Strategic Leadership pt.I
Our third session of YPN was led by Adam Hamilton and titled, “Strategic Leadership.” Last week was the first time that I had ever met or heard Mike Slaughter speak although I had heard of him and Ginghamsburg for years. I was much more familiar with Adam because of my attendance at his church’s Leadership Institute in 2006.
A side note to begin with from my notes…
Throughout the week, Adam talked about what he calls “Conjunctive Faith,” which he [in mainline church terms] describes as what is “emerging” within the church today. Conjunctive faith is the bringing together of the evangelical gospel and the social gospel and is representative of the shift [what many call the emerging church] from both the liberal and conservative sides of the church towards the center.
Adam’s language for this is much different than some of the more prominent “emerging church” authors. Having Adam & Brian McLaren together was interesting because they both recognized and affirmed that while they both represent this movement towards the center, they are coming at it from opposite directions… Adam from the left of the theological spectrum as a United Methodist and Brian from the right as a former pastor of an independent conservative church. If you’d like to know more about the idea of conjunctive faith or the nature of theology at the center of the spectrum, I highly recommend Adam’s book, Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.
Back to the subject of Strategic Leadership…
Adam opened the session with, “The failure of leadership in the United Methodist Church isn’t Bishops or General Church Agencies, it’s the local church.”My comment in my notes was, “we need to own this.” I think there is an unhealthy tendency in the church to look to the leader above you to express blame, but Adam reminded us that you are solely responsible for the way you lead the local church. Great reminder to get us started.
Adam then walked us through an exercise where we reflected first on the characteristics of some of the worst leaders we ever worked for… What was it that made them ineffective? What were the pitfalls for them? After that, we flipped the question and looked at what some of the best leaders we have ever been around were all about. After spending some time thinking and reflecting, Adam then said, “What’s interesting about leadership is almost everyone knows what a good leader looks like and does. We just don’t keep that vision in front of us.” Adam’s challenge to all of us [which I haven't done yet, but plan on doing] is to spend some additional time coming up with our list of characteristics of great leaders and not to great leaders and look at that list every single day before we leave the house.
His key question: What would you begin to look like as a leader if everyday you started with your vision of what a great leader really is?
Ok. That’s about half of that session with Adam, but a lot of content to digest. I’ll post the second half of “Strategic Leadership tomorrow.
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.
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