Leadership Archives - Page 4 of 7

Leadership

Training Your Eyes

Talbot Davis August 18, 2009 at 7:43 am 0

So what is it?

Is it an image of two people touching their palms as a sign of cooperation?

Is it a world map from the 1400s, when people really didn't know how the continents fit together?

Is it a frowning face?

An owl's face?

It all goes to show the importance of training your eyes.

Not just to get the "right" answers to these questions -- if they even exist -- but to see the world as it needs to be seen.

Spiritual leaders, especially, need to train their eyes to see what is right in the world and what is good about people.

Because it is all to easy to focus on things that are wrong and on people who are difficult.

I know it's easy because that kind of negative focus is my natural tendency.

So through the years, I have tried to be diligent in re-training my eyes. Moving them away from cynicism and sarcasm and towards hopefulness and grace.

Because you will see what you are looking for. Every time.

And when I look for signs of God's movement in people's lives, when I seek out willing disciples, when I survey the landscape for moments of brilliance and beauty, that's what I see.

I pray I'm learning to see with the eyes of a leader.

What are you seeing?

Leadership

Activity & Progress

Talbot Davis July 22, 2009 at 6:00 am 0

A lot of people in leadership mistake activity for progress.

I know this because I've done this.

Back in the day, for example, I wanted the church bulletin to be as full as possible. I wanted it to be loaded with information and to feature a calendar that was stocked with events. In my way of thinking, newcomers to the church would be dazzled by our array of activities, and long-timers would figure they were getting their money's worth.

Now I know that such a bulletin simply creates confusion for newcomers and exhaustion for long-timers.

I was confusing activity for progress, naively assuming that the more we did, the farther we'd go.

I now believe that the reverse is true.

I will accomplish the most as a leader and we will accomplish the most as a church when we take the time to rest, retool, and then focus all of our energy and creativity on a few things that are of eternal importance. Things like your kids, your spiritual growth, your service in the community, and your connection to the Holy Spirit.

So that if we get it right, we'll be much less busy and making much more progress.

And our bulletin will be a lot cooler as well.

Leadership

Staff Reading

Talbot Davis April 2, 2009 at 6:22 am 0

As a staff, we've begun reading Sal Paolantonio's book How Football Explains America. It's a fascinating read, one that explores how football is so much more than just one game among many within the American psyche.

Football instead is an expression of our 19th Century belief in Manifest Destiny; it is a weekly morality play featuring "good" and "evil"; it even reflects the uniquely American need to congregate, regroup, and plan . . . in other words, to "huddle."

Great stuff.

So why should a church staff study a book that on the surface has so little to do with church?

In the grand scheme of things, I want us reading books like this so we can better understand the culture within which we minister. The more we "get" people's values, assumptions, and desires, the more we can speak Christ into their lives. It's why later this year we'll read a seminal book on cultural communication called Made To Stick.

But beyond that, we recognized in reading How Football Explains America that many of the elements which contribute to a football team's success or failure do the same with a church staff. Cliches, but they are true:

You win with fundamentals.
You measure progress in identifiable units -- like a first down.
You tap into the power of people's narrative.
People tend to fill a leadership vacuum with their own poison.
There is a common enemy -- and it's not other churches.

Down, set . . . hut.

Leadership

Vision Over Visibility

Talbot Davis March 18, 2009 at 7:08 am 0

There is a masterful line in U2's "Moment Of Surrender" off the new CD No Line On The Horizon:

At the moment of surrender,
of vision over visibility . . .

So vision is different than visibility. Vision sees what fog obscures. Vision turns the "not yet" into the "will be."

As a pastor, I've often been asked about my "vision" for the church I serve.

Many times, I fumble around in search of an answer. I want to appear confident without being arrogant. I also want to make sure my vision is in alignment with God's vision. And I don't want to be one of those pastors who has a vision no one else in the congregation shares or cares about.

But I've had seasons where I didn't have a vision . . . but a vision had me.

That's certainly true of our church's move towards "full color." The impression that God wants us to be a place where every tribe, tongue, land, and nation gathers under one room worshipping the one true God, well, that's a vision that has me. That worship here really would look like worship in heaven.

It's vision over visibility. And isn't it great when vision becomes visible?

Leadership

Time Well Spent

Talbot Davis March 10, 2009 at 6:00 am 0

I spent most of Monday at a seminar with other pastors from the Charlotte District of the United Methodist Church. Gil Rendle, a consultant with The Alban Institute, led our time together, and issued a number of provocative observations about leadership in the local church. Here are some of his greatest hits:

Leaders get in trouble when they start giving answers to questions the congregation is not asking.
Much of our problem solving merely takes our congregation back to the place of comfort it had before the problem arose . . . problem solving rarely takes us forward.
People don't fear change. They fear what they'll lose in change.
Management asks, "are we doing things right?" Leadership asks, "are we doing right things?" (nothing groundbreaking there, but it leads to his next observation . . . )
Congregations and denominations want pastors to do leadership. But they will reward only management.
At the moment a congregation says it will move into the future without losing any members, it has already decided not to move into the future.

Those one-liners alone were worth the time I spent learning and listening. Some of them might even find their way into Sunday morning; I hope all of them will find their way into my leadership Monday through Saturday.

Leadership

Talbot Davis

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