Author: Allen Bingham

I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor of Haymount United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA.

Ike Reighard talks about 4 friends every pastor needs. Can you put a name and face to these friends?

Ike Reighard, pastor of Northstar Church in Kennesaw, suggests that friendship for pastors is crucial to their leadership:

Pastors may be the most well-known, loneliest men on the face of the earth. Friendship is a vital part of New Testament ministry and leadership. Without quality, biblical friendships, we are modeling a flawed Christian lifestyle for our church members. Yet, for many, the difficulties of pastoral friendships outweigh the benefits.

Most pastors find themselves in an unhealthy relationship where their wife is their only friend and counselor. If a pastor continues to project his problems onto his wife, she will grow disillusioned and desperate to leave the ministry. I believe a pastor’s wife should be his best friend, but she should not be his only friend.

In my 30 years of ministry, I have learned that every pastor needs at least four types of friends.

via 4 Friends Every Pastor Needs Leadership Care | LifeWay.

The following are Reighard’s suggestions for our friendships:

  • A developer who knows how to bring out the best in you.
  • A designer who would mentor us in marriage, parenting, ministry, etc.
  • A disturber who asks difficult questions and shakes up the status quo.
  • A discerner who has spiritual insight into our lives and is willing to speak the truth in love.

Jason Byassee reminds us that people are asking us to “tell me a story”

Jayson Byassee suggests that a primary task of the leader is to tell a compelling story of a preferred future.  He closes his post with the following story, beginning with the quote that centers my ministry:

Reinhold Niebuhr said “Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime. Therefore we are saved by hope.”

I remember a story from the falsely titled book “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Though I learned of the story in college, I’m only now seeing the wisdom of it. It is about the building of Chartres Cathedral in France during the Middle Ages. Though it is hard for us to conceive, the people of Chartres built the magnificent structure knowing that, for most, it would not be completed in their lifetimes. One day a man approached Chartres to see how it was coming. He passed one man covered in dust and asked what he was doing. “I’m cutting stone,” the man said. He passed another covered in sweat and dirt and asked him the same. “I’m laying stone,” he said. Finally he arrived at the cathedral and saw a woman sweeping the floor. He asked what she was doing, though he could see it plainly enough. “I’m building a cathedral for the glory of God,” she said, answering truer than the others.

Leadership is about telling a story of who we are, what we are doing and where we are going. In Christian terms, it’s about describing how what we’re up to is part of God’s coming kingdom, and how we’re invited to join in it building now. So if you want to lead me, tell me a story, and if you want to lead me as a Christian, remind me how this all fits into the glory of God.

So what story is driving your work?

via Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog | Faith & Leadership | Jason Byassee: Tell me a story.

Susan Beaumont thinks beyond the corporate model of church. First learn to deal with complexity …

Susan Beaumont at the Alban Institute is paying attention to the larger entity in their pastoral-program-corporate church typology and offers the the following:

It’s All About Complexity

Once a congregation passes into the size zone that has traditionally been labeled “corporate,” it is already a fairly complex organizational system. In his book One Size Doesn’t Fit All (Baker Books, 1999), Gary McIntosh talks about the large church as a multiple-cell organism where:

• There are too many people to know everyone.

• There are numerous groups, classes, and cells where people can become involved. In other words, the church is a congregation of congregations.

• Church leadership is representative of several groups, classes, and cells.

It is reasonable that congregations growing beyond this attendance level will experience continued growth in the number of groups, classes, and cells that make up its ministry. It is also reasonable to expect that organizational and leadership structures will adapt themselves in predictable ways to this ever-increasing complexity.

In my work as a consultant, I’ve found that five parts of a congregational system are affected by increasing complexity and must be adapted as medium-sized and large congregations grow larger. These are:

• the organizing principle that governs adaptation and decision making

• the foundational way in which growth and assimilation are managed

• the style of pastoral leadership that works effectively

• the way in which the staff team functions

• the identity and focus of the governing board

Additionally, she identifies how the above systems flow in the multi-celled church (250-400 in worship), the professional church (400-800 in worship), and the strategic church (800-1200 in worship).

via The Alban Institute – Beyond Corporate.

Lame Duck Leadership

Susan Beaumont offers her insights into Large Congregations in this piece about responding to the question “shall I stay or shall I go?”

“I don’t want to stay a day longer than I ought to.”

“I don’t want to be a lame duck”

These are the two most frequent concerns I hear expressed by clergy leaders who are thinking about retiring or leaving their post. Quickly, the conversation moves away from the first question and onto the second. It’s not unusual for me to enter a congregation and have two independent conversations on the same day. First, the clergy leader approaches me and says, “I’m thinking about retiring or moving on, but I can’t discuss this with any of my lay leaders because doing so will make me a lame duck leader.” A lay leader approaches me and says, “Many of us are wondering what the pastor’s retirement plans or vocational plans are, but we can’t ask her for fear that she’ll think we want her to leave, or that she’ll become a lame duck leader once the conversation begins.” Consequently, nobody speaks about a looming departure and the anxiety level of the congregation builds.

via Lame Duck Leadership « Inside the Large Congregation.

Ed Stetzer at LifeWay interviews Tim Keller, the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York city.  Keller is popular with atheists and non-Christians and many have come to hear him give apologetics for the Christian faith. His strategy is in his tone. The tone of some Christians & The New Atheists is harshly critical “take no prisoners” demonizing the other side.  Keller says “We need to respect doubts because they have something in them that needs to be addressed.” Take a listen

Tim Keller invites us to enter conversations with athiests and new belivers in a new way.

The folks at Nurture Shock at Newsweek offer a simple set of goals for parenting … Praise them less, and help them develop accurate awareness of how well they’re doing—so don’t try to spin them into believing they’re better than they are. Protect their sleep hours fiercely. When young children hurt each other’s feelings, give them a chance to come back together on their own. You might not see apologies or overt repair, but scientists are learning that repair can be implicitly implied when kids end up side by side again. Choose schools that don’t assign too much homework (more than an hour in middle school is too much), and the schools will finally get the message. Protect play time, and as children mature, help make sure they still have outlets for fantasy. By the time a child is 11, don’t encourage or expect her to tell you everything. Some things need to be none of your business. Set a few rules and enforce them, but in other domains encourage independence and autonomy. Teens need opportunities to take good risks. They need more exposure to other adults, and even kids of other ages—and less exposure to teens exactly their age. They need part of their life to feel real, not just a dress rehearsal for college. They will mature more quickly if these elements are in their life. Colleges have gotten better. It’s harder today to get into the top 30 name-brand colleges, because so many kids apply, but the next 70 colleges are now just as good as the top 30 were when you went to college, and the next 100 are darn good too. Care about your child’s education, not the notoriety of the name printed on his college sweatshirt.

How not to helicopter as a parent (and when its best to hover).

An excerpt from the Nurture Shock column at Newsweek … To vastly oversimplify the homework debate, just for a moment, the evidence suggests high schoolers school performance goes up, a lot, when they have to do homework. Middle school children, though, only get minor benefits from homework, and elementary school kids get no benefit. One theory as to the reason for these findings is that younger kids can’t correctly choose for themselves what to study. They simple perform homework in a rote way, rather than a targeted way. It turns out that kids are better at basic facts, like vocabulary. The metacognition for vocabulary in 3rd grade has a correlation of .90 – kids almost always know if they’re spelling words correctly on a spelling test. (They might misspell much more when they’re just writing and paying attention to the content not the spelling). By 5th grade, even as the vocabulary words get harder, metacognition accuracy is still very high. Here’s the catch: students at this age are not good at applying their metacognition, i.e. they don’t use their awareness to direct themselves to the right study facts to memorize. They’ll study everything equally, or many kids will in fact study mostly words and facts they already know (it makes them feel good). In 5th grade, this ability is still only getting started. They still need teachers and parents to help them focus on what to study. And kids are not nearly as good as having accurate metacognitions about their reading comprehension as they are for facts. They’re not really aware when they’ve understood a passage in a text. Their brains might have read every word, but comprehension is more than merely decoding text – it’s understanding the point. Even by 7th grade, most kids are not really aware if they’ve gotten the point. They’ve become so accustomed to not getting the point that they can no longer tell. Concept maps can help – this is where students draw a diagram of the main points and how they relate – and concept maps are better than merely reading the passage a second time – but neither makes a drastic contribution to metacognition. All of which is to say, most kids still need your help – less so with facts, more so with comprehension.

At what age do you no longer have to check your children’s homework? Don’t let my middle-school kids see this article.

Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership explores five decision-making models that leaders utilize with their people: 1. Tell“I want to inform you of a decision I’ve made and give you an opportunity to ask any questions.”2. Test“I’m thinking of choosing option A to solve the problem – what do you think?”3. Sell“I’m thinking of choosing option A to solve our problem – let me convince you why I think it’s a good option.”4. Consult“I need to select an option, and would like your input on which to choose.”5. Consensus“We need to make a decision, and I’d like us to make the decision together.”

Leaders tell, test, sell, consult, or build consensus with others … knowing which to do when is key.

The following are several criteria that McHugh explores in this article, beyond the business typologies explored more deeply in his book Introverts in the Church (2009). Charisma. For many people charisma is the preeminent trait that distinguishes a great leader from ordinary people. It is an intangible quality—perhaps better described than defined—that attracts others to a leader like a magnet. Charismatic leaders have a theatrical quality to them, and they relish playing the lead role amid other actors on the stage. Public attention is an intoxicating force that brings out their best qualities. They are able to inspire and captivate others with their passion and presence.People with charisma have the uncanny ability, as my friend describes them, “to speak to millions but make you feel like they’re speaking just to you. You don’t know them, and you’ll never meet them, but they feel like your friends.” A truly charismatic leader has a mystical ability to mix the appearance of an untouchable, larger-than-life persona and an accessible, sympathetic friend.Dominance. People who are dominant are hard-charging, persuasive and directive. They can motivate people and accomplish their goals by sheer force of will. This trait is primarily positional, meaning dominant leaders rely on the authority of rank or title to compel others. Their understanding of leadership “assumes that humans are naturally still, at rest, and that they need some motivating force to get them going.”When I think of a dominant leader I think of an extroverted pastor I once met who has built a large and successful youth ministry. He has positioned himself at the heart of the program, to the point that people cannot conceive of the ministry without him. He is constantly pushing things forward, starting new programs and rallying people around his ideas. He will not take no for an answer and will debate and persuade until the other person relents or ends the conversation.Gregariousness. Gregarious leaders relate comfortably with people of different personalities and backgrounds. They are able to initiate and prolong conversations and are at home among strangers. They have the capacity to disarm people and assuage conflict with their warmth and charm. Gregarious leaders in the Christian community are the face of a welcoming, friendly, inviting church. They set the tone for hospitality and openness among the congregation. They are skilled in the ministry of chat, filling awkward silences with engaging conversation, and people quickly feel at ease around them.In a highly verbal culture, words carry power. The person who wields words with the greatest fluency, or even just uses the most words, is invested with authority. In group contexts people often give leadership to those who are most willing to present their opinions, even though their solutions may not be the right or best ones. Speaking is construed as confidence, whereas reserving one’s opinion, or speaking up only on topics one has previously considered, is interpreted as timidity or deference to others.Superstardom. The superstar leader is one who excels at everything. Anyone with church leadership experience knows that the tasks of leading are manifold, even to the point of contradiction. Those in charge are called on to provide visionary, intellectual, administrative, financial, social, spiritual and emotional leadership. Superstar leaders are able to successfully address both the overarching needs of the organization and the particular, more personal needs of the individuals who comprise the organization. They have a rare combination of skills, which are often bolstered by intangibles like charisma and high energy, and are able to assert those qualities in a variety of settings.

Adam McHugh asks whether introverts can lead? This is a good summary of a dated topic.