Tag: leadership

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Church Leadership Journal Joy Notes

We love Houghton College – Reflections on completing my term as trustee

JoAnne Jones with her Grandma and parents at her Houghton graduation
JoAnne Jones with her Grandma and parents at her Houghton graduation

Houghton is special

JoAnne and I returned yesterday from the fall trustee board meeting at Houghton College.   I have had the wonderful privilege of serving the Central New York District of the Wesleyan Church as district representative on that board for the last six years.   Even though the decisions to be made have occasionally been difficult, I have relished this opportunity and served with great joy.   The reason I am no longer serving is that when I semi-retired, I moved out of the district from which I was a representative.   I thank District Superintendent, Wayne Wager, and the DBA for the opportunity to serve.

As I was driving home yesterday, I was reflecting on the reasons why I have so much enjoyed serving in this capacity.  It was fulfilling, stimulating and exciting.  I will miss it greatly.   But why is Houghton so special?

Houghton has a transformative vision

Houghton has a vision, not just for education, but for the maturation and transformation of the lives of students.  This is something I strongly believe in.  So much of American higher education has abdicated its responsibility for character formation and settled only for increasing knowledge and technical prowess.   That is a badly flawed concept.   The result of it has been an atmosphere on many secular campuses that actually contributes to moral turpitude.   In contrast, the evidence of Houghton alumni shows that Houghton grads have a highly developed character for service, leadership and faith. You can check out the mission statement at http://www.houghton.edu/about-us/.

Houghton practices excellence

Houghton is a place of excellence.   From musical performances to scholarly presentations, from board business procedures to landscaping the already beautiful campus, the Houghton way is excellence.   This is why Houghton is in the top tier of liberal arts colleges in the nation and is the highest ranked Christian college in the Northeast.  http://www.houghton.edu/about-us/national-recognition/.   Because of this, Houghton is well recognized by graduate schools.  I can be proud to be associated with Houghton.

Houghton is a place to meet leaders

It has been a stimulating opportunity personally to serve among so many great leaders.   In the course of my six years, I have come to know denominational leaders, college leaders, businessmen, prominent lawyers and doctors, persons of wealth and expertise in various fields.  Our college president, Dr. Shirley Mullen, was recently recognized on the cover of Christianity Today.      http://www.houghton.edu/news-media/recent-news/houghton-president-shirley-mullen-named-one-of-christianity-todays-top-50-women-you-should-know/162/.   This has been growth-producing for me and a very helpful networking experience as well.   I have also gotten to know Harriet Olsen, the president of United Methodist Women, with whom I have had the distinct privilege of working on the Academic committee for these six years.  But this idea that the company we keep either strengthens us or drags us down, is a principle of life too.  When we seek out company or have opportunity to interact with people of greater experience, wisdom, expertise or character maturity than ourselves, it will raise us up.    I have experienced that in this season of service at Houghton.

We highly recommend Houghton

And, by the way, if you know a good student looking for a great college, do them a life-time favor and recommend they check out Houghton.  http://www.houghton.edu/

 

 

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Church Leadership Journal

Guiding congregational prayer

Over the last several weeks, there has been more than one occasion for our church to join in united prayer as a congregation in various different ways.   Some of them have been ways that we do not see very often.  I thought it might be helpful for me to address in a blog article some of the practices that were in evidence as we prayed together.

Praying for Eric and Magda

This last Sunday, we had the privilege of praying for Eric and Magda and family as we commissioned them for short-term mission service in Romania.   As pastor, I asked for many to gather around them in front at the altar rail as we laid hands on them and prayed for them.   One might ask, “Why do we lay hands on them?”   The short answer is simply that it was done that way in the book of Acts.  For example, when Barnabas and Saul went on their first missions trip the Bible says that the church at Antioch laid hands on them.   “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”  So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off” (Ac 13:2-3 NIV).   IN the NT, the laying on of hands is also done in conjunction with prayers for receiving the Holy Spirit and prayers for healing.    Since a successful missions trip can only happen as the Holy Spirit empowers, it was natural also to lay hands on them as we prayed for the coming missions trip. 

As we prayed for Erica and Magda I suggested that we all pray out loud at the same time. 

Continue reading “Guiding congregational prayer”

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Church Leadership Journal Joy Notes

The Power of a Celebration

 

Our Celebration Theme and Logo

After our fun celebration, I began thinking, “Why is it important to celebrate?  Are there good reasons besides the fun?”   I remembered immediately that God must have thought it was important as he taught the OT people to set aside time for feasting and rejoicing.   Now, in the glow of our big weekend, I can see some of the reasons.

Celebration motivates people to volunteer and identify with the cause.

The energy of the occasion is catching.  People like to be a part of a good purpose in a way that is immediate and tangible.  Helping out at a celebration provides a positive emotional feedback to the volunteer, especially when coupled with appropriate appreciation from those being helped.   Volunteering in turn helps the volunteer to feel more a part of the organization that they helped.  

Celebration generates creativity.

We found that the combination of workers thinking together and the challenge of a focused task that they strongly believed in generated much creativity.   All kinds of new ideas were spawned in the past few months and many of them were used.   One of the biggest examples was the sanctuary makeover.  The idea of preparing for the future helped set a climate for change.   The creative idea of dividing the front wall between paint and paneling instead of all paneling was accepted by a huge majority.  The new design’s decorative flexibility became evident at the 50th as the background of the cross became purple to complement the purple and gold color scheme of the celebration.  Enlarging the vestibule and moving the doors to the center created an entrance so natural that it seems like it always should have been like that.   For another example, we had done slide shows before on the big screen but never with the music embedded and narration overlaid.   Anne Kipping and JoAnne Jones went as far as they could and then called in Josh Basile to put it all together.  A third example was the spontaneous recreation of the church sign landscaping by Cindy Centner and Vicki Hilliges.   All these examples made it obvious that creativity just happens as we celebrate.

Celebration calls forth profound praise to God.

Sometimes our praises seem rather ordinary, habitual and dutiful.   That’s certainly much superior to a lack of praise, but there is more.  

Continue reading “The Power of a Celebration”

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Church Leadership Journal

How to Make the Most of a Church 50th Anniversary Celebration Part 2

I’m having a little challenge getting PDF’s to display.  If the article is not displayed, please either click on the article or click on the button to open in a separate window to see the PDF file that is this post.   The latter choice may be easier to read.

Download (PDF, 198KB)

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Church Leadership Journal

How to make the most of a church’s 50th anniversary

This year Community Wesleyan Church is celebrating its 50th Anniversary.   With God’s help, we have worked hard to use this event, not just to celebrate the past or have a party, though we will do those too, but also to launch our church forward into its next decade with momentum and clarity of vision.   Our aim is not only to celebrate God’s faithfulness in the past, but also to look forward with faith to his future acts through and on behalf of his people.

Since we have been complimented on how well this celebration is going so far, I thought I would write a couple articles about how it has happened.   What have we done right that helped it happen?

Set a precedent at lesser anniversaries

As I reflect, the first ingredient of the success of this celebration plan has actually been the precedent that we set in previous anniversaries.   No one argued, as sometimes happen, about whether we should celebrate; it was a given.  The only question was how.   We had in varied ways marked every five year anniversary since I arrived as pastor 21 years ago.   In fact, as I look back, the variety in itself was a helpful part of the precedent we had set.  Many of the activities for the celebration had been tested before.  For example, for the 45th anniversary, we had decided to send a short term missions team to Romania.  It was a big goal for us.  But it was a success and so it was natural to decide a few years later to include sending another missions team as one of the ministries that would mark the 50th.      As a part of the 40th we had a great feast.  That idea will be part of this celebration as well, though it will be carried out a little differently.    If we had not set a precedent by celebrating lesser anniversaries, I do not think we would have been ready to create the excitement and energy that have gathered around this celebration.

Start early

Continue reading “How to make the most of a church’s 50th anniversary”

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Church Leadership

How can pastoral ministry be healthier?

http://joshrhone.posterous.com/what-if-our-current-models-of-pastoral-leader

Joining a conversation

I have decided to join an important conversation about the long term viability of the current paradigm of pastoral ministry.  Pastor Josh Rhone has asked a crucial question that I believe is a very important one for pastoral leaders today.  It is a daring, even dangerous question.  Yet it is one that may help us to face uncomfortable facts about the way we usually do ministry.   We owe it to following generations to answer his question.  Let me copy in his intensive query.

What if our current models of pastoral ministry are in fact detrimental to the spiritual health and vitality of the Church (and her leaders)? Might we need to reimagine/re-envision our models of pastoral ministry? And, what might a new model of pastoral ministry look like?

I am especially interested in how ministry affects pastors over the long term.  Today I would like to comment on the issue of proximity.  One of the characteristics of many pastoral situations that I believe often creates greater wear and tear on the pastor is the issue of proximity.   By this I am speaking about how enmeshed the pastor’s and family’s lives are with his work.  This issue has many facets.  

Are parsonages usually too close to the church for best clergy health?

Continue reading “How can pastoral ministry be healthier?”

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Journal Joy Notes

Burmese Bible School Class Completed

What a joy once again to participate as a teacher at Burmese Bible School in Syracuse.  I was the professor for the class, Church Leadership and Management. 
  For the last three weekends, the class met from roughly from 5 PM to 9 PM on Friday evening and again on Saturday from 9 AM to 4 PM with an hour for lunch.  It’s a lot of concentrated class time, even with breaks for Burmese tea (I tried three kinds, one of which I liked quite well).   I also taught the class two years ago, but it was a four Saturday format at that time, so I needed to reorganize my material.  I also supplemented it where needed and from books I have read in the interim.  Everything is translated so that the school can serve the immigrant community whose English is not yet good enough to handle classes in English alone.   Pastor Than from Lyncourt translated most of the time, with Dr. Khai, head of the school, translating one Saturday.   I notice in the three years I have been involved that the English level of the students is constantly improving.   It keeps me extremely busy.  I will only attempt it in January when the church schedule is not quite as heavy as in some months.  

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Church Leadership

Building up people power

As I move through the senior years of my ministry, I find I am blessed and my ministry is truly enabled by remembering and putting into practice a basic principle of leadership; the networking of people resources.

1.    Accept ideas: 

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Church Leadership News Commentary

Answering a call for clergy leadership

 

Letter writer, David C. Ashley, in today’s Post Standard opinion page decried a lack of obvious clergy leadership in changing the climate of political discourse in our country.   I have good news for him.   Just such a leadership move has been in the works for awhile and at this crucial time has just begun to be publicized http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100326/conservative-liberal-christians-vow-to-model-civility/.  

This initiative is authored and signed by many prominent clergy of various denominational backgrounds.  It is called A Covenant for Civility: Come Let Us Reason Together.    It is inspiring to read and is very Biblically based.  If implemented, it would bring the Golden Rule back to American politics, something we haven’t seen since politicians discovered that slander via advertising works in election campaigns.    I have personally joined those signing this important document and encourage others to do so.  I found a signable copy and list of many of the chief signers at http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=action.display&item=100308-civility-covenant.    I intend to honor it (I hope I already have been) as I blog and as I preach.

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Americana Church Leadership

Celebrating the week Francis Asbury arrived in America

I found a great video clip that tells the story of Francis Asbury.   Asbury was an early Methodist leader in the colonies, sent by Wesley himself, and ultimately responsible for the explosive growth of early Methodism.  His sacrifice and zeal for reaching people with the good news of Jesus serves as an example for all of us still.   Whenever I am reminded of his story as this video does, I am inspired to “never be lacking in zeal (Ro. 12:11)”  but always have a vision for what God wants to do in this world.   It is no wonder that so many things in our country have his name.  I only pray that we would first and foremost revere his God.

  http://www.afa.net/Radio/show.aspx?id=2147491277&tab=video&video=2147499797