faithrunner

Atop Camelback Mtn. in Phoenix Realizing a goal involves moving from where you are to where you want to be or become. That's obvious but it's not easy. To say, "I want to climb that hill," and you have never walked to the end of your street means you have a lot of work to do before you make the top. Pick any one of your goals you have set for yourself or ministry this year and if you take any time for reflection or planning, you will see what is involved it getting from here to there.  Reaching a goal includes transitions; those bridges of actions that carry you from one point of reality to the next. The effectiveness of these crossings will determine your success toward reaching your goal. I offered the first 3 Rules of Transition I have learned by leading people from a favored status quo to a preferred future in my first post, 6 Rules of Transition, 1-3 . I want to offer you the next three in this post.   Transition involves as series of conflicts which ...

Climb to Camp Muir 2013 was a year of transition for me. I retired in June from local church ministry as Senior Pastor of Legacy Church, Plano, TX after 26  years of service with them. That same month I begin to serve with B. H. Carroll Theological Institute as Vice President for Advancement and then in October of this year I was elected to serve as their President . My climb of Mt. Rainier in August was easier than those changes in many ways. Transitions are part of life, and how we navigate them is the key to our success and our ability to stay faithful to God's call on our lives. Someone once said, "Change is easy. It's the transitions that will kill you." God is a God of change. God creates it and allows it to happen in our lives. As a servant leader who serves a group of people who are on mission with God, transitioning to adapt and embrace those changes is the bridge to how well you move forward together. Here are six rules of transition I have learn...

This Side Up! I write and teach about leadership. There are as many definitions of leadership as there are those who try to define it. But, if the essence of leadership is influencing a group of people to reach a shared goal, then Sarah Morris, the Director of This Side Up Family Center is a leader . She is what I would classify a servant leader because her leadership is clearly for the benefit of the families the Center serves, not herself or her family. How do I know this about Sarah and her small group of volunteers and partners?   Liberty Mutual, Dallas, hosted for a second year their Like My Community social responsibility project. Through the use of social media, local non-profits, who were nominated by the agents of Liberty Mutual, invited their supporters to "like" them on the company's facebook page .  Sarah and her dedicated band of supporters out "liked" all the other non-profits , and This Side Up Family Center walked awa...

Calvin Miller I first met Calvin Miller via snail mail. I had read The Singer while in seminary, and his poetic imagery of Jesus as the Troubadour singing the song of God's love cut to the core of my beliefs about who I was as a follower of Jesus. The line that became Ground Zero for my revitalized relationship with Jesus and perspective on the church was: Life is the Song and not the Shrine. I wrote Calvin a note about what his book meant to me, and he wrote back--as he did I think everyone who wrote him.Our friendship had begun. I had stayed in touch with Calvin since that first letter through other hand-written notes, so when he came to Southwestern , I asked if I could take him to lunch. He accepted, and I was surprised when we walked out to the parking lot and got into his red Fiero . Pastor, seminary professor, artist, author, driving a red sports car? But when you got to know Calvin you learned his taste was demonstrated as much by that car as it was by his art a...

One of the hardest parts of leading is admitting you made a mistake, living with the consequences of that miss-take, and keeping followers on mission after you make it. Leaders are human, and no matter our training, experience, or talents, we can't see everything and we can't be right 100% of the time. This truth is why I appreciate the story about Joshua in in Bible . In Joshua 9 , we read how the leader of Israel was deceived into making a treaty with an enemy whom he would have destroyed. While the cleverness  of the enemy to survive is interesting, the better part of the story is how Joshua exhibited character in the midst of his failure as a leader . Read the story here . Here are some leadership lessons from this experience in Joshua's life. Take responsibility for your actions. Joshua did not play the blame game or whine he had been deceived, nor did he get into the politics of blame and point his finger at the elders who ratified the treaty by oath. ...

Ruth Haley Barton I teach leadership courses for DBU and B H Carroll at both the Masters and PhD levels. I have extended bibliographies for each course, but if you were to ask me for one or two books on leadership you should read, I would recommend (other than my book on leadership ): Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership , by Ruth Haley Barton and Leadership on the Line , by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. Heifetz and Linsky   Why these two out of all the others? Both resonate with my personal experiences (and those of leaders I respect) of leading a freely formed group of followers around a perceived common mission toward a new goal or reality.  Both provide practical and spiritual ways to survive the Mt. Rainier climb of leadership. Leadership on the Line contains the wisdom of leading I wish I had known twenty years ago when I started this leadership adventure at Legacy Church . I wish someone had told me the price of lead...

I recently made a trip to a country in southeast Asia where the church is required to register with the government. I went at the invitation of a registered denomination and under the auspices of the government. I had been to two other countries with similar situations in order to serve in those places, so I was comfortable accepting the call and fulfilling what I was asked to do. Here are some things I observed about the church this outing. The Church does not need the support of the government to survive. Whether or not the government sanctions or persecutes the Church, it thrives. This country allows the church to exist under its mandates and management. No free church movement legally exists. When the government was directly hostile to the Church in the country, Christ followers still gathered, served, and risked persecution as they lived out their allegiance to Jesus. But the church is not a governmental agency. It is a viral movement of relationships borne on the Spirit, ...

Daily News What is a leader to do when the bottom falls out? How is he or she to respond when people panic and look to their leader as the one who should know how to get them out of the mess or crisis. I'm no expert on leading in a crisis, but I do have some personal experience as a pastor and what I observe from the life of Jesus, the ideal servant leader. First, a servant leader reminds everyone that no matter the changing circumstances, the mission remains the same . For my family and those I serve as Legacy Church, our mission to help people trust Jesus as the church, at home, and in the world does not change no matter what goes on elsewhere. This stance allows the leader to be what Edwin Friedman called the "non-anxious presence." Knowing and sticking to the mission is the rudder and course in the storms of life. Good leaders call those they lead back to the reason for the group in the first place . Jesus continually reminded his closest followers that al...

I don't post much on this blog about the servant leadership of Jesus . (I need to start a separate blog, I suppose.) I spend more time teaching the principles and model of Jesus' leadership in the courses I teach for B H Carroll Theological Institute and Dallas Baptist University as a Teaching Fellow and Adjunct Professor (MACE and Ph.D.) respectively. That doesn't mean I don't keep up with the dialogue around my life's message that if we are followers of Jesus we who are called to lead will lead like Jesus . The dialogue around servant leadership and Jesus, which I am pleased to monitor and enter into regularly, has become a mainstay of leadership discussions in Christian schools and seminaries , . Bethel Seminary has with a D.Min. in Servant Leadership and Gonzaga University recognizes itself among "servant leadership schools," who train leaders to be servant leaders. I appreciate serving DBU's mission to "produce servant leaders" th...