Category: Culture

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.

So What Are Tribes and How Are We Like Them?

Len Sweet in a recent tweet asked “what if church ad councils or “sessions” or “deacon boards” were reinvented as “Tribal Councils” (twitter.com/lensweet, October 1, 2009)?  The question prompted me to investigate what others are saying about tribes.

I turned first to Seth Godin who recently wrote TRIBES: We Need You to Lead Us.  He gave an preview to his book at TED Talks on “The Tribes We Lead” (May 2009).  Seth suggests that in our time there is a new way of making change.  The change we seek is lived out by changing life through the tribes we are part of, and more importantly, the tribes we create.  The process unfolds as we tell the story of what is wrong with the status quo, gather others who share our discontent, and then lead this “tribe” to a better future.

So three questions I’d offer you. The first one is, who exactly are you upsetting? Because if you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not changing the status quo. The second question is, who are you connecting? Because for a lot of people, that’s what they’re in it for. The connections that are being made, one to the other. And the third one is, who are you leading? Because focusing on that part of it, not the mechanics of what you’re building, but the who, and the leading part is where change comes.

So how do leaders respond to these challenges?

So here is what leaders have in common. The first thing is, they challenge the status quo. They challenge what’s currently there. The second thing is, they build a culture. A secret language, a seven second handshake. A way of knowing that you’re in or out. They have curiosity. Curiosity about people in the tribe. Curiosity about outsiders. They’re asking questions. They connect people to one another. Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don’t show up. They want to be missed when they’re gone. And tribe leaders can do that. It’s fascinating because all tribe leaders have charisma. But you don’t need charisma to become a leader. Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading. Finally, they commit. They commit to the cause. They commit to the tribe. They commit to the people who are there.

Enjoy the full video.  Seth make a great presentation.

David Logan, a USC faculty member and consultant, added clarity to me investigation in a TED talks on Tribal Leadership.  The following are the different stages of tribe development and his insights on how to lead the tribe forward:

Stage 1:  LIFE SUCKS!  This tribe is formed from folks who have systematically rejected traditional tribes and gathered together with other likeminded people in gangs.  The prison yard is literally full of tribes of this type.  Logan’s further insight is that people behave the way they see the world, e.g. if they assume that life sucks, they will behave as if life sucks (and it should for you as well).

Stage 2:  MY LIFE SUCKS!  This tribe is characterized by the line to renew your driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles.  The culture makes people dumb and we react with anger at our participation in the ritual of standing in line.  But many organizations have people within them that react with despair about their situation and no work or innovation can emerge from this kind of tribe.

Stage 3:  I’M GREAT (and your not)!  This is the stage that many of us will move to and unfortunately stay at.  In this kind of tribe every member is constantly trying to one up each other.  These tribes are formed from gatherings of smart and successful people.

Stage 4:  WE’RE GREAT!  At this point tribes of motivated people gather around a larger mission and vision to become innovative as they celebrate their corporate identity.  (e.g. Zappos values fun, creativity, and being a little bit weird).

Stage 5:  LIFE IS GREAT!  The tribe that demonstrates this is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others rallied others to find common ground so that South Africa was able to avoid the fate of other nations like Rwanda.

There are three possibly counter-intuitive things that leaders of tribes know:

1.  Leaders are fluent in all five stages of tribal development.  The Declaration of Independence highlights the stage five goals of  “inalienable rights,” but most of the document makes references to stage two complaints about life under the rule of a tyrant.  Martin Luther King’s most famous statement “I have a dream” was a stage three comment from a leader of a stage five movement.  We have to speak to where our people are even as we nudge them forward.  (Organizational tribes break down along these lines: Stage 1 – 2%, Stage 2 – 25%, Stage 3 – 48%, Stage 4 – 22%, Stage 5 – 2%.  Stage 5 tribes will change the world!)

Leaders are not content to leave people where they found them!  So the following learnings are paired:

2.  Tribes can only hear one stage above and below where they are.

3.  Leaders nudge people and their tribe to the next stage.

Logan close his talk with a challenge to form triadic relationships.  Our typical response to networking is to become a hub of connection.  Logan suggests we introduce ourselves to another person and then help them make another connection in order to build a innovative movement.  World-changing tribes connect not just to a leader but to each other so the momentum continues at all levels of an organization.

We all form tribes, but what kind of an impact are the tribes you are part of making?  Will your tribe change the world?