A recent guest lecturer in one of my courses was Lynn Turner, Associate Pastor of Youth, Career, and Discipleship at the First Baptist Church of Richmond, VA. Lynn was asked to share her thoughts about ministry with our seminarians. Here are her thoughts about “Growing Into Ministry: Nine Tips I Have Learned”:

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I’m teaching a new course titled “How to Thrive and Succeed as a Congregational Ministry Associate.” The course features a narrative component that consists of visits from “practitioners.” These are ministry associates, “second chair” leaders, currently in congregations. The visitors were at several stages in the trajectory of professional ministry. Some were just starting their first or second years in ministry and some were seasoned veterans with many years of experience. Each was asked to share about their calling and to tell the story of their professional ministry experience.

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Peace - it sounds like such a nice word, but what does it really mean? What does peace really look like? How do we preach peace - especially every year at Advent?

These are just a few questions that went through my head as I was preparing to preach last week.

Below is the sermon I preached last week, Dec 9th, on the second Sunday of Advent.

Title - Yeah Right!
Texts - Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12
Focus - Peace takes work
Function - To challenge

Other information:
Size/style of congregation - average 150 in attendance on a Sunday, Pastoral Style
Spirituality - Head
Advent themes - Hope, peace, joy, and love (some churches focus on peace first and then hope).
My position - Associate Pastor - preaching as a “second chair”
Technique - I like to “weave” the text with present and real life issues and situations, even if it is a line or two here and there.
Other - Some of the organizations listed are particuar to my congregation and surrounding city

Enjoy:

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One of the most important qualities in any organization is the ability to solve its own problems. Organizations that cannot solve their own problems are in trouble. It won’t take long before they become overwhelmed as one unsolved problem begins to affect another. At that point the issues become systemic, and the only solution is to fix everything at the same time together. That’s a task that is more complex and overwhelming than most organizations can pull off.

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I had an interesting discussion with a lay person who has just accepted the call to lead her congregation’s Christian education ministries. She was feeling a bit overwhelmed (close to panic, actually) as she started to get a grasp of the scope of the job she’s taken on. She called me to help her get a handle on what it is she was supposed to do as the leader of the Christian education enterprise of her church. At one point she asked, “What does a Christian educator do, anyway?”

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A regular reader of the GRACE Writes blog sent a question. She’d like some advice from readers of this blog to the situation she describes below. This person is in her first ministry position out of seminary and serves as a pastoral associate in education. The issue she describes is a common one. In fact, just this past week I was talking to another recent seminary graduate who was interviewing for a job in a church with a similar situation. Here is the question:

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Wait….before you assume I am talking about theological fundamentalists, read further. I am talking about those who insist that “my way or the highway” and am thinking about those good folks in our congregations—whether conservative or “moderate”—for whom the end justifies any means.

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The current issue of the Leadership in Ministry Workshops newsletter (Summer 2007) is now available. Download the newsletter (.pdf, 10 pages) here: limsummer07.pdf. (This is an “interactive” document, so look for tags to websites and features).*

ISSUE CONTENTS:

• The Rules, Israel Galindo
• Non-negotiables, Daniel Bagby
• What is a Systems Sermon? Israel Galindo
• Leading from the Right Side of the Brain, Israel Galindo
• Book review: A Failure of Nerve
• LIM Facutly News
• A Holiday Roll Nodal Event, Debbie Highsmith
• Conceptual Similarities, Michael Gillen
• A Message from the LIM Coordinator, Lawrence Matthews

*Be sure to download the document (Right-click and “Save as….”) to your computer. Some computer settings may block your ability to access the attached resources and documents on the newsletter if you try to read it from the server. To access the website links be sure you are on-line.

Emotional Intelligence is one of the fields of research that currently is being applied to pastoral leadership. I think it holds great promise to effective pastoral leadership because the nature of leadership in the (systemic) context of congregations is more about understanding emotional fields than about anything else typically associated with what constitutes “leadership” (management skills, education, intellect, good looks, personality style, etc.). But I think in many cases, “common sense” may be as valuable an asset for the leaders as a high score on any emotional intelligence inventory.

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I’ve got a book on my bookshelf that I’ve had for years titled How To Run Any Organization, by Theodore Caplow. The clever title caught my attention and I snatched it up from the used bookstore I frequented during my pecuniary seminary days. I was eager to learn any secrets it could reveal as I was heading off to my first administrative job. Never having been in a position of primary leadership in any organization I was hoping for a crash course in “how to succeed in business without really trying.”

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