Looking back at yourself

April 22, 2009 — 3 Comments

stormyYesterday I completed my fourth interview with the Central Texas Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. These interviews take place on an annual basis and are required for all candidates for ministry who are in the Residency program in preparation for ordination in the United Methodist Church. With that interview behind me,  I have just completed my first year of a three year residency program.

Our church has a very defined and rigorous process for qualifying men and women for ordination which I think is a necessity. I don’t always like the process. It’s very long [I'll tell you how long in a minute] and it does require a lot of work, but ordination is a big deal, a sacred act that should be difficult to achieve. Along the way though, there are some interesting dynamics that you see in a process of this magnitude.

One of those happened to me yesterday when a member of my interview team asked me a question in regards to my psychological evaluation [yes, we require these!] that I completed when I was 22 years old. [I'm 31 now. That's how long the process can be] It was interesting to me because I can barely remember what it was like to be in my late twenties, married without kids, much less, 22, fresh out of college, getting ready to get married, with no seminary training and no real church work experience. So, the question that was posed to me was essentially a request for me to dialogue with a statement I had made when I was 22…

And guess what…

It was a stupid statement.

It was something that I don’t even believe anymore.

It was something that if I heard someone say today, I would strongly oppose.

The only problem was this. I was the one who said it… nine years ago.

Awkward position.

And yet it also gave me the opportunity to reflect on how much has changed in my life in the last nine years. It made me think about several particular experiences that I have had in the past nine years that radically changed my heart and life away from someone who would say something like I said at the wise old age of 22. It gave me the chance to see how God has taken my initial passion and energy for ministry and reshaped that around a clearer vision of what the “redeeming” work of God’s kingdom is really all about.

And today it’s a reminder to me that what God really requires of us is simply a willing heart.

With a willing heart, God can do amazing work. We don’t have to have all the answers. We don’t have to all the necessary skills.

Just a heart that says, “yes.”

“I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to serve. I’m willing to be changed in order to participate in the changing of others.”

That’s the word that I received from yesterday’s interview. A reminder that my highest calling is to continually place my heart and life on God’s table, willing and ready for him to continue the work of “reformation” in my life.

What has God done in your life in the last nine years?

What is it that you need to stop right now and thank God for doing in your heart in the last great season of your life?

Take a look back… You just might be surprised how far you’ve come.

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Pastoral Changes

January 12, 2009 — 1 Comment

Our Senior Pastor sent out the following note today about pastoral staff changes in our church.

Dear First Family,
I am excited to announce a restructuring in the ministry direction of two of our pastors that will enable our church to step up in reaching the goals we set for ourselves this year and in years to come, lining up particularly with our theme for 2009, “Discovering pathways to Christ-centered living!”

Reverend Jim Gause, our Director of Care Ministries, has recently completed his education in Counseling Psychology and is now Dr. Jim Gause, PhD.  He is a certified professional counselor and Life Coach.  He will continue to work in pastoral care with an emphasis on hospital and crisis care, but his new focus will be counseling in marriage, grief and depression.  He will be available in his office in the Wesley Mission Center and may be reached at (817)475-8749 for an appointment.  I anticipate this expanded ministry making a great difference and celebrate with Jim, now Dr. Jim.

Reverend David Alexander has been our Associate Pastor of Evangelism, leading primarily in evangelism, communication and in Saturday night worship.  His new designation will be Teaching Pastor.  David will be more involved in preaching, teaching, worship planning and pastoral care, as well as leading church-wide Bible studies beginning with “Transformation  Journey,” a study that will be offered on Tuesday evenings beginning January 27.  This is a step into a more full pastoral role.  This change will benefit all our church as we continue a year we have called “The Year of Living Biblically!”

May God bless Jim, David and our church in this transition.

For the cause of Christ,
Reverend Mike Ramsdell
Senior Pastor

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Strategic Planning

November 6, 2008 — 0 Comments

Our final session at the Young Pastors Network gathering was led by Rev. Adam Hamilton and was titled, “Strategic Planning.” These are the notes I took from this final session.

Mike Slaughter, Brian McLaren, and Adam Hamilton each gave one of these three ideals in response to the question, what are the most important ideals needed in staff?

  • Integrity [Adam]
  • Courage [Mike]
  • Patience [Brian]

I liked Brian’s quote that he shared in relationship to his ideal. He said, “Loving truth takes courage, loving people takes patience.”

Adam’s follow to that thought was, “You may have a prophetic word, but you are always a pastor.”

Adam talked about two different kinds of leaders. The first he described as downward spiraling leaders which are those who look at the work ahead and can only seem to consistently repeat how difficult things are going to be or how unlikely it will be that success is achieved. The second type of leader that Adam described was a leader that “radiated possibility.” These types of leaders are champions of the positives and tend to make everyone around them feel a great sense of energy and passion around a particular task. Adam shared some visuals which I copied into my notes.

In talking about mission statements for the church, Adam said, that these guiding ideas need to be either written by the leader or meet the standard of something that the leader is deeply passionate about. If this standard is not met, the leader will not be faithful to keep that vision before the people. In the case of the local church, the preacher won’t preach on it, and it won’t become a part of your church DNA.

Further, Adam said, “never allow a committee to write your mission statement. It’s the best way to kill your mission.”

Also he said, “the mission has to be compelling to the leader first and then it has to be compelling to your people.”

In developing strategic objectives for your local congregation, Adam shared the following ideas of what makes something a “smart” objective.

  • Specific
  • Measurablle
  • Aggressive
  • Realistic
  • Time-Specific

Adam said that for an objective to not only build a sense of energy and purpose but also get completed by the end of the year, the objective has to meet all of the above criteria.

For 2008, Resurrection set the following three strategic objectives.

  • Double the number of people who were incorporating prayer and Bible study into their daily lives.
  • Increase by 20% the number of people in the Resurrection family who were participating in efforts to alleviate poverty in the greater Kansas City area.
  • Develop plans for future campuses for Church of the Resurrection.

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.

  1. Home from Ohio
  2. Self Leadership
  3. Prophetic Leadership
  4. Strategic Leaderhip pt. I
  5. Strategic Leadership pt. II
  6. Strategic Planning
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Strategic Leadership pt. II

November 3, 2008 — 1 Comment

This post is a continuation of my notes from Adam Hamilton’s session on “Strategic Leadership” at the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network. To read the previous notes, click here.

I thought this quote from Adam was interesting in relationship to preaching. He said, “I don’t always preach something that I’m practicing, but I never preach anything that I”m not going to try to live in my life.”

Adam shared some information from Ron Heifetz’s book, “Leadership without Easy Answers,” which I thought was some of the best info we received during the entire event. Paraphrasing Heifetz’s work for application in the church, Adam shared that Heifetz believes that leadership is about, “helping followers to become more authentically human.” The process of completing this task is as follows.

  • Get followers to clarify what matters most [To God].
  • Lead them to care about these core values.
  • Identity the present reality.
  • Help them understand the gap between the ideal and the reality.
Here’s the illustration that I drew in my notes for the above principles.
You probably can’t read the writing above, but the gap between the ideal and the reality is where Heifetz says that leadership happens. I thought the picture was also interesting in that it can be used to describe the work of preaching as well. If the ideal is the Kingdom of God and the reality is the human condition, then effective preaching is defined by those who help their listeners understand the gap between the two. From there, Adam moved the discussion to John Cotter’s work who said, “the average church is over-managed and under-led.” To identify the difference between the two, Adam shared the following statements about managers and leaders.

  • Managers plan & budget, Leaders establish and cast vision.
  • Managers produce policies and procedures, Leaders align resources to achieve vision.
  • Managers control & problem solve, Leaders motivate and inspire.
  • Managers create predictability and order, Leaders produce change and chaos.

Seeing this list, I was struck by the idea that I really struggle when I have to work primarily out of the role of manager. It’s just not who I am.

In establishing vision for the church, Adam identified three questions that every leader needs to be able to answers. [These are outlined in further detail in Adam’s book, “Leading beyond the Walls.”

  1. Why do people need Jesus?
  2. Why do people need the church?
  3. Why do people need this church?

Another quote I jotted down in the session. “People who achieve success simply do what the unsuccessful people decide not to do.”

That quote led into what Adam calls, “Whatever it Takes” leadership which he described as a key philosophy for Church of the Resurrection. To illustrate this, he told the story of a pastor on his staff who had a house call to make, but was asking Adam if it was OK if she didn’t make the visit today because there was 8 inches of snow outside. Adam’s response was, “No, because today is the day that they are going to remember that you showed up.”

A final philosophy from Resurrection that Adam shared was called “Discernment by Nausea.” To describe this, he said that when his Senior management team is faced with a really difficult decision, they tend to follow the principle that, “whatever path makes me sick to my stomach is probably the path that God is calling us to go.”

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.

  1. Home from Ohio
  2. Self Leadership
  3. Prophetic Leadership
  4. Strategic Leaderhip pt. I
  5. Strategic Leadership pt. II
  6. Strategic Planning
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Strategic Leadership pt.I

October 31, 2008 — 0 Comments

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.

  1. Home from Ohio
  2. Self Leadership
  3. Prophetic Leadership
  4. Strategic Leaderhip pt. I
  5. Strategic Leadership pt. II
  6. Strategic Planning
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