David’s Bucket

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

Our second session at the Young Pastors Network gathering was on the subject of Prophetic leadership and was led by Mike Slaughter. Mike started out the session by talking a little bit about the Jesus Movement of the 1970’s which he described as “an awakening” which pointed to a future “reformation.”

In Mike’s understanding, the Jesus Movement molded itself into the modern “Church growth” movement where worship attendance has been the primary measure of success in our churches. The future reformation which the awakening of the 70’s pointed towards is the time we find ourselves in right now according to Mike.

If that’s true, the times we are currently living in right now could be as transformational for the church as the times of Martin Luther when the unity of Catholic church was forever divided into Catholics and Protestants.

During this session, Mike also talked about four general worldviews he sees present in our world today.

The Secular Worldview

The secular worldview is held by those who are totally skeptical of anything supernatural. Generally speaking those who hold this view are more likely to be over the age of 40, white and there are also a large number of individuals leading in the field of education who operate from this worldview. They could be described as humanistic and dedicated to the idea that satisfaction is directly tied to the accumulation of material wealth.

The Soft-Secular Worldview

The soft-secular worldview is held by those who believe in God, but place their trust in secular culture. They draw their meaning and security from the material world while showing a limited amount of interest in the supernatural. Soft-secular people struggle with the idea of sacrifice because of their connection to the material world and so they tend to think of their gifts as donations rather than intentional sacrifices. Those who hold to the soft-secular worldview are most interested in bringing God into their worldview. It was Mike’s opinion that our churches are filled with individuals who have a soft-secular worldview.

The Post-Secular or Post-modern Worldview

The number of individuals in our churches who hold to the post-secular worldview is growing, yet not nearly at the same rate as the number in the general population. Post-Seculars are usually under the age of 40 and show a high interest in the supernatural. Their worldview is radically shaped by the idea of Expressive Individualism which says that, “something if true if it works for me.” Also central to this worldview is the idea that the present is what really matters. A lack of attention to the past and the future means that those holding this worldview have deep struggles with the question of identity. Again, while there are fewer of these in our churches, listening to them is critical because they have the ability to understand the large number of younger individuals who are making a mass exodus from our faith communities. For more on that, Mike directed us to David Kinnamon’s book, UnChristian.

The Christian Worldview

Finally, we have the Christian worldview which says that, “it’s bigger than my life.” Those holding to this worldview believe that truth will prevail because it’s true, even if it doesn’t happen within their lifetime. Etc, Etc…

In relationship to how we view ourselves, Mike talked about two differing ideas…

The Moralist worldview says that, “I work hard to be right and to be accepted.”

The Gospel worldview says that, “I’m accepted so now I’m free to work hard at being right.”

[I wonder what your thoughts are as to the difference between those two statements.]

His closing thought for the session, which might have been one of the most profound I heard all week was this: “Your ministry will not be defined by what you achieve, but by who you develop.”

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

I received an email today with some new research regarding the number of Young Clergy in the United Methodist Church. Since I referenced some of those old figures a few days ago in this post, I thought I would share the update I received.

The Lewis Center has issued a new version of Clergy Age Trends in the UMC containing updated 2008 statistics. The new report, prepared with assistance from the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits, contains modest good news. The consistent decline in under-35 elders as a percentage of all elders seems to have hit its low point in 2005, when it sank to 4.69%. In 2006 and 2007, the percentage increased to 4.89 percent and 4.92% respectively. In 2008 the number of young elders increased from 876 to 910, and the percentage grew from 4.92 to 5.21% – the first time under-35 elders have surpassed 5% this century. As recently as 1985, young elders represented over 15% of elders. The overall number of elders continues to decline each year.

The five conferences where young elders are highest as a percentage of elders in 2008 are Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama-West Florida, North Alabama, and Oklahoma. The largest number of young elders is found in Western North Carolina with 60. The 2008 report also shows the average and median clergy ages for each conference, as well as the numbers and percentages of young elders, deacons, and local pastors. To review the report online, visit http://www.churchleadership.com/research/um_clergy_age_trends08.htm

A PDF version can be downloaded free of charge.

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.

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

Yesterday I arrived home from my trip to Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio, the site of the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network and the Change the World conference hosted by Ginghamsburg. I arrived in Dayton, which is about 15 miles south of Tipp City late Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday was dedicated to the first day of training for the Young Pastors Network which is an effort co-sponsored by Ginghamsburg and the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. Church of the Resurrection [or COR as it is often referred to] is the largest church in our denomination that is pastored by Rev. Adam Hamilton. Rev. Michael Slaughter, lead Pastor and chief Dreamer [yes, that is his official job title] of Ginghamsburg has partnered with Adam to lead this new group which will meet again in January for a three day retreat and again next September for a one day seminar followed by COR’s conference they put on every year.

Why are Adam & Mike leading this effort? Here is some of the information that they shared.

• There are currently 16,000 United Methodist clergy. Around 800 of them, or 4.7%,  are currently under the age of 35.
• Mike shared with us that he has been a pastor since 1979 and still finds himself under the average age of United Methodist pastors which is 59. That also happens to be the average age of our laity as well.
• In 1964, there were 1.5 million children actively attending United Methodist churches around the nation. In 2005, that number had dropped to 300,000.
• Studies show that a majority of pastors are most effective at reaching individuals and families in their communities who are at a similar life stage.
• Adam shared that is was his vision that in that room last Thursday were men and women who were going to be serving in large churches, growing their small churches into large churches, serving as Bishops and other leaders in Annual conferences across America, and perhaps someone who would one day take his place at Church of the Resurrection.

I spent that first day with 50 young pastors from around the country who had been selected to participate in this opportunity along with Adam, Mike and Brian McLaren. It was really one of the most extraordinary days of my life.

Over the next week,  I will be posting my notes from the sessions that we shared with Adam, Mike & Brian.

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

Tomorrow, I’ll be flying into Dayton to attend my first event with the Young Pastors Network and the Change the World conference at Ginghamsburg Church. As I prepare to be out of town through the weekend, I would say I am cautiously optimistic about this upcoming experience. I know the conference will be great. Speakers include Adam Hamilton, Mike Slaughter, Jim Wallis and Brian McClaren. I’m looking forward to attending what I think will be a high quality conference that will be hosted by and within the context of a United Methodist congregation. I’m really interested in seeing what the content of the Young Pastors Network will look like.

YPN is a partnership between Ginghamsburg Church and Church of the Resurrection and their website describes their mission this way.

“The Young Pastors’ Network is designed specifically for high capacity clergy within the United Methodist Church who are under the age of 35. Network candidates must be nominated by their bishops based on each candidate’s potential and drive to serve as a future leader of a large membership church within the annual conference.”

I’m excited about the opportunity to connect with young clergy from around the nation. I think that will produce some interesting conversation and connection.

But here is a few things that I’m a bit anxious about for the next few days…

• I have to fly, and I hate flying.
• I’ll be traveling and attending the conference alone. This will be a new experience for me. I have always attended conferences with at least one traveling companion. The closest I’ve gotten to going solo was attending the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry conference with our current Student Ministries Director, Jake Allen, many years ago. Every other time I’ve attended with my team. I also know that I am the only person from Texas who was accepted into the YPN. It’s quite possible that traveling alone may be a really good thing for me right now. I’m looking forward to the “retreat” aspect of going to Ohio as much as the content of the conference.
• I’ll be traveling low-tech. No laptop companion for me this trip… Just my iPhone. I’m currently without a laptop until the first of the year, so note-taking and other computer related tasks will be relegated to the legal pad. Again, could be a blessing in disguise in that I’m going to have to disconnect a bit from the world.
• I’m going to be away from the family. I don’t know how some people do this week in and week out. I hate not coming home every day to my wife and kiddos… especially right now as my 10 week old son seems to do something new every day, and my 4 year old daughter is in that stage where she loves to tell me everything about her day when I get home.

Just after midnight last night, the Rev. Dr. J. Michael Lowry was assigned to serve our annual conference as our new Bishop. Bishop Lowry will be consecrated at a service at First United Methodist Church in Dallas today and will officially begin his new position here on September 1st. 

If you would like to read more about Bishop Lowry, click here or here.

Other Bishops elected at Jurisdictional Conference include Bishop Earl Bledsoe who will be assigned to the North Texas Conference and Bishop Jim Dorff who will be assigned to the Southwest Texas Conference. I would encourage everyone to pray for these three men as they transition into these new roles . Particularly in our conference, I believe we are at a critical point in the history of Methodism in Central Texas in need of a strong leader to guide us through the next eight years.

I know that our delegation to Jurisdictional Conference strongly believes that Bishop Lowry was the strongest candidate for that role, and were very pleased to be assigned the candidate we hoped to receive going into this process.

If you’d like to know more about this process or what the role of the Bishop is within our church, click here.

At 11:00 p.m., I’ve finally settled into my room at Stillwater Lodge here in Glen Rose, Texas after the last day of Annual Conference and speaking tonight to the summer staff at Glen Lake Camp who are preparing for the beginning of summer camp next week. Here’s a very long day in pictures. [Can you tell I've finally started using the camera on my iPhone?]

We ate lunch today at Glorias, a really nice Mexican restaurant that is located in the old Montgomery Ward building in downtown Fort Worth. The food was great and that whole area is really neat. 

Here’s two pics of the rest of the First Methodist Mansfield delegation near the end of the day. We’re all a bit tired of hearing reports at this point. 

Luckily, my friends from Starbucks kept me energized today. 

Annual Conference always ends the same way with the traditional “reading of the appointments.” During this time, the Bishop and the Cabinet read the names of every church and every clergy who has been “appointed” to all the churches in our conference. The first picture above is my District Superintendent [my boss] reading our names and the second picture is the handout which lists the names of all our pastors. 

This is a really neat time for me because I can remember as a kid that this was the only time during Annual Conference where I got to go sit with my Dad. Mom would take us all up to the seat where he had been sitting all week to hear Dad’s name read again. 

Finally, this is who I got to end my day with… the staff at GLC. It was a wonderful ending to a very long day. Glen Lake changed my life, and it’s an honor to give back to this ministry. 

Peace, 

David