Barnabas File

During a workshop today, participants began to question whether it was practical to take the time to initiate a new approach to leadership development in the church. Their concern was, “How can we attempt something new when we are dealing with basic survival in the church?” I shared my belief that a spirit of experimentation and innovation is key to the health of churches in the 21st century. We must move beyond maintenance to dreaming and planning for future opportunities. Afterward, I commented to one person that every church should have a Department of Research and Development. The church should always be trying new things. Of course, doing this is not easy. When things are going well in the church, people say, “Why bother to try something new?” When things are not going well, the response is, “We don’t have the time and resources to try something new.” Now I do not mean that we need a literal department with the name “Research and Development,” but every church should be stretching...

“Power to the people!” Sounds like something out of the 60s, doesn’t it? But that is the bottom line message of The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo. As Ramo reflects on the rapidly changing and complex world in which we find ourselves, he encourages readers to consider the total picture and not to be distracted by one particular focus. He reminds us that problems that we face today—internationally, politically, or economic—rarely have one cause. Such problems may also be addressed in a number of ways and have multiple solutions. Most often, he contends, these solutions “bubble up” from creative, empowered individuals who join together in community to create change. Empowerment is not a new idea. When Luther and other Reformers embraced the priesthood of every believer (although interpreted in various ways), they opened the door to individual and corporate actions that would go in unexpected directions. In Ramo’s book, he points out that grassroots decision-making, whethe...

Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest Divinity School, was a guest at our church over the weekend for a Baptist Heritage weekend. In a couple of the discussions and over lunch on Sunday, the postmodern question was interjected. Leonard ma de some comments to the effect that there are fewer metanarratives—grand, all-encompassing stories—that all Christians look to for meaning. In contrast, there are a number of stories that link us to God’s story. One of the key theological themes to emerge in the 20th century was contextual theology. The idea is that our context and our experiences shape how we talk about God. We see expressions of this in the emergence of black theology, liberation theology, feminist theology, and so on. If we consider this carefully, we realize that this makes sense. We each come to the biblical story with our own perspective, one that provides the lens of our understanding. This is not strictly a personal matter, however. Theology and community are necessarily conne...

Whenever I led an orientation for college students who were planning to spend ten weeks in mission service, I always added one thing to the list of responsibilities: “Be flexible.” No matter how much planning went into these projects, life often happened. Sometimes it set the stage for disaster, and other times it was an opportunity for the Spirit of God to work in a great way. The way it turned out often depended on the attitudes toward change of those involved. In The Age of the Unthinkable , Joshua Cooper Ramo presents the concept of flexibility early in the book. He points out that “you might have a dream of what you want to do . . . but unless you constantly refine that dream, constantly update it, your chances for success are limited.” To accomplish your dream, you must be adaptive or flexible and aware of the environment in which you live and work. This provides the basis for one of his key arguments—planners, policy makers, and leaders of all stripes must not only be flexible a...

The famous thinker Anonymous is reported to have said, “History repeats itself because no one listens the first time.” Someone commented recently that she appreciated my blog comments. My response was, “That’s because I am becoming a better listener.” Listening is an important life skill. It is one that a good leader will work to develop. Listening is a mandatory skill for a coach. I have been thinking recently that I have learned the most in my ministry when I have asked the right questions and listened carefully for the answers. When coaching skills such as listening and leadership are brought together, phenomenal things can happen. The area in which I am spending a good deal of my time these days is in leadership coaching. I have always been interested in the area of leadership, especially as it applies to the church and its various manifestations, but I have become more aware of the impact that effective coaching can have in the life of believers and their empowerment as leaders. T...

“Mashup” is not a term I use every day. It comes from the rap music genre where different types of music are mixed at varying speeds to develop a new piece of music. The process transforms two or more different things into a new creation. Several years ago, something similar happened when Japanese game creator Shigeru Miyamoto combined an accelerometer used for the deployment of automobile airbags with a video gaming system to produce the Wii. As Joshua Cooper Ramo notes in The Age of the Unthinkable , Miyamoto had “mashed up” two seemingly unrelated things to create something new. He explains, “Understanding mashup logic is . . . the first step toward a new, deep security in which our ideas match the world around us.” In so doing, we can recombine “our policies, dreams, and ideas . . . to release new and unexpected power.” Another term for this would be convergence. How do we combine various streams to produce some synergetic—more than the sum of its parts? I suggest that this is one ...

You learn a lot when you lead a conference, especially when you get good questions from the participants. I was leading a workshop on Discovering Disciple Development Coaching in Mississippi over the weekend. The concept I was presenting was that healthy people have the ability to discover the answers to their own problems—spiritual, relational, professional. What we need to do is provide a climate to help them discover those answers, plan how to implement those answers, and then hold them accountable. The question went something like this: “How will people in the church respond to this? They are used to coming to the church to receive direction and answers. How will they respond to the idea of finding their own answers?” As we processed this together, I suggested that believers do need biblical information and teaching, but they also need to learn how to make decisions for themselves. Jesus walked with his disciples, taught them and encouraged them, but when he was gone, they had to t...

You’re rummaging through your tool box, and you suddenly discover a brand new tool that does just what you want to do and in less time. So what do you do? Do you say, “Hey, I am used to my old tool, so I will just stick with it”? Or do you say, “Thank goodness, I have finally found something to make my life easier”? If you are smart, you use the new tool that you just found and save yourself some time and effort. Given the above scenario, you can understand why I am surprised when I find a minister who says with disdain, “I just don’t do the Internet. It’s not my thing.” I look at that person and think to myself, “Well, I guess you don’t use a cell phone, microwave, or electricity either, do you?” You may think that this is mean-spirited, but I have a difficult time understanding a person who does not use the tools available to him or her. If we are to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, we have to be ready to use the technologies that will make our ministries more effective....

Have you ever noticed that if you talk to the same people all the time, you rarely hear a new idea? Whether these folks are family, coworkers, church members, or fans of your athletic team, we tend to hang with those who think, act, and feel like we do. This is comfortable, but it does not promote a climate for change and growth. In a previous blog, I suggested several factors that have impacted all organizations, including churches, in the last couple of decades—fragmentation, customization, and decentralization. In this blog, I suggest one way to deal effectively with those influences—dialogue. How does dialogue differ from discussion or debate? David Bohm suggests an answer. Discussion comes from the same root word as percussion , so the sense communicated is “beating against something.” Dialogue , on the other hand, comes from the root word for “flowing together.” Both can promote learning but they begin from different perspectives. Discussion assumes that by pushing something hard...

In The Age of the Unthinkable , Joshua Cooper Ramo writes “My argument so far has been that . . . many of our best minds, blinded by optimism and confusion, are using out-of-date and unrealistic models of the world. This is why our uneasiness about resting our future in their hands is inevitable.” Although he is talking about foreign policy experts, I think we can apply this to other areas of human endeavor as well, including churches and religious institutions. New times call for new thinking. Whether we acknowledge it or not, everything really has changed in the 21st century. The changes have been coming for decades, but we are feeling their full influence and power now. Let me suggest several that have especially impacted churches. First, fragmentation. While there at least appeared to be unity in 20th century denominational structures and they certainly operated efficiently, most denominations today are divided over theological, moral, and practical concerns. Whether it is the way ...