Self Leadership
Our first session of the Young Pastors network began with a session led by Mike Slaughter entitled, “Self Leadership.” Before jumping into that, Mike shared a little bit of history. Mike was appointed to Ginghamsburg in 1979 and has served as their pastor ever since. We were actually meeting that day in the original sanctuary. You can see what they have done to renovate that area in these pictures.
To give you a feel for the size, there were 50 of us at the event and we were pretty packed into this little sanctuary. In the second picture, you can see that they have hung old pictures of the church all around the room and in the last picture, you can see that they have installed a small kitchen area in the back of the sanctuary. This room is one of the several locations they have for “cafe” worship.
When Mike arrived, the budget for the church was $27,000 and was located on this 1/4 acre. He was their first full-time pastor.
Mike started his session with the statement that, “all leadership begins with self-leadership,” and went on to talk about five of the daily practices in his life that make up his understanding of “self leadership.” Mike writes extensively about each of these in his book, Momentum for Life, which is based around the acronym, DRIVE. Those letters stand for the following.
- Daily Devotion to God
- Readiness for Life Long Learning
- Investing in Key Relationships
- Visioning for the Future
- Eating & Exercising for Life
Each of the disciplines here are fairly self explanatory and if you are really interested in learning more, I would recommend Mike’s book. Here are a few of the items I found of interest during this session.
Mike said that daily devotion is a reminder that for most of us, “it only takes 24 hours to lose a healthy fear of God.” He went on to say that, “daily devotion renews the ‘why’ in our lives, and the bigger the ‘why’ the greater the creativity and energy we have present in our lives.”
Mike shared the specific daily devotion model that he uses and his entire church does together called the Transformation Journal. One of these year long devotional reading guides has been published and is available here from Amazon. Mike shared that he teaches his congregation to read the Bible through the eyes of the “SON.” Son is another acronym [which I hate acronym's by the way] for:
- Scripture : Take time to read the scripture
- Observation : Spend a few minutes making some observations for the text. This is the place to “ask the hard questions of our faith.”
- Naming the Application : Consider the question, how does this text apply to my life?
Mike finishes off this method by writing out a prayer in response to that day’s reading. He then titles the day’s reflections [in relationship to the application] in his journal and places the title on a table of contents page at the front of his journal. Finally, he shared that his sermon preparation comes right off that table of contents. It’s the source of his creativity.
With respect to relationships, Mike said that, “relationships are always nurtured in the margins of our lives.” I thought this was a really interesting way to look at relationships in that for many of us, our relationships suffer because we simply don’t have any margins in our lives. If your not familiar with that terminology, the basic idea is that if every moment of your day is scheduled to be “doing something” you don’t have any margins in your life. Relationships are spontaneous, inconvenient, and are grown outside of “scheduled appointments.
Finally, eating and exercise… Mike said that the United Methodist Church currently spends more money on Clergy Health Insurance than they do on mission. With an average age of 59, you can see the problem developing, but what really sends this figure sky-high is the unhealthy lifestyles of clergy.
And one more final thought that I thought was powerful.
“Great leadership is being able to say, ‘do as I do’.”
I pray that one day I’ll be a leader like that.
This post is from a series written following the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in October of 2008. The rest of the series is available below.
Can I apply for the “Chief Dreamer” position. I think I would be good at that!
Great to have you home and look forward to reading more about what you learned at the conference and how to put it in action!
Join us for Boot Camp at 5:30 am three days a week for exercize and a daily devotional – Randy Margo is there – if he can do it you can!
I loved this!
The idea of being a “self leader” is exactly the mindset I’ve been looking for.
I just feel that if I try to D.R.I.V.E., then I end up erasing my margins. I become too scheduled. Finding a way to do all of those things and leave room for spontaneity is easier said than done.
…and back off Art! He’s MY workout date! haha.