The Listening Ear

Leadership’s Failure Of Nerve–2

As Edwin Friedman looks at leadership in American society in his book, A Failure Of Nerve, he sees four related problems in contemporary society:

1) Many organizations allow their most dependent members to set that organization’s agenda. This results in an adaptation toward weakness rather than strength, giving power to the recalcitrant, the passive-aggressive, and the most anxious members rather than focusing on those who are energetic, visionary, imaginative and motivated.

2) The process that systems thinking identifies as individuation is undercut. Individuation promotes a person’s capacity to define themselves more clearly. A well-differentiated leader is who has clarity about their life goals, who can be separate while remaining connected with others and can maintain what Friedman calls a nonanxious presence instead of being caught in the emotional reactivity of those in a system of relationships who are anxious.

3) We have become obsessed with data gathering and technique that keeps us from dealing with the emotional processes that operating in our families and our institutions.

4) There is a widespread misunderstanding of these emotional processes that operate in a destructive manner in families and institutions. Leaders assume that toxic forces can be regulated by reasonableness, love, giving insight, role-modeling, instilling values and striving for consensus. Such an approach keeps leaders from taking stands that set limits on the invasiveness of those who lack self-regulation.

So what’s a leader to do? More on that in subsequent posts.

Leadership’s Failure Of Nerve

I just finished reading a book that has clarified my thinking regarding the meaning of leadership. It is Edwin Friedman’s A Failure Of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Friedman’s Generation To Generation was an influential text for me as I was doing some graduate work some 20 years ago. This new book contains a furthering of Friedman’s insights. 

The major drawback of the book is that Friedman died in 1996 before he was really able to complete the last half of the book. It was first published privately in 1999 and now has be put out in a revised edition by Seabury Books.

Even though Friedman’s untimely death left the book with some rough edges and incomplete sections, it still contains some new and original thinking. Friedman encouraged leaders to focus on their own integrity and on the nature of their presence in stead of concentrating on techniques for motivating or manipulating others.

Anyone who has read any of Friedman’s other work, or the work of some his disciples, will not be surprised about the way he applies the concepts of family systems thinking to institutions and all of society.

I hope to comment more in coming days about things I have learned or been reminded of by this book. It will help me internalize what I have found in Friedman as well as share those discoveries with others.

NCD Results—3

When the St. Paul Lutheran’s church council began examining the results of the NCD survey, Pastor Damon Laaker, an Omaha pastor who also works with the Nebraska synod office, met with us to help us understand those results. He told the council that they should feel good about the improvements that have been made in the congregation’s ministry since the survey was first taken. 

Pastor Laaker will meet with the council again on Sunday, November 30 to help us plan ways to improve in the area that has been identified as our minimum factor, passionate spirituality. As we begin to make those plans, I hope that we can involve many of our ministry teams and our members in our attempts to grow in this area. I think it will be of benefit to many individuals as well as strengthening our congregation’s ministry.

 

A Great Day Yesterday!

We had a great day in our congregation yesterday. It was Consecration Sunday, the culmination of our stewardship emphasis. I really want to complement our stewardship team. They did a great job executing this year’s stewardship emphasis and the results show it.

The team worked hard to encourage members of our congregation to participate in Consecration Sunday. They planned a Celebration meal for all who could attend and worked with our church council members to contact every house hold to make sure they were invited.

Here are the results: 235 persons attended which is about 20% higher than our normal worship attendance. There were 88 households the made a financial commitment to support the congregation’s ministries. Of those households, 57 increased their commitment over the previous year.

Based on those commitments and the giving patterns of those who were not present for Consecration, St. Paul’s projected income for 2009 is over $317,000.00 which represents a $50,000.00+ increase over the congregation’s income received in the last 12 months. It almost goes without saying that congregational leaders are very encouraged by such results.

I am gratified by what such an increase in giving will mean for the ministry of our congregation. It will allow us to do more and to give more for the benefit of others. But for me, that’s not the most important outcome. For me, the results are much more a measure of spiritual growth in our congregation because giving is primarily a spiritual matter.

A dramatic increase in commitments means that our members are learning to be generous with their giving. Such generosity is an indication of a spiritual deepening. We are learning to trust God to provide for our needs as individuals and as a congregation. I am so grateful for what God is doing among us.

 

NCD Results—2

I am pleased with the improvement that St. Lutheran has experienced in several areas since we first took the Natural Church Development survey in 2005. Nevertheless, the quality characteristic that was identified as our minimum factor was Passionate Spirituality. It’s an area that will need our attention in the coming year. 

The people who have developed NCD have discovered that spirituality can be expressed with a variety of styles, the thing that is important is that faith be lived our with commitment, fire and enthusiasm. The degree of spiritual passion is what sets growing churches apart from non-growing ones. Some of the characteristics that make up passionate spirituality are that members of a congregation experience God in their lives, they have a passion for the church, a passion for devotions and a sense of spiritual interconnectedness. These are areas our congregation will need to work on in the future.

NCD Results

For those readers who are not members of St. Paul Lutheran, the congregation I serve, the series of posts that I am beginning today may not have as much interest to you. Then, again, you may find something of value in them.

Our congregation recently took the Natural Church Development survey. The survey measures eight quality characteristics for growing churches. The survey is based on data gathered from 10,000 congregations around the world. This is the second time that our congregation has taken the survey.

When St. Paul Lutheran took the survey in 2005, there results were rather sobering. St. Paul scored pretty low in several of the eight areas. The survey identified Holistic Small Groups as our ‘minimum factor,’ the characteristic that needed our greatest attention if we wanted to become a more vibrant congregation. Consequently, since that time the development of small group ministry has been an on-going emphasis for us. We more than doubled our score, moving from 15 to 39 on a 100-point scale. Since the survey forms were filled out before our 40 Days of Community emphasis, I think by now we would probably score even higher.

Another encouraging finding on the survey was that two other areas showed marked improvement as well. Need-oriented evangelism went from a score of 20 to 52 and Effective Structures moved up from 37 to 57. Congregations often find that when they work on one quality characteristic, others improve as well. In my next post, I’ll say something about our current minimum factor and how the council is preparing to address that need.

Further Thoughts On My Sabbatical

During the last couple of weeks I have been thinking about my plans for my sabbatical and discussing things with others in the congregation. Here how the plans are currently shaping up.

If we receive word in December that we have been awarded a sabbatical grant to fund my sabbatical plans, then the sabbatical will begin with a trip to Tanzania in April and May. If the grant application is not approved, the sabbatical and the trip to Tanzania will be postponed until later in 2009 or perhaps 2010. In that case, we will continue to seek other ways to fund the sabbatical and will submit further grant applications.

Even though at this point we aren’t receiving any funding to help members of our Companion Congregation team accompany me on the visit to our companion congregation, Kidugala Lutheran church in Tanzania,  the team is working to find a way to raise funds to make that possible. Three members from the congregation, Diana Smith, Bernie Bichel and Frank Maguire plan to go with me and my wife whenever we do travel to Tanzania.

While in Tanzania, the travelers hope to engage in a variety of activities. Bernie Bichel would like to spend most of the time teaching at the Igumbilo Girls School. My wife is hoping the update the assessment of health needs in the Southern Diocese for Global Health Ministries and Diana Smith may help her with that task.

While in Tanzania, I hope to provide a continuing education opportunity for pastors of the Southern Diocese as well as work with students at Kidugala Lutheran Seminary. Frank Maguire will help videotape the group’s activities. Most importantly, all will have the opportunity to meet and get to know Pastor Konga and other members of our companion congregation.

The current goal that the Companion Congregation team has set is to raise at least $6000 to help others go with me on the trip. This would cover approximately half of the congregational representatives’ expenses. Those who go on the trip have agreed to fund the rest of trip’s costs themselves. An envelop that can be used to make contributions will probably be included in the December issue of the our congregation’s newsletter.

An Amazing Demonstration Of Human Talent

I have always found autism a puzzling condition. Often autistic savants possess amazing abilities paired with challenging disabilities. Here’s a video that really illustrates that point.

 

Thoughts After The Election

We have a new president-elect and I am cautiously optimistic. I know that there are many others on the other side of the political fence that are probably feeling that way that I did after the last two elections. It seemed to me that the election and then re-election of George Bush was the wrong choice. No one can know for sure what would have happened if Gore or Kerry would have won instead. Would they have been better? We’ll never know. But I do suspect that history will not render a very positive judgment on the Bush presidency.

My hope is that the multitude of crises facing our nation will spur our leaders to work together for the good of our nation. I know that it is difficult to get people from various political persuasions to come to some agreement on any course of action. I hope that they will keep talking to each other so that solutions can be hammered out that both sides can live with if not embrace whole-heartedly.

I think Barak Obama has the chance to be a great president. In a real sense, each person elected to the presidency has that opportunity. Yet, no one is perfect and I don’t expect that Obama will be either. We make our choices as a nation and then need to trust that God will work through those who are elected, whatever flaws they may have. I don’t expect any human leader to resolve all the problems. The best we can hope for is some improvement, some way to make it through.

Another Taylor Mali Video

I have already featured Taylor Mali on one of the videos on my blog, but here’s another that makes perfect sense to me. He is entertaining, insightful and speaks with great conviction. See for yourself.