In this issue:

Leading with Energy, Intelligence, Imagination, and Love

BOOK REVIEW: Strategic Leadership for a Change

The Right Question

If we lose a generation in the church, that loss won't be because we failed to entertain them, but because we failed to dare them — to take the words of Jesus seriously and to do something about the things that are wrong in the world.

Shane Claiborne

Leading with Energy, Intelligence, Imagination, and Love
by Kenneth J. McFayden

Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love? This question is asked in the service of ordination and installation of church officers in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). But there is nothing uniquely Presbyterian about this question or the identification of church leadership as servant leadership.

When I hear this question asked, I find myself wondering if some have heard this question so many times that they are deadened to what it is asking. Leadership requires much of those who accept its mantle. Those who follow leaders deserve the best they can offer.

Leadership requires energy — physical and emotional, psychological and spiritual. Leadership calls for active engagement and considerable amounts of energy. It requires stick-to-it-iveness and stamina, since there are no quick fixes in leadership. Leaders are wise to seek sources to renew their energy within the congregation and the community in which they serve.

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BOOK REVIEW

Strategic Leadership for a Change: Facing Our Losses, Finding Our Future
By Kenneth J. McFayden, Alban Institute, 2009
Reviewed by Lewis Parks

Church leadership literature often seems lacking in psychological depth. It feels Machiavellian in its world view and behaviorist in its focus, particularly if your seminary preparation and your daily practice of ministry focus on the care of souls. Does the Jerusalem of your education and practice really have nothing to do with the Athens of the pressing contemporary call to church leadership?

Ken McFayden argues convincingly that one of the most common pastoral practices — helping people who grieve — can be a source of wisdom for congregational leaders. Drawing principally on the writings of British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, McFayden analyzes our lifelong and instinctive practice of attaching ourselves to people, places, and things. Attachments give us a secure base for growth. When objects of attachment are threatened, we are thrown into anxiety. When they are taken away, we succumb to grief.

The Right Question

Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

When a pastoral change in forthcoming for a congregation, Lawrence W. Farris suggests that the outgoing pastor and some insightful church leaders, especially some who have been active throughout the departing pastor's tenure, come together to review the church's recent history using these questions.

How are we different today from how we were when
the pastor came?
What accomplishments in ministry are we most grateful for?
What challenges have we overcome and what did we learn
from those situations?
What do we wish we might have done had time and
resources allowed?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution: Carol Follett