an end in itself, rather than as a precondition for the real work of leadership — which is to use all of our capacity, including healthy conflict and competition, to create winning, sustainable results.” Change and insecurity may push us to accept alignment for its own sake, without paying attention to where we are actually going. It’s not hard to think of “over-aligned” groups that actually turn out to be cults.
We really shouldn’t have to look to HBR to figure this out, though. It was described clearly for us about two millennia ago like this: The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. . . . But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (I cor 12:12, 18-20) All the parts are needed, for all are crucial parts of the body of Christ.
If you missed it Sept. 09, 2009 was host to an event called the nines. Many Christian leaders spoke for nine minutes on that day to all who would listen free on the internet. Everyone from Rick Warren to Neil Cole, Francis Chan and many others. This is one of the best videos from “The Nines” by Skye Jethani managing editor of Leadership Journal. It is called “Where does our legitimacy come from?” A number of Europeans I know said it was one of the best talks from the day. I found it on – SKYEBOX but it is also on YouTube.
Are you like me? I sit in the church service with my smartphone on and as the pastor preaches I surf web sites like www.bible.org and double check what the pastor is saying against three commentaries and two Bible translations.
Steve Moore of The Mission Exchange talks about this. He quotes Robert Murdock who says, “Power is moving away from the old elite in our industries, the editors, the chief executives and lets face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers are demanding content delivered when they want it how the want it and very much as they want it.” We really could say that power is moving from the pastoral hierarchy to the people in the pew.
I love what Moore says: “Now that information has been democratized and initiative has been decentralized, the power brokers of the old school are discovering, ‘We are no longer in control.’ Get use to it.”
This reality is changing the way churches and missions operate. You can see a video of Steve talking about these things and more in his video blog for March here: The ‘Punkification’ of Missions: Why a Download Paradigm doesn’t work in an Upload World. He has about 5 minutes of introduction so if you want to just hear about the topic then skip to minute 5 second 10. I think that is where he starts.
