David’s Bucket

I received this email tonight from Rev. Adam Hamilton regarding my next gathering with the Young Pastors Network in Jacksonville near the end of this month. I’m very excited about this next gathering as I get to bring my wife along. Here’s what Adam had to share about what’s being planned for the agenda.

I’d be curious to hear what agenda items sounds interesting to you… Drop me a comment.

Dear YPN Participant,

Happy New Year to each of you!  Mike and I just finished a phone conference putting together the agenda for our retreat on the 26, 27 and 28 of this month.  Your comments and suggestions were pivotal in determining the content of this retreat.  I wanted to give you a heads up on what we’ll be doing. We know several of you cannot attend, but we wanted to keep you in the loop of information.

On Monday afternoon Mike and Carolyn and LaVon and I will devote a session to the personal and family side of leading large churches.  We’ll look at the struggles and the successes we’ve had in our personal lives and what we’ve learned about balancing church and family.

On Monday evening LaVon and Carolyn will lead a session for spouses based upon work they’ve done before while Mike and I will lead a session for you on preaching.  Mike will take an hour and share with you his preaching style, theory and offer examples.  Then I’ll take an hour and share with you a bit of my preaching philosophy along with a number of concrete ideas.  We’ll be providing you a gift copy of my book Unleashing the Word at this session.

On Tuesday from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. we’ll divide the group in half so we can have more interaction with you.  Mike and I will each take half of the group and look at the essential lessons we learned in leading a church from 100 to 1,000.   Then from 10:30 to noon we’ll flip the groups so you’ll have a chance to interact with whichever of us you were not with in the early session.

We felt you might want to have some down time to pray, walk the beach, play and reflect upon what you’ve heard and experienced, so from lunch until 7:00 p.m. we’re providing free time for you to network or play or enjoy the resort.

On Tuesday night we’ll do a bit of improv – inviting you to bring your questions about any dimension of ministry, theology or family life you’d like to discuss.

On Wednesday from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. Mike will lead a session on his book, Money Matters.  Each of you will receive a complimentary copy of the book.  He will address annual stewardship campaigns in the local church.  Then from 10:30 a.m. to noon I will lead you in a session on buildings, master planning and capital campaigns.

LaVon and Carolyn are planning another session for the spouses at some point during this retreat.  We also want to be sensitive to the fact that some spouses will be interested in attending some of the clergy sessions.

We’re looking forward to our time with you in Florida, and to getting to know you better over these three days.  This will be a terrific retreat and we wanted to give you a quick overview!

I received an email a few days ago from the Catalyst ministry at Church of the Resurrection with details about our next gathering of the Young Pastors Network coming up in January of ‘09. At the conclusion of our last gathering that location was still unknown as they were in the process of waiting on some grant proposals they had submitted. The next gathering is for clergy and spouses and the email that I received revealed that it will be held at the Ponte Vedra Beach Resort in Jacksonville, Florida.

I’m pretty excited about the next gathering. I’m of course looking forward to the learning experience of spending a few days with Adam Hamilton and Mike Slaughter, but I’m just as excited about a mini-vacation for me and wife. That should be a lot of fun.

If you’d like to learn more about the Young Pastors Network, click here.

To read a series of posts I wrote after the first gathering of this group, click here.

To share suggestions on what to pack for Florida in January, drop me a comment.

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

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.

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