An advantageous reminder is that while we are blessed with the power of cognition, we remain biological creatures often at the mercy of our phylogeny. This is advantageous when we recognize it, and, when the instinctual, non-rational part of our brain does its job in ensuring the survival of our little puddle of the gene pool. The problem comes in that our instinctual brain lacks discernment and will veto our rational cortex when it perceives a threat.

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The following is from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?

FICTION: If you want to get rich, you can’t go wrong investing in real estate (land) because, as they say, “they ain’t making any more of it.”

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Leaders often get caught by surprise by reactivity. That’s no surprise given that reactivity often feels like a dose of intense raw emotion. That kind of energy goes right to the amygdala triggering reactivity on the part of the recipient that results in a “fight or flight” impulse. A sudden assault of intense reactivity can turn off our brain, leaving us with an inability to tap into the resource of cognition—thinking through the problem

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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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I’m often surprised at the disconnect that we clergy have from our congregation in several areas. One I see especially seems counterintuitive. We go to conferences to feed our own growth about spirituality and faith, and then fail to share those very things with our congregations. It seems that we somehow assume that the faith of our congregants, and the ways it needs to be nurtured, is somehow different from ours. Similarly, we get coaching to help us gain perspective, learn, and function better, and then we don’t see the connection that we should do likewise with our congregational leaders.

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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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