If there is an attitude akin to cancer in a congregation it is a spirit of criticism and negativity. Few things are more disheartening to pastoral staff and few things are more divisive and dangerous to the life of a ministry than this. One church has just lost its pastor because of the criticism and negativity on the part of some congregants and some board members. Another church is probably going to lose their pastor. In both cases the congregation is far worse off for it. A ministry I know well has this spirit running through its entire office (not the one I work for which is a great blessing).
Words and attitudes matter. They either build or tear down. They encourage or they discourage. I would go so far as to say that where such a spirit is pervasive it is not the spirit of the Father but of the evil one - even when wrapped in spiritual language.
This does not preclude honest dialogue. In our organization, robust dialogue is a huge value and anything can be put on the table that does not include a personal attack or a hidden agenda. The problem with critical and negative attitudes is that in many cases they are indeed personal attacks and there are personal agendas. There is a huge difference between critical and negative spirits and robust dialogue. It lies in the attitude and motivations behind it.
The truth is that we ought to treat one another as our Father treats us and as Jesus treated people in the gospels. Our attitudes and words are deeply spiritual issues for Jesus said in Matthew 7 that what comes out of us comes from what is inside us. Critical and negative people have a spiritual issue (and don't we all from time to time in this arena). It is sin and it comes from our lower nature.
In my view, church leaders ought to directly and boldly deal with pockets of critical spirits and negativity in their congregation because, like cancer they will eat away at the very core of your congregational health and it usually spreads. It is also one of the reasons I encourage churches to define the culture they want to see embedded in their church (see the book, Leading From the Sandbox). Once you have defined your culture you can hold individuals accountable for keeping the culture.
In the two churches I referenced above, I would not personally recommend that any pastor take them until the church has dealt with the insidious infection that is destroying them from within. And the pastor who left? I agreed with his decision to resign. The church and leadership were so unhealthy that it was destroying him as well. Don't ignore criticism and negativity when it pops up. It will hurt you and the cause of Jesus.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Please pray for Southern Sudan!
I received this from one of our ReachGlobal staff today. This impacts many believers in Southern Sudan.
I just received this horrific string of emails from one of our Pastors and President of the EFCS William Laku. The conflict in the Northern part of Southern Sudan continues to escalate! As we near the July 9thindependence day and birth of the world’s newest country “Southern Sudan” the country of Northern Sudan continues to bomb and plant land mines in Southern Sudan’s Unity State, Abyei and Southern Kordofan which has been a disputed area since the South’s almost unanimous vote for secession took place in January.
The disputed areas are wanted by Northern Sudan because of their rich oil fields. These areas were promised, by the Government of Northern Sudan, that they would also have the opportunity to vote for secession from the North or to unify with the North. After realizing that these areas were most likely going to vote for secession, the North refused to allow them to vote and decided to take the land. This is the same scenario that took place before the 25 year war that ended in 2005.
As with many disasters there is great opportunity to share the gospel and bring much needed help to these people.
The disputed areas are wanted by Northern Sudan because of their rich oil fields. These areas were promised, by the Government of Northern Sudan, that they would also have the opportunity to vote for secession from the North or to unify with the North. After realizing that these areas were most likely going to vote for secession, the North refused to allow them to vote and decided to take the land. This is the same scenario that took place before the 25 year war that ended in 2005.
As with many disasters there is great opportunity to share the gospel and bring much needed help to these people.
Please join me in prayer for the people of Southern Sudan and that these attacks from the North would stop. They have waited so long for their much deserved independence and to have peace in their lives. Many lives have been lost and many families devastated by the atrocities committed by the North.
The following accounts are from Christians on the scene.
From the 17Th -18Th June 2011, I was in Khartoum to attend the Board of Trustees of the Sudan Council of Churches (SCC). During the meeting, we had two people who managed to escape from Kadugli. The lady who gave us her testimony painted an extremely bad picture of the killings of the Nuba people by forces of the SAF in Kadugli. She saw 360 dead bodies as she and her tree children were trying to escape killings. Hers was a rela miracle as women, children and men were being slaughtered.
Nuba youth have been targeted apart from the aerial bombardments. After listening to their disturbing and lengthy testimonies, the meeting issued two statements to the International community and the other statement was directed to our ecumenical partners in form of an appeal, if they could begin to mobilise relief items; food, water, clothing, shelter and medicines as a matter of urgency to the 73,000 displaced of Southern Kordofan. Kindly share the info with as many people as you can.
Nuba youth have been targeted apart from the aerial bombardments. After listening to their disturbing and lengthy testimonies, the meeting issued two statements to the International community and the other statement was directed to our ecumenical partners in form of an appeal, if they could begin to mobilise relief items; food, water, clothing, shelter and medicines as a matter of urgency to the 73,000 displaced of Southern Kordofan. Kindly share the info with as many people as you can.
| At moment I am in Nuba Mountains. I am writing this email from Kauda . I want to tell you it is really Genocide. We are bombed daily by Northern government, even just few minutes before writing this email we were frighten by one of them and we runned away before writing this email. What I want you do is to pass this information on behalf of me and my people. Here is a link to the latest news if you are interested. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43535068 |
Can you legislate morality?
In a recent address, the president of Trinity Law School in California made the point that most evangelicals would answer no, you cannot legislate morality since morality is a matter of the heart. However, morality is being legislated every day.
When the state of New York made gay marriage legal yesterday, putting it on par with the marriage of a man and a woman they were in effect legislating morality. A generation from now few will question that this is as life should be (I have gay friends whom I love dearly but I cannot find justification for the redefinition of marriage). When the Netherlands made it legal to euthanize infants with serious abnormalities it is legislating morality – just as Germany did in the days of Hitler. Countries that have made abortion legal – and even promote it as a means of birth control, have made immorality legal and largely accepted.
When people try to take Christianity out of any and all public discourse, they are legislating morality – their morality. Indeed, little by little, chip by chip, the underpinnings of Judeo-Christian ethics are being intentionally legislated out of the law both in the United States and elsewhere.
It was William Wilberforce who through his undaunting opposition to the slave trade and the institution of slaver who led the passage of the abolition of both in England leading to its eventual abolition in the United Sates. Wilberforce was a politician who rightly brought his biblical convictions to bear on one of the most insidious institutions in modern history. Through law, a grossly immoral practice was outlawed. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, congress through law, outlawed racist practices embedded in American society.
Certainly one cannot legislate the condition of the human heart. But, the laws that we pass and the court decisions that are made impact the morality or lack of morality of whole nations by their consequences. In effect, the law can move a nation either toward or away from biblical morality: issues of justice and poverty included.
I thank God for men and women in the public arena who are willing to bring their biblical convictions to bear in bold ways from all parties. The liberal elite, after all have been bringing their version of morality to the public square for a long time. They have an agenda for our society that is in large part antithetical to morality as defined by Scripture. While the law and courts are not the answer to all evils, their laws and decisions impact the moral behavior of entire nations. Both morality immorality can be legislated.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Leadership in Missions
Let me make an observation. Many mission organizations do not value leadership on their teams or fields. It is a holdover from the past where missionaries viewed themselves as independent contractors rather than a part of an organization or team. In that culture, when there needs to be leadership, one elects someone who will basically leave you alone and the criterion is often that they have been on the field a long time (paid their dues) or it is their turn (among those who have paid their dues) with little evaluation as to whether they are truly leaders or not.
Let me make a second observation. Not valuing leadership in missions means that those missions are not truly concerned about good strategy, seeing significant fruit or missional effectiveness. The long term result will be the decline and eventual death of those missions because while they don't value strategy and missional effectiveness, the individuals and churches who pay the bills do - a lot. And they will not continue to pay for ineffective missionaries or strategies.
Furthermore, long experience on the field does not equal leadership skill. All it equals is long experience on the field. Veteran missionaries often resist leadership from individuals who don't have that long experience but they miss the point. Good leaders release others into focused, missional, strategic leadership. They don't need to know what a veteran missionary knows because they use the expertise of the team an determine where they go and then they align all team members in a direction that is likely to be fruitful.
Leadership should be seen as a skill in itself. Good leaders don't know everything, in fact they may not know a lot. But they do know how to position people for success, build a team that is pulling in the same direction, solve problems and ensure there is a healthy strategy. That is true in business and industry, just as it is in missions. The job of leaders is not to know everything. It is to take the corporate wisdom of those involved and help craft direction and strategy and alignment.
In industry when business is in trouble, the board often will bring in a leader who has no prior experience in that field. What they do have is leadership skill and the ability to access, get the right people in the right seat on the right bus, determine what needs to be done in concert with the corporate wisdom of good people and turn the business around.
Missions that will thrive and survive in the years to come will do so because they have courageous leaders who help lead missional teams toward fruitful ministry. Ignore leadership and your mission is destined to fail. Value it and you will move forward.
One final observation. All Christian movements globally require good leadership. That is why Paul spent so much time developing leaders. Missions who don't understand good leadership will never be able to develop indigineous leaders. And if you don't do that, you will not leave behind fruit that will last.
Let me make a second observation. Not valuing leadership in missions means that those missions are not truly concerned about good strategy, seeing significant fruit or missional effectiveness. The long term result will be the decline and eventual death of those missions because while they don't value strategy and missional effectiveness, the individuals and churches who pay the bills do - a lot. And they will not continue to pay for ineffective missionaries or strategies.
Furthermore, long experience on the field does not equal leadership skill. All it equals is long experience on the field. Veteran missionaries often resist leadership from individuals who don't have that long experience but they miss the point. Good leaders release others into focused, missional, strategic leadership. They don't need to know what a veteran missionary knows because they use the expertise of the team an determine where they go and then they align all team members in a direction that is likely to be fruitful.
Leadership should be seen as a skill in itself. Good leaders don't know everything, in fact they may not know a lot. But they do know how to position people for success, build a team that is pulling in the same direction, solve problems and ensure there is a healthy strategy. That is true in business and industry, just as it is in missions. The job of leaders is not to know everything. It is to take the corporate wisdom of those involved and help craft direction and strategy and alignment.
In industry when business is in trouble, the board often will bring in a leader who has no prior experience in that field. What they do have is leadership skill and the ability to access, get the right people in the right seat on the right bus, determine what needs to be done in concert with the corporate wisdom of good people and turn the business around.
Missions that will thrive and survive in the years to come will do so because they have courageous leaders who help lead missional teams toward fruitful ministry. Ignore leadership and your mission is destined to fail. Value it and you will move forward.
One final observation. All Christian movements globally require good leadership. That is why Paul spent so much time developing leaders. Missions who don't understand good leadership will never be able to develop indigineous leaders. And if you don't do that, you will not leave behind fruit that will last.
Red, Green, Yellow
Visual management is a tool long used in industry but has wonderful application to ministry as well. For instance, we evaluate our adherence to our core commitments in ReachGlobal with a series of defined metrics along with a color for each. Green means that we are doing well, yellow that we could be doing better and red that we need to pay attention to it. Behind each color is a comment indicating why we evaluated the metric the way we did.
In the same way, as we define processes that we follow for various key functions we rate each process with one of the colors along with comments. This is easily done using Microsoft Excel.
The colors are not about whether someone has done well or badly, in fact, yellow and red are not negative. Instead they represent "opportunity" to do something better. Red is an indicator that we have something that we really need to pay attention to.
Ministries are not good at evaluation, generally. Giving our metrics or processes a color along with comments is an easy way to start to evaluate what we say is important to us. If in fact, we don't honestly evaluate it is not really important to us!
Further, the colors give you a quick indicator of where you are doing well and where you can improve. Knowing that you cannot improve everything at once or solve all problems concurrently you have a choice from your visual management tool as to which you want to pay attention to now.
The first time a team does this, everyone wants all the colors to be green. They never really are. Furthermore, if they were all green it would mean that you have nothing to improve which we know is never true. In fact, using colors honestly gives you a continuous management tool which is what we all really want.
It takes a little bit of work but it is a highly effective tool! It is even more effective if you put them on a wall for all to see. People start to pay attention to areas where improvement is possible and they all get in the game.
In the same way, as we define processes that we follow for various key functions we rate each process with one of the colors along with comments. This is easily done using Microsoft Excel.
The colors are not about whether someone has done well or badly, in fact, yellow and red are not negative. Instead they represent "opportunity" to do something better. Red is an indicator that we have something that we really need to pay attention to.
Ministries are not good at evaluation, generally. Giving our metrics or processes a color along with comments is an easy way to start to evaluate what we say is important to us. If in fact, we don't honestly evaluate it is not really important to us!
Further, the colors give you a quick indicator of where you are doing well and where you can improve. Knowing that you cannot improve everything at once or solve all problems concurrently you have a choice from your visual management tool as to which you want to pay attention to now.
The first time a team does this, everyone wants all the colors to be green. They never really are. Furthermore, if they were all green it would mean that you have nothing to improve which we know is never true. In fact, using colors honestly gives you a continuous management tool which is what we all really want.
It takes a little bit of work but it is a highly effective tool! It is even more effective if you put them on a wall for all to see. People start to pay attention to areas where improvement is possible and they all get in the game.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Books on Kindle
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Words that bring life and words that bring pain. Our daily choice.
We live in a world that is often hard and harsh. Circumstances disappoint, life often throws us curves we don't expect or appreciate and people can be less than supportive. That is why we gravitate toward those people in our lives who are encouraging, who speak words of life to us and are literally Jesus in our lives.
Think of the difference between the words of Jesus and the words of the Pharisees. Jesus' interactions were life giving and the Pharisees' interactions were life taking. Jesus was full of grace while the Pharisees were full of legalism. I know believers who reflect the attitude of Christ and those that reflect the attitude of the Pharisees, those who bring grace and those who bring guilt.
Recently someone made a comment to me that was like a knife in the stomach. Words that hurt deeply. It reminded me of how powerful words are, either to be life giving or life taking. As I shared the pain I was feeling with another friend he brought words of encouragement, perspective and life. He was Jesus to me in my pain.
Paul encourages us to "not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs...Be kind and compassionate to one another...Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs...(Ephesians 4-5)."
Here is what I know. My words today can be life giving, encouraging and reflect the love and grace of Jesus. Or, they can be critical, hurtful and life taking and reflect the attitude of the Pharisees. I have this choice in every interaction I have. When I speak like the Pharisees I do so from pride and judgement. When I speak like Jesus I do so from humility and grace.
Think of the difference between the words of Jesus and the words of the Pharisees. Jesus' interactions were life giving and the Pharisees' interactions were life taking. Jesus was full of grace while the Pharisees were full of legalism. I know believers who reflect the attitude of Christ and those that reflect the attitude of the Pharisees, those who bring grace and those who bring guilt.
Recently someone made a comment to me that was like a knife in the stomach. Words that hurt deeply. It reminded me of how powerful words are, either to be life giving or life taking. As I shared the pain I was feeling with another friend he brought words of encouragement, perspective and life. He was Jesus to me in my pain.
Paul encourages us to "not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs...Be kind and compassionate to one another...Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs...(Ephesians 4-5)."
Here is what I know. My words today can be life giving, encouraging and reflect the love and grace of Jesus. Or, they can be critical, hurtful and life taking and reflect the attitude of the Pharisees. I have this choice in every interaction I have. When I speak like the Pharisees I do so from pride and judgement. When I speak like Jesus I do so from humility and grace.
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