The Art of Self Leadership

Your toughest management challenge is always yourself.   Bill Hybels

Imagine a compass—north, south, east, and west. Almost every time the word leadership is mentioned, in what direction do leaders instinctively think?

South.

Say the word leadership and most leaders’ minds migrate to the people who are under their care. At leadership conferences, people generally think, “I’m going to learn how to improve my ability to lead the people God has entrusted to me.”

South. It’s a leader’s first instinct.

But many people don’t realize that to lead well, you need to be able to lead in all directions—north, south, east and west.

For example, good leaders have to lead north—those who are over you. You can’t just focus on those entrusted to your care. Through relationship and influence good leaders lead the people over them. Much of what I do at Willow Creek, through relationship, prayer, and careful envisioning, is to try to influence those over me—the board and the elders.

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Spiritual Authority: What is authority and what makes authority spiritual?

Scott E. Shaum
Barnabas International

On Authority
If a police officer exclaims, “Stop in the name of the law,” she is using a form of authority. Authority has been granted and delegated to this person for the purpose of upholding the law. It is to be used for the protection and service of others, not for the personal gain of the officer. This simple illustration points out several relevant dynamics of authority.

Authority is received from others. It is delegated.
Authority is granted from a greater authority. People who take authority are referred to as “dictators.” It is wise for a person to not seek higher position, but rather wait on God and for that position to “seek” them. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to wean out any hint of personal ambition in the pursuit of any position of influence. Our identity is too tied to what we do and how others perceive us. A potential leader waiting in the wings is wise if she waits on the Lords and humbles oneself in that posture of waiting. If God is in it, the person will receive greater influence at the right time and in the right manner.

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By Alan R. Pence

THEME: MANAGEMENT SKILLS: DELEGATION

THE STORY

In 1961 Rick, presided over a disastrous meeting where members of a committee wanted to help a Bible translator in Papua, New Guinea set more appropriate work priorities.

The translator rejected this input in an embarrassing show of anger during the meeting and continued doing what he had been doing. Those involved ended up beginning from scratch in building a relationship with him.

In a prior meeting, this committee raised the question whether this worker was putting the cart before the horse in focusing on literacy work before making more progress on his linguistic analysis and translation goals. The committee decided invited him in to see if they could learn more about what he was doing and perhaps straighten him out. Bad idea!

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By Jim Feiker

Walking on the Forest Home Conference Grounds of Southern California one afternoon, I desperately sensed a need for God’s fresh touch and anointing for my increasing ministry responsibilities. I had set aside a day to wait upon God for His voice.

As I walked and prayed, I came upon a memorial to Billy Graham that marked the very place he had driven an important stake in his life and ministry. His covenant with God was to solely use the Scriptures as his authority in his preaching even though others might not. Many believe it was this hour of decision, honored by God that gave Billy power in his preaching.

That day I asked God to make me a man with similar convictions. I prayed that I would have a lifelong commitment to master the Word of God as much as possible in my lifetime and to use it faithfully as my authority in life and ministry. As I look back over my life, it has always been during such extended times with God that He has driven major, life-changing stakes deep into my value system.

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The process and pitfalls of handling personnel issues on the mission field

Summary
The work of investigating personnel problems, confronting difficult people and addressing sin is both loving and gracious, resulting in a stronger, more effective mission community. Despite the importance of directly addressing personnel problems, many find these situations awkward and uncomfortable and consequently do not fully address even the most serious of issues. The Bible gives both clear principles to follow when addressing sin issues within the Christian community as well as stern warnings for neglecting this important work.
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By R. Scott Rodin

/Journal of Religious Leadership,/ Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2002), pp. 105 – 119.

I have been asked to reflect on my five years in the presidency at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and to do so honestly, I need to begin with a confession.  I was wrong.  That is the most accurate statement I could make in summing up my experience in this position.  Mind you, I was not wrong about everything.  In fact, I believe we were quite right and accurate about a lot of things we attempted and accomplished during my tenure.  I could make the usual list of ‘legacy’ items that we former presidents do in justifying our term in office. There is much to be thankful for, many moments to treasure and certainly a legacy that I trust will make a difference to generations of students and faculty at our seminary.

Yet at the very heart of my reflection on my service lies this one major conclusion… I was wrong.  I was wrong in my understanding and preconceived notions of leadership in Christian ministry.

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By Dr. J. Robert Clinton

The grass withers, the flower fades; but the Word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:8

Fads, helpful as they may be, will come and go [1].  Effective leaders will recognize and use fads which are appropriate to the times and situations in which they lead. But there is more. My personal conviction about lasting effective ministry flows from the following two verses.

2 Timothy 3:16, 17 The Guarantee
Every Scripture inspired of God is profitable for teaching, for setting things right, for confronting, for inspiring righteous living, in order that God’s leader be thoroughly equipped to lead God’s people.

2 Timothy 2:15 The Proper Response to the Guarantee
Make every effort to be pleasing to God, a Bible Centered leader who is completely confident in using God’s Word with impact in lives.

In my opinion we have only one guarantee for an effective life time experience as a leader. We must be people of the Word. Seminaries are good. But a seminary degree does not guarantee an equipped leader. Short term training in leadership institutes are good and helpful. But institutes that offer various leadership emphases can not guarantee equipping. Retreats, workshops, seminars, and conferences, all good in themselves and helpful in our development, can not guarantee equipping. But God does guarantees it. He insures us that this unfading Word which will stand forever can equip us. If we center our lives and ministry in the Word we have a guarantee from God that it will equip us to lead. Our job is to respond and make every effort to please God in our mastery and use of this Word for our own lives and for those we serve. Let me suggest then, that,

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Author:  Rob Hay, Director of Generating Change

Introduction

The likelihood is great that almost everyone, at some point during the span of a thirty or forty year career, will work in an organisation dominated by a toxic leader and also will work in a toxic organisation.  Neither the organisation nor the leader will wear a warning label but most people instinctively know they have been in an unhealthy organisation because they felt inhibited, constrained and unable to thrive even if they survived.  In this new area of scholarship: toxicity of organisations, we see a complex interplay of factors and an array of symptoms of toxicity but the toxic organisation in very simple terms is one where healthy functioning, normal growth and the ability of an individual to thrive and flourish are all inhibited.

As Michael Herman¹ says “The notion of toxic organisations isn’t new, everyone has a story about one.”

Does it exist?

It is worthwhile looking at a diversity of organisations to explore whether and where toxicity has been identified.  Many areas have been studied by this new scholarship and it is by no means just restricted to the business world.

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By an anonymous other of a wonderful prodigal

One can almost hear the tongues of the neighborhood gossips wagging.  “That man must not have a lick of sense.  Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have known not to give that boy money.  And to think that he gave that son his inheritance!  It would have been far better if that man had just told his son that he was not dead yet and put him in his place.”  One of the first principles of prodigality found in Jesus’ story in Luke 15 is that sometimes prodigals’ parents must make decisions that do not seem right to others who do not have full insight into the situation.  They are sometimes judged for making a decision that they themselves did not want to make, perhaps seeking the lesser of two evils.

When our children were born, we wanted first and foremost to be good, loving parents; and to raise our children to love and follow the Lord Jesus.  Having done our best, acknowledging our own mistakes and circumstances beyond our control; our hearts ache with a depth of pain that others cannot comprehend as we watch our children walk away from the Lord they loved in childhood.  They are living lives that we warned them would lead to a broken relationship with God and the consequences of sin that we had wanted them to avoid.  Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 is rich with understanding and comfort for those of us who have prodigals.

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Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. — Habakkuk 1:5

God’s promise to bless all the “families of the earth,” first given to Abraham 4,000 years ago, is becoming a reality at a pace “you would not believe.” Although some may dispute some of the details, the overall trend is indisputable. Biblical faith is growing and spreading to the ends of the earth as never before in history.

The Amazing Progress of the Gospel

One of every eight people on the planet is a practicing Christian who is active in his/her faith. The number of believers in what used to be “mission fields” now surpasses the number of believers in the countries from which missionaries were originally sent. In fact, more missionaries are now sent from non-Western churches than from the traditional mission-sending bases in the West. The Protestant growth rate in Latin America is well over three times the biological growth rate. Protestants in China grew from about one million to over 80 million believers in less than 50 years, with most of that growth occurring in just the last few decades. In the 1980s, Nepal was still a staunch Hindu kingdom with only a small persecuted church. Today there are hundreds of thousands of believers, and churches have been started within each of its more than 100 distinct people groups.

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