Is the Church a Safe Place to Bare Your Soul?

Is the church a safe place to lay bare your soul?

That is the question posed by my friend Tanya Marlow in a recent article on the PremierChristianity blog. You can read it here: http://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Can-you-wear-a-bikini-to-church.

She asks a number of uncomfortable questions: can I show my whole self here and still be loved? Which would you find more vulnerable - turning up to church dressed in swimwear or admitting to your home group that you have a problem with alcohol; would I still be welcome if people knew my faults?

Tanya concludes with a plea for pastors and leaders not to communicate or model that we have to be perfect. Surely if they are prepared to model vulnerability it becomes so much easier for everyone else: “ If a pastor can lay bare her or his soul, with all its cellulite and sin, then the church may feel they can also be honest.”

I think that’s a crucial question.

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Leadership Lessons: Building a Team

What makes a good team-building leader? The characteristics of a good team-developing leader are a corollary of the characteristics of a good team. In our case it is a corollary of the purpose of the church and the reason God acts. We are building teams for building a biblical church, we need to have a clear view about what a biblical, God-glorifying church is
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Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 4

A final list of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality:

 

4. Leader's Reasons

Leader wishes to retain strong control over all aspects of church life

Developing a team means the leader sacrificing doing some of the stuff they personally enjoy most

Wrong theology held by the leader. eg "growth happens  through  teaching, I am the teacher, so I do everything"

Feeling disenfranchised and threatened by others who don’t have the benefit of my professional training taking a leading role

Leaders who don’t have time or perceived ability to develop team

Leaders being unable or unwilling to cope with negative consequences of things being done less well or of trying to change long-standing traditions

 

We might summarise the four lists as follows. Churches struggle to develop a team mentality when:

 

  • structures don’t encourage it
  • leaders don’t want it
  • congregational institutional assumptions don’t want to
  • historical assumptions don’t’ allow
  • personalities are not temperamentally amenable 

 

All of which are likely to cause leaders to dismiss developing teamwork as an unwelcome extra burden