100 Leadership Lessons #20 Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 1

In this post and the following three are 4 sets of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality. There are probably plenty more.

1. People holding wrong assumptions about what the church is:

• Church is meeting to attend rather than common life together
• Lack of understanding about every member ministry
• Unbiblical view of fellowship = activity or nice time together
• Unbiblical view of leaders = activity coordinators
• Unbiblical view of congregation = consumers or pupils
• Historical assumptions about relationship between clergy and laity
• Denominational assumptions or practices that turn leaders into a priesthood

100 Leadership Lessons #19 The Leader as Change Agent 2

In all areas of change leaders are the key factor for minimising the negative and leading for the positive. Therefore the key question is: what does the spiritual leader need to bring to the table to build trust and confidence in new direction?

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How to know the will of God; Colossians 1:9-14

How do we know the will of God? Basically by embracing the biblical gospel of his grace and asking for wisdom and understanding from God about how to live it out. His will is not just that we understand the gospel, but it is never anything other than living out the gospel of grace in the circumstances in which we find currently ourselves - or into which he directs us to move next.

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100 Leadership Lessons #18 The Leader as Change Agent 1

Kingdom growth involves constant change by definition. A church that wants to be in exactly the same place in 10 years time is extremely complacent and will atrophy. Leaders are the people who mainly expect to receive and shape God-given vision and direction for where the church and its mission can and should be in the future. Change, however, is the biggest threat to stable organisational life so being able to lead through change is critical to church and kingdom growth. Whether leaders are allowed to lead for change, and how they do so, will determine whether a church develops for future gospel extension or concretises itself in a past reality.

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How to be full of faith and love; Colossians 1:3-8

For those of us who want to see the Holy Spirit at work among our believing friends and churches, this is how to work to that end according to Colossians 1: show people the hope they have stored up in Heaven, through proclaiming the message of grace. When you see people starting to ignite, when you see faith and love starting to emerge in greater and greater measure, that's not us doing it, that is the Holy Spirit of God. 

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Orthodox Evangelism?

Back in Autumn 2011 I spoke at an evangelists' conference. Afterwards I was chatting to one evangelist who said this: I think I am doing good, orthodox evangelism. I am giving people the truth of the gospel straight from the Bible and presenting Christ accurately. However, if I am honest, I know in my heart that in a year's time the only thing that will be different in the lives of most of the people who become Christians is that they will be going to church.

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100 Leadership Lessons #16 More on Leaders and Character

The myth that there is no connection is dangerous because it divorces leadership from character. It turns it into merely a combination of skills to be exercised, opportunities to be pursued and networks to be leveraged. Of course, with that combination it is possible to create, for example, a very profitable business. But what it is not possible to do is help people be the kinds of people they should be and do the kinds of things they should do. Because that kind of leadership isn’t driven by values, only by end results, with leadership ‘success’ being defined by a very narrow and inadequate set of criteria. It doesn’t have to be honourable, compassionate, moral or even honest in order to seem to work.

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