Your Leadership Attitude is Contagious
A co-worker arrived at the door of my office waving an angry email from one of our most talented adult education teachers. The teacher was…
Browsing: Lessons for Leaders
Articles
Baseball and the Simplicity of Leadership
The new baseball season is upon us, and hope emerges anew in major league cities across the country. Baseball fans and some who had paid…
Look for Options, Not Solutions
Leaders are constantly faced with problems. They engage such challenges with energy because they know that these issues represent what stands between their current reality…
Leaders Learn from Their Failures
The Super Bowl in January had the highest viewing audience ever — a record of over 114 million. Those who attended the first Super Bowl…
Could Your Church Have Developed WD-40®?
The church today requires innovation, not improvement. Making things better through improvements is always welcomed, but we are past the time when merely improving what…
Pay Attention to People Who Stay
Mobility has been an historic characteristic of people in the United States. Mobility, opportunity and adventure have tended to go together. There was the massive…
The Emergence of “Dones”
A friend alerted me to a blog by Thom Schultz, founder of Group Publishing, on “The Rise of the Dones.” At first I thought there…
Celebrate to Build Your Church’s God-Esteem
Dying churches are often churches with low self-esteem. Your task as a leader is not to build up the church’s self-esteem but to build up…
High Yield: Seven Disciplines of the Fruitful Leader
Whether by training or intuition, fruitful leaders develop a set of practices that serve them well and bear much fruit. These practices often become second…
Remember That We Are Working in Sand
Each summer my family spends a week at the beach. And every year my daughters, their friends, and I build a sand castle. We’ve discovered…
Five Leadership Insights I Wish I Knew 25 Years Ago
This summer marked 34 years in ministry for me. Although I appreciate what I learned in seminary, I have learned from experience five key lessons…
What’s Your Church’s “Ladder”?
When people think of your church, what comes to mind? Is your church seen as similar to other churches? Different? How would church members answer…
Leaders Believe Things Can Happen
One of the most important contributions a leader can make is to believe that things can happen. When we do not, they will not. It…
Use Trial Periods for New Ideas
Lovett H. Weems Jr. says using a trial period to launch new ideas is a non-threatening approach. Trial periods also encourage feedback and engagement in…
Change Leaders Persevere
Regularly we remind others and ourselves that resurrection never happens until after a death. Yet often in leading a significant change, we panic. When the…
Learning to Fail Fast
While reading recent studies in leadership development trends, I was reminded of Paul’s call in Romans to be “transformed by the renewal of your minds.”…
Leadership Lessons from The Salvation Army
For most of us, The Salvation Army has been an icon of service throughout our lives. The inner workings of the Army are unknown to…
Jesus’ Lessons for Leading
Building a congregation’s life around a clear vision and purpose is easy to affirm. Aligning that purpose with biblical teaching and witness makes sense. Seldom…
Leading as Moses Led
One of the most fundamental elements of any successful organization is leadership. However, it is also one of the most misunderstood qualities as it relates…
Old Habits Die Hard
I grew up working with my parents in our country grocery store. Those were days before the advent of large drug stores with hundreds of…
Nelson Mandela — A Leader for His Time
Late last year, the world paid tribute to the remarkable life of Nelson Mandela. Some said there had been nothing like it since the death…
Leadership is Always about Others
There are many, many things about leadership that we do not know. However, there are a few truths about which we can be sure. One…
Asking Instead of Telling
You pick up some books because of the author and some because of the title. This one called to me for both reasons. Through Edgar…
Dreams Take Leadership…and Time
Will Campbell died earlier this summer. He was known as an eccentric Baptist preacher who fought fiercely for justice but was never comfortable with the…
Separating the Mission from the Medium
A year ago, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced they would cease producing bound volumes. It was a watershed moment when you consider this standard reference was the…
Determine On What Hills You Are Willing To Die
As a much younger leader, I wanted to fight about everything. Growing in this particular understanding may be more a factor of aging and maturing.…
Who Takes Your Church Seriously?
No church is right for everyone. It can be helpful to acknowledge that fact to potential members. It is a way to treat such conversations…
Giving our Best to God?
A phrase made popular by management writer Philip Crosby is “quality is free.” It reminds us that efforts to ensure that work is done right…
Stop Complaining about Sunday Morning Sports
It’s a common complaint among clergy types, “Sunday morning sports are taking people away from worship!” This lament and the exasperation that accompanies it go…
A Keystone Habit for Our Time
A much-talked-about book currently is The Power of Habit. The author, Charles Duhigg, attempts to answer the questions, “Why do habits exist, and how can…