Blog
Many congregations assign to each staff member a personnel liaison: a lay leader who serves on the board or personnel committee and is charged with supporting that specific team member. Few congregations manage these liaison roles well, and as a result they often do more harm than good. Congregations appoint liaisons for a variety of […]
Read MoreBarb shared her decision to end the day trip ministry. “I simply can’t organize these trips anymore. We began this ministry to address the loneliness and isolation of older adults. It’s been wildly successful in terms of participation. People love going on these day outings and enrollment fills up immediately. But our funding source is […]
Read MoreWe have great leaders. They just don’t work together collaboratively. What we accomplish together is sometimes less impactful than the sum of our individual parts, because we spend precious time and energy protecting individual or departmental turf. This is silo mentality. Silos are artificial boundaries put up to accomplish personal goals and keep others […]
Read More“You like me. You really like me!” Let’s face it. We are all guilty of defining our self-worth by what others think. When people praise us we feel successful. Are we? Courageous and adaptive leadership requires leaning into our own incompetence, and pointing out the incompetence of our congregations. Leading beyond our own competence will […]
Read MoreCongregations today are chronically anxious. When the anxiety of the congregation rises, leaders come under attack. We know this intellectually, but understanding that something will happen and actually riding out the experience are two different things. Every change leadership theory has a name for the leader’s needed presence during times of high anxiety. Edwin Friedman […]
Read MoreIn the world of congregations we are good at planning and doing. We enjoy thinking great thoughts and crafting lofty ministry ideals. We are fair at experimenting with our ideas, and taking tentative steps in the direction of our plans. We are great at running programs, running programs, and running more programs. However, we are […]
Read MoreConsider the last slate of candidates nominated for leadership in your congregation. What attributes were sought when recruiting this group? Perhaps you looked for potential leaders who were: invested, good decision-makers, strategic, prayerful, respected, effective communicators, with strong personal boundaries. How did the actual list of nominees compare to your desired list of attributes? Did […]
Read MoreMost teams in congregational settings assume they are being Spirit-led. They believe that God will be self-disclosing and guide the work of the team, so long as good people gather with good intent. They expect that discernment will happen automatically in the context of good decision making. And so, they demonstrate little intentionality when it […]
Read MoreOrganizations in all walks of life openly plan for leadership transition. The Church is unique in the veil of secrecy that we draw around pastoral transition. We don’t want to watch people grow anxious, so we withhold known information about departure. In doing so, we postpone the hard adaptive work of leadership transition into the […]
Read MoreThe large church is known for the quality and depth of its programming, and for the exhaustion of its staff team. It’s true, every one of my client congregations is functioning with a burned out staff team, and pastors on the brink of exhaustion. We assume that a growing and thriving church is always adding […]
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