Leadership Lessons: Evangelical Unity 1

You don't have to move very far beyond the confines of your own local church to discover that questions of how and why evangelicals relate to each other are rife in the UK at the moment. And even whether we should (of COURSE we should. Jesus prayed that his followers would be one).

It doesn't take long to come up against thorny issues like preferred worship styles, matters concerning the Holy Spirit or questions of leadership and gender. Nor long to meet people who assume that those who disagree with them always and necessarily hold a weak view of scripture.

It doesn't take long to find people who are clearly evangelical but who express it in some quite different ways to me, and therefore to talk past each other or find it impossible to work together simply because we spend too much time in our own silos and just don't get each other

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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

Marginal Gains

I was very taken by the interview with the head coach (or performance director or something or other) or British Cycling last week. He talked about improving performance - and what performance! - through having a secret squirrel club and by making marginal gains.
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