Leadership

Leadership

Video

Releasing Ordinary People vs. Professional Clergy

// This touches on issues that are worthy of a fuller post (which may see the light of day… eventually), but here are some of the many reasons why I no longer work as a ‘full-time Christian Minister’ (I really do hate that phrase and its many contradictions). I’m convinced there is a better model than ‘professional’ clergy, and these guys touch on some of the reasons why.

Strategic chaos

// I can’t believe it’s true, but it is: Mosaic is now a year old! Our rag-tag community have experienced so much over the last 12 months, but we are very much still at ‘the beginning’. There is lots to learn and a ton in our community life and mission that I feel still needs nailing down. But, is has been, and is, amazing. I love our community, and the people who make it. I love the friends we’ve gotten to know over the last year. And I love what God is up to in us and through us. A lot of the time I feel like our emerging community is a kite in God’s wind, blown into new things and kept aloft by him. And recently, it’s been quite windy!

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Soma Communities

// Once in a while you watch something that strikes a profound chord. Something that causes you to jump about, laugh, cry, and shout, all at the same time. For me, this was one such video. All about Soma Communities.

This is how I want to live.

This is how I want my family to live.

This is how I want others to live.

This is what I want to give my life for.

Link

Leadership coaching

// Just a quick nod to a couple of great resources that surfaced this week:

  1. First up, Mark Driscoll is offering leadership coaching for all involved in Christian leadership, no matter age or stage. Looks great so sign up!
  2. Thanks to Tim Chester for pointing to a great wealth of urban mission and missional church videos offered by the Verge Network for all the resource junkies out there. Go ahead, watch and be inspired.

Try a bunch of stuff

// The excellent Peter Short has this quote from Tom Peters on the back of his door and I love it! I wish I had penned it as it reflects so much of how I want to live and lead. Too often I hold back from trying a bunch of stuff because of a fear of failure, or worse, looking bad in others people’s eyes (or is that just my problem??).

What’s more, it reflects a much more postmodern style of leadership than the prevailing modern, organised, systematized, (and dare I say institutionalised) style. An excuse for laziness? Maybe. A more effective leadership style in today’s changing culture? Definitely.

A few years ago Eddie Gibbs stated in a lecture that the task of leadership before us is no longer to make 5 or 10 year plans of how to cross the ‘sea’ ahead and strategize accordingly. No. Instead we need more leaders who just get in the boat, head out on an initial bearing and then change course often as the journey dictates. For more of his thoughts and reasoning behind such a statement I can recommend Eddie’s book Leadership Next, despite wishing for a bit more Bible in it!