Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

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The Measure of Success in Ministry

December 12th, 2008

Last week at the Every Nation Winter Conference for campus ministers and church leaders in the Every Nation movement. One of the conference sessions featured a panel discussion on “The Measure of Success in Ministry”.  - A great topic, especially for someone like me who has the Achiever theme in his top five of Strength Finders. 

 Here are a few of the highlights from that session:

- “Real success has a lot to do with the purity that’s in your heart and the clarity in your head.” (Kevin York)

- “‘The Lord is my shepherd’, not ‘The pastor is my shepherd.’”

- “Don’t allow the grace of God to fool you into thinking that you’re better than you are.” (Jim Lafoon)

- “As a young pastor my greatest mistake was counseling too much and discipling too little.” (Jim Lafoon)

- “Multi-tasking [may make for high organizational productivity but it] makes for terribly poor relationships with God and with other people.” (Jim Lafoon)

- “I don’t want to grow [my church numerically] past my character.” (Russ Austin)

- “Influence has more longevity than authority.”

- “Most people don’t want a vision so much as they want significance.” 

Some pretty good leadership insights, in my opinion! Which one stands out to you? 

…My next and final post on the EN Winter Conference will recap Steve Murrell’s message on Five Tension Points in our ministry.

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Catalyst Recap – Andy Stanley on Moral Authority

October 24th, 2008

Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta church spoke several times at the Catalyst Conference this year. 

HIs first session he spoke out of Nehemiah 5:6-18 on the importance of a leader having “moral authority”. 

“Moral authority is what we get when people percieve that there is agreement between our creed and our deed”, said Andy. “Most of our leadership comes from this.” It’s easy to

Here are a few other key thoughts from this talk:

- “All the leadership tricks in the world won’t compensate for a lack of moral authority.”

- “Everyone [including paid staff] at the end of the day is basically a volunteer – they can leave at any time.”

- It is important not only to have alignment between words and deeds, but “public alignment”. People need to see the alignment of your walk and your talk.  

He emphasized integrity and modeling in three specific areas:

1. Forgiveness

- Forgiveness is at the epicenter of the gospel. We must not carry bitterness and offense, but instead lead the way in forgiveness.

2. Family

- “If your wife feels like the church is your mistress, you are part of the problem.” 

- “Prioritize the role that no one else can play over the role that someone else can plan”. 

3. Finances

- “Give. Save. Live on the rest.”

Do you have moral authority with the people you lead or merely positional authority? In what areas do you think that your moral authority has been waning? What are you going to do about it?

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Catalyst Recap – Jim Collins

October 17th, 2008

 At Catalyst 2008, Good to Great author Jim Collins spoke on a topic that will not surprise you – Going from Good to Great. (He’s still working that content seven years after the book’s release, but why not, it’s good stuff!)

Here are a few of the statements that he made during his talk which I found most interesting and helpful:

- “Not all time in life is equal. If you are young in life you have a long runway ahead of you.” (The audience at Catalyst was a younger crowd.)

- “If we got better ‘whos’ we would get better ‘whats’.”

- “You have to prepare for what you cannot ultimately predict, so your most important decision is who”

- “The question is not if you are a leader or not, but if you are a level 5 leader or a level 4 leader.”

- “The signature mark of these [level 5 leaders] was humility”

- If it is about you, you will not build something great.”

Collins also talked abou the culture of discipline that truly great companies have saying that “most overnight success stories are really about 20 years in the making“. We don’t see much of the process, or usually hear about it, but this is the discipine of the flywheel – that pushing and pushing and pushing when no one sees, and no one knows that ultimately builds momentum and can lead to greatness.

One of the most interesting things that Collins discussed was the concept of “overreaching”. While it is good to push and good to strie for excellence, the momentum of the flywheel has to build up gradually. One should not try to go too fast, too quickly or they could easily ruin everything. This is the leadership sin of overreaching.

“Overreaching born of hubris is how you fall – derailing the flywheel“, said Collins. I wonder how many pastors, missionaries and church planters, who ruin their marriages, ministries and families do so as a result of overreaching.

As a motivated twenty-something with a type-A personality and a deep love for God I know I need to be careful to not overreach.

What about you? Which of these quotes stood out most to you and why? Are you in danger of overreaching?

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