View Post

The Servant Leader as Gardener: Without Change There’s No Growth

This article focuses on some key realities about the growth of people and the Christian servant leader’s role in its facilitation. First it’s the recognition that growth in organizations is as dependent upon God as is growth in a garden. However, growth needs to be fostered; it requires sufficient room for the individual to grow but excessive growth on the part of one can constrain and deprive another. Even then the difficult process of “pruning” is required to help shape and direct people, increasing their fruitfulness. But perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of growth is change. This is inevitable.

View Post

The Servant Leader as Gardener: Grass Doesn’t Grow Faster If You Pull It

In many aspects, the task of the gardener in a garden is similar to the task of the Christian servant leader modelled on Jesus Both will study the environment, define a specific purpose, prepare a place that is conducive for growth, get the right plants/people in to be able to fulfil the purpose, and tend to the individual plants/people to help them grow and bear fruit. A garden is made up of single plants and much additional insight can be gained from considering the role of a single plant – or even parts of a plant – in the garden, and applying those insights to the role of a leader in an organization.

View Post

Jesus: The Role Model for Christian Leadership

There is a lot that is said and written about Christian leadership. Much of it is not actually about leadership at all, but is focused on theological, expositional, hermeneutical, worship facilitation and communications skills. It’s also sad to say that Christian leadership today seems frequently to get confused with the modern concept of celebrity. Where consideration is given to the vital skills of people and organizational leadership, the Christian world so often seems to call upon secular, worldly models, passing over the one role model who should be in focus – Jesus Christ.

View Post

The Christian Servant Leader’s Role Model: Jesus’ People Development Strategies

Often as Christian leaders we look to Jesus only as a spiritual role model and then we look to the world for our models of leadership. Whilst the world’s models are not always bad, many aspects of them are poor from a Christian perspective or need to be tempered with the Gospel. Because Jesus, amongst other things, is the role model for the whole of the Christian’s life we can, if we look, learn from him how to be Christ-like Christian leaders.

View Post

10 Mistakes You Can Make When Seeking a New Pastorate

When seeking a new pastorate there are number of classic mistakes that the prospective pastor can make, they can have dire consequences for them, their family and the church. This article, born out of experience helps you ponder these mistakes in the hope of helping you make good choices in God’s service.

View Post

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.

View Post

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.

View Post

Stress – Tips for the Servant Leader Part 4: 5 Tips for Reducing 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.