I recently read a post at Learnings at Leadership Network, by Warren Bird, Ph.D., Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation. This was posted on May 16, 2008 in Church Visits.

Warren wrote, “Unfortunately, too many churches exist where the senior pastor is a tremendous leader but an even bigger bottleneck. In such churches nothing of importance can happen unless the senior pastor is at the hub of it. Neither long-term volunteers, nor senior staff, feel empowered to take initiative on anything major. They feel underutilized – and they are.

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I’ve been working with a couple of organizations that are “stuck” but motivated enough to get moving toward becoming “healthier.” As I witness the process of working with the leaders and employees of both organizations I’m reminded of some fundamental truths about systems. First, while motivation is a necessary component for bringing about change, it’s not sufficient. For example, if the motivation is to simply ease acute anxiety or pain a system will settle on pragmatic “instant” solutions that will ease the symptoms.

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Roy Phillip’s Letting Go (Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 1999) starts with the assertion that ministers need to “let go” of their need to control every aspect of their congregation, and to let the members take charge. Phillips talks about how bringing people into congregations can be seen as a five-step process: inviting people, welcoming them, orienting them, helping them join, and then assimilating them into the congregation. He says that this last step is where most congregations fail. In order for congregations to become transformed for ministry, Phillips proposes four major changes, each to which he dedicates a chapter.

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Opening this “seed catalog,” as author Bob Dale calls his book on organic church leadership (Seeds for the Future: Growing Organic Leaders for Living Churches. St. Louis, MO: Lake Hickory Resources, 2005), you are struck almost immediately by central themes of growth, cultivation, and numerous agricultural metaphors integral to this work. Dale takes the challenges of congregational leadership and lays out a path that pushes readers to evaluate themselves as church leaders and their church as faith communities.

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Elections can provide endless entertainment, if you’re into that sort of thing. But there’s enough drama at all levels to provide a source of amusement for most people, not the least of which is to watch ideologues in action. Liberals and conservatives (political and religious) tend to provide the steadiest source of amusement and irk, if only because both camps seem to take themselves so seriously. Despite the content of their messages, they become two sides of the same coin.

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If you have ever talked to someone about the Christian Year who isn’t familiar with it, then you may recognize the blank stare on their face that you get in return. Use the Seasons of the Spirit’s “The Seasons of the Church Year” poster, and you have a great starting point for this discussion.

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Pastor led churches often struggle with how to most effectively utilize the time and talents of their pastoral staff without creating burn-out and rapid clergy turnover. Sue Mallory’s book The Equipping Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001) has provided a biblical sound option for churches in search of finding the right balance between pastor/ teacher and pastor/ burnout.

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These are anxious times for theological schools and seminaries, more so than normal, anyway. The plight of several seminaries (closings, downsizing, layoffs) has recently made the rounds in the religious press and newsmagazines. And talk about viability and relevance is lively among faculties, including questions about how long the shelf life of the classic M.Div. will be. Comments like these made by alumnus in response to a survey only serves to increase the angst of some professors:

“Taking Hebrew helped shape some of my thoughts and understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, but other than that, I haven’t found it to be very useful in my week-in, week-out work with youth.” “I have never been asked a question about my Greek knowledge level. Luckily for me, there are Greek-English interlinears.”

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I will start by saying that I found R. Paul Steven’s book The Equipper’s Guide to Every-Member Ministry (Regent College Publishing, 1992) to be every practical. I also found myself wondering how different churches would look if the things in this book were applied in the widespread congregations across the country. Dividing the book into eight chapters Stevens takes on the challenge of moving our current church culture forward by examining different areas in which the whole congregation can get involved in living out their biblical call to be ministers.

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Forced terminations of clergy remains one of the most difficult, and often tragic, issues for congregations. A congregation can take years to recover from the forced termination o a pastor—and so also for the pastor. A single episode can become a nodal event that shapes a congregation’s culture for years. A series of these can put a congregation on the downslide toward dysfunction or extinction. And when a congregation gets the reputation for “eating up clergy” they’ll tend to have difficulty attracting mature pastoral leaders, the very kind who can get them back on the road toward health and relevance.

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