That’s as far as this train travels, folks.
In Western evangelical Christianity there is a consistent, unsubtle pressure to be more dedicated, more radical, more disciplified, more better. This morning my inbox held an advertisement for the logical terminus of this way of thinking:
That’s right, leaders, it’s no longer good enough for you to be like Paul or Peter or Jesus. Your choice is diluted humanism (fail, obvs) or being like God. From now on, I, for one, plan to lead like God. I just need to get some omniscience, which seems like a difficult thing acquire. If only it grew on fruit trees!
7 June 2013
tags: books,
leadership,
silly
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The leadership test
Actually this could apply to all humanity, but the way leaders misbehave and then are defended made me think of it.
Leaders are defended by their followers when they behave badly.
- ‘You don’t know what he’s really like.’
- ‘Yes, she does take some liberties, but look at all the good she accomplishes.’
- ‘He has a very focussed personality. You mustn’t take it the wrong way.’
- ‘She was tired.’
- et cetera, ad nauseum.
So, the test: Would I find the behaviour of this leader acceptable if my five year-old behaved in a equivalent way with their friends?
If it is not acceptable for your five year-old, why should your leader get a pass? If anyone can find an exception to that test, I will draw them a comic of that exception and become a wiser man.
17 June 2012
tags: humans,
leadership
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My thumb made a rule
The most valuable things in life have always been given, not sold. If someone has nothing to give, only to sell, what they are selling isn’t that valuable.
6 March 2011
tags: leadership,
love,
money
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I like Phil Rigotti
Of course I like Phil Rigotti. He is a good friend of mine. But right now I especially like him because of The Thing He Did. Phil works for Conwy Social Services. Last week three dozen local authorities got together to talk about How They Do Social Services. In other words two days of sheer boredom.
When Phil and his boss and the rest of the team met to talk about how they would do their presentation, Phil came up with the idea of Puppets. This makes sense. Phil uses puppets in the therapeutic work he does with children. Phil’s boss was smart enough to say yes to the puppets. And so last week Phil and nine of his colleagues who had never puppets before Phil said his idea out loud went up against 35 Powerpoint presentations. No prizes for guessing the stars of the conference.
All it took was a little bravery.
Two of the other teams asked for a video of the presentation. More went home inspired to do better work.
I’m sure there were a lot of local authorities at that conference who do very good social work, but no one cared because they put some words on a slide and read them to a bored audience.
Show is better than Tell.
Live is better than On Screen.
Puppets are better than Powerpoint.
Related: here’s Seth Godin on how to (not) use Powerpoint.
23 November 2008
tags: communication,
leadership
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Jeff gets a curriculum 2
My curriculum post a few days ago was not just about proving that I can still write like a 15 year-old smart alec. There was a point, and it is this: Take a look at the things you are teaching or the way you are doing your job or the way you are running your organisation. Is your activity centred on a life-giving core? (Yes, I know ‘life-giving core’ is a weird phrase, but I can’t think of anything better yet.) Does the Way you are doing connect directly with your Inspiration for doing? Are you spending your time being connected and connecting other people to the life-giving core? Or are you spending most of your time caught up in layers of stuff that seem necessary but are really distractions and inspiration killers? Maybe it is time to take a look at why you teach and work and lead and then strip off anything that does directly connect the the Why.
Also, I wrote that post because for me working from the bible itself is much more inspiring that any curriculum I’ve ever looked at.
23 November 2008
tags: happiness,
leadership
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Putting the raisin back into fundraising
I have hated fundraising my whole life. Actually hate is probably not a strong enough word. I have loathed even thoughts of fundraising my whole life. Until today. Today, thanks to Seth Godin, I read Sasha Dichter’s fundrasing manifesto. Now I love fundraising. Now I want to go do fundraising, as long as I get to do it in the way that Mr Dichter describes.
Get the manifesto here. It is about a ten minute read if you take it nice and slow.
28 October 2008
tags: leadership,
money
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I like Claire Richards
She runs parenting courses for Conwy Education Services, and she is a teacher. The courses are great. Christine and I went to one in 2006 and it helped us bring much more peace into our home and effectiveness into our leadership as parents.
The problem with the courses is that hardly anyone goes to them. Maybe not enough people know about them? Maybe there is a perceived stigma with attending a parenting course?
We know that that kind of stigma is silly. In no other part of life (except for maybe within the slacker crowd at high school) would you be stigmatised for wanting to get better at what you do. But calling stigma silly doesn’t get parents onto your course.
Claire knows that. Instead of shouting at the status quo…
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23 October 2008
tags: change,
community,
leadership,
north wales,
parenting
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Epiphany is a strong word for something so obvious
After two years of helping to run a church my brain has finally started working. I just remembered what I’m good at:
- Connecting with and being liked and trusted by the people who run things
- The hustle – talking to people, selling ideas, making things happen
- Design thinking – coming up with the right idea to meet the need
- Presentation, especially on stage in front of an audience
I used these four abilities to build a design studio from nothing to way-way-way-too-busy in four years. Then I joined the i61 church plant and forgot. For two years, I have been making a lot of pretty things, physically and spiritually, for i61. I have been using those four skills to some degree in the church, but hardly at all to connect the church with the community.
When I went to work full time for i61 18 months ago, I had the idea of approaching ministry as a design job. I wanted to bring the thinking and creative skills that I had developed in five years as a designer to a new arena. But my ideas about how to do it were not well formed. It was all too nebulous, and it didn’t work. I soon slipped back into the place that was the norm for me during Ministry Career 1 in America: in front of the computer, comfortably afraid of doing the Things That A Person In Ministry Should Be Doing. I knew that i61 couldn’t operate very well without me, but What Was I There For, Really?
Was I actually contributing to the advancement of the kingdom of God? I’ve had very real doubts about that. It wasn’t a lack of ideas – I always have a million of those. It was a lack of connection. I wasn’t connecting what I am good at with the work of building God’s kingdom. I was trying to fit myself into my idea of what A Person In Ministry ought to be doing without even being fully aware that I had such an idea.
When I started my design studio. I had the advantage of not knowing how to be a graphic designer or how to run a business. I needed to feed my family and pay bills, so I just got on with it. When I went to work for i61 I had a decade of ministry experience and a lot of new ideas telling me what I should do. Somehow those things didn’t connect with what I can do best, what makes me thrive.
Last night in the bath, the place where most good thoughts are thought, I remembered the things that make me thrive. And for the first time I connected them with the works of God. Bam. I felt like I retrieved piece of myself from the shelf, the feisty bit that likes people and makes things happen.
The catalyst for this connection was a meeting with a high school assistant head teacher. I was talking to her about an event we do called Hi, School! Just having a meeting with someone outside of the church world was a buzz. During the meeting she invited me to do some school assemblies. I came alive inside. Here was a chance to start something. Starting things makes me happy.
Then I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I be focussing on what I’m already doing? This doesn’t fit perfectly with some of my New Ideas Of How To Do Ministry. If I like it, it is probably because it is an old, and therefore ineffective, way of doing things.
Fortunately, I came to my senses and realised that I get thrilled standing up in front of a crowd of teenagers and talking about the kingdom of God because Jesus in me gets thrilled to talk to a crowd of teenagers about the kingdom of God. It is one of the things I’m built to do.
That excitement has been bouncing around in me for a week, and last night it bounced off all the right things at once and gave me this really obvious realisation: The things that I love to do and do well are the things that will make me most effective in getting the good news of the kingdom of God to my community.
Damn the theories. I’m finally ready for action.
19 June 2008
tags: church,
design,
failure,
kingdom of god,
leadership
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Grids
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids…
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14 February 2008
tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership
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Even more shame on you
There are many, many churches and Christians in the world who have no interest in piling shame on anyone. But we still don’t see the masses rushing to talk to them about their lust and their gluttony and their failures and their griefs. Our minds tell us that those are secret and private. Our culture is in agreement: Hide it away! And we get no arguments from our own pride and shame.
The kingdom of God – and all the healing and life that come with it – doesn’t work well with a lot of secrets. 1 John has a lot to say about living in the light and bringing things into the open – stuff that goes against natural human inclination.
So when we are trying to move people away from shame and ‘into the light’, we need to be aware that we are not just overcoming church culture, but also the broader culture and human tendencies. And that leads us back to thinking about the questions I asked in part one of this little series.
10 February 2008
tags: church,
failure,
grief,
leadership,
shame
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More shame on you
The thing about shame is that it is easy to apply and often gives good immediate results. But it has no power to effect long-term change, and it stands completely in opposition to the ways of God.
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10 February 2008
tags: church,
leadership,
shame
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Shame on you! And while I'm at it, let me give you some condemnation and rejection as well
In my experience, there are a number of life issues and sins-that-so-easily-beset-us that the evangelical church really stinks at addressing. We’re good at inspirational messages about How To Succeed and How To Get Over It (and those are often useful and necessary). We are very good at shock and shame and savagery when people Don’t Succeed and Don’t Get Over It. But we are not so good at teaching people How To Fail, nor are we very good at coming alongside the failures among us and walking with them into success. We are really bad at understanding Getting Over It and what an ordeal that actually is.
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10 February 2008
tags: church,
failure,
grief,
humans,
leadership,
shame
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Her humps
While we are all waiting around for me to have time to write the next installment in our money story, let’s watch Alanis Morrisette’s rather brilliant satirical cover of the Black Eyed Peas song My Humps.
In that same vein, have a read of Tia Lynn’s article on the book Ten Lies the Church Tells Women and my Seven Cheers for St Paul.
28 January 2008
tags: blogging,
leadership,
music,
silly,
video,
women
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Everyone is stupid and wrong
Anyone who gets any position of leadership soon learns that people are stupid and wrong and stubborn.
Anyone who keeps any position of leadership…
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8 January 2008
tags: humans,
leadership
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Seven Cheers for St Paul!
At the moment Western church culture features a strong emphasis on Jesus the man and on being one of his followers. That’s great, but somehow in some quarters the Apostle Paul seems to have been forgotten in a dusty corner. (In some quarters it seems that the whole bible has been forgotten in a dusty corner, but that’s a different post.)
I don’t think Paul should be forgotten anywhere, so here are my seven reasons for saying, Hurrah for Saint Paul:
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1 August 2007
tags: leadership,
paul,
women
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