Tag: leading

I was asked to speak at our Vineyard pastors and leaders meeting today… here are my teaching notes.

The key questions in life are the who? and why?… not the what? and how?

Who are you? Who are you becoming? Who are you following? Who forms you? It’s way more important that what you do/achieve and how you do it. God is more interested in you than in what you can do for him – he doesn’t ‘use’ us! Dallas Willard said, “The only thing we will get out of our lives and take into eternity, when we breathe our last breath and stand before God with everything stripped away, is the person we will have become. Therefore, WHO are you and WHO are you becoming?” And WHY are you becoming, or want to become, that kind of person? The WHAT and HOW flow naturally from this.

The need for leadership as spirituality… not as technology

Spirituality, as in the formation of character toward Christlikeness, essentially has to do with the who and why questions, whereas technology of leadership has to do with the ‘what is leadership?’ and ‘how do we do it?’… as in ‘Five Easy Steps to Leading’, or ‘The 20 Laws of Leadership’! Eugene Peterson, in his five books to leaders & pastors and five books on Spiritual Theology, has been a prophet crying out in the wilderness of the Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostal church lost in the technology of leadership that’s been taken in and copied from the business world. We urgently need a return to the biblical theology (understandings & models) of leadership… then the what and how of leadership (also taught in scripture) find their proper basis and place of operation. I.e. our doing then comes from our being and becoming, and NOT the other way round. Many leaders have their identity in their doing, their activism, the what and how of success – leadership as achievement, position, power, title, turf – ‘push and pull’, ‘get the show on the road’, ‘hire and fire’ type leadership, the technology of getting things done! Our identity, meaning and purpose in life, as people, as leaders, is found in God and his love for us. Then we can freely give our lives away in love and service of God and others – our doing is then a natural/healthy overflow of our being/becoming, with eternal results. Continue reading Spirituality of Leadership versus Technology of Leadership