At some point every Christian leader will end up being called upon to lead some kind of project. They may be short and quick or they might be large and challenging. Many Christian leaders have no training or experience of running a project and that in itself can be an enormous stress factor. Whilst natural organisational ability is enormously helpful, in itself it is no guarantee of any project being both successful and low stress. This Article provide budding project managers with a practical guide
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Understanding Personality Questionnaires for Christian Leaders : The Key to Solving Your People Puzzles Quickly and Effectively?
Using questionnaires to increase self-awareness and create an understanding of personality differences can help Christian Leaders and team members understand how they interrelate. Armed with this knowledge, and a little guidance, they can adjust how they work together to achieve their full potential.
A Time for Everything – 10 Time Management Tips for Christian Leaders
As a Christian Leader may be you feel overwhelmed by the stresses and demands you and others place on your use of time? Time Management skills are vital to your effectiveness and the role model that you are as a servant leader.
10 Mistakes You Can make When Seeking a New Pastor
When seeking a new pastor for your church there are number of classic mistakes that you can make; they can have dire consequences for your church and your newly appointed pastor and their family. This article, born out of years of experience helps you ponder these mistakes in the hope of helping you make good choices in God’s service.
Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 5: 5 Tips to Avoid and Reduce Personal Stress
This series on stress has been focusing on organisational stress and we have looked at the role that the Christian servant leader has to play by adopting strategies that help reduce stress for the people in his team or organisation. So far we have not considered what you can do if, through reading these articles, you identify high levels of occupational stress in yourself. Colin Buckland shared some more tips with me.
If you are in the ministry or on the mission field you may find our series on ministry stress helpful as well.
Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 4: 5 Ways That Will Help You Reduce Organisational Stress
As we have seen in the first three articles, stress frequently arises because of the demands that are being placed on staff without a reasonable consideration of their capacity and capability and it is exacerbated when they feel they have no control over their situation. They feel that they are simply Cog-ware, parts of a machine that demands performance but has little care for their well being. The result is stress and with that declining performance.
Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 3: 7 Signs That Your Organization is Highly Stressed
There is a phrase that always amuses me. It’s “the elephant in the room”. We all know that it means that there is some big issue that is not being addressed. Well, organisational stress is most times a silent elephant in the corner of the room. It needs to be dealt with but no one more »
Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 2: 6 Signs That Your People are Highly Stressed
Stress is part of life and to some extent stress, or at least benign stress (let’s call it pressure), helps to motivate us to perform well. To that extent it can be considered positive. With too little pressure performance is sub-optimum. Witness the difficulties and boredom generated by too little work as well as insubstantial work that you can’t “get your teeth into”. The problem is that as the pressure increases performance peaks and then declines as the pressure turns to high level stress.
Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 1: The Cost of Stress to Your Team
“The truth is we should minimize negative stress in the workplace if we want to maximize productivity. If you really want to get the best with your people, from your people, then actually minimizing work-related or occupational stress is really something worth looking at.” Colin Buckland
If Only I Built Tables…..15 Reasons Why Christian Leaders Are Stressed
If stress allowed us to die, perhaps a little sooner but feeling comfortable that we, as a Christian leader had achieved our full potential for God and made a Kingdom difference, then we might think the trade worthwhile. Unfortunately it is seldom so clean and tidy, and perhaps even less so when, well before any part of our bodies give up, burnout’s devastating consequences wreak havoc in the church.
The life of a Christian leader, especially a church minister, is surrounded by more than enough stressors for any ten others. What is more, they are often unobserved by them, their loved ones and their church board, waiting to strike. This may seem over dramatic but it is oh so real to oh so many.
The aim of this short series is to enable Christian leaders and those around them to be alerted to the risks and consequences of ministry stress and the devastation of burnout that so often follows.
Getaway Guide 2012
HOLIDAY DESTINATIONS FOR CHRISTIAN WORKERS
The 2012 edition of the Getaway Guide is now available here
Christian Leadership Books
Freedom to Lead
by Colin Buckland
Price: £8.99
(Postage and packaging extra: UK £2.41, International £5.62) details....
This book (originally published under the title of Liberated to Lead) is for any Christian in a position of leadership in the Church. Many leaders struggle with the nature of their role – trying to do the impossible for God, rather than doing their best and leaving the rest to the God of the impossible.
Colin helps readers to:
- Balance family life and the pressures of ministry
- Set realistic expectations in ministry
- Understand one’s calling to Christian service
- Avoid or overcome burnout.
Freedom to Lead is an invaluable tool for leaders who want to learn more about themselves and the role God has called them to.
You can download a sample chapter from here....
Culture Craft (eBook version)
By Rick Sessoms & Colin Buckland
Price £3.99
Many committed, capable, next-generation leaders are confused and frustrated in their current organisations. They cannot reconcile the evident chasm between the Jesus way of leadership and their own organisations’ dysfunctional cultures.
Rick and Colin have written this book to clear the confusion. They ask tough questions that reveal any organisation’s culture. They also offer practical, proven tools to build a ‘healthy’ organisation, one whose members demonstrate real values that are consistent with the teaching and example of Jesus.
This is a must-read book for ‘culture crafters’, those leaders who want to influence their organisations toward better health.
Please refer to the eBook licence
