Barnabas File

In Becoming a Coaching Leader , Daniel Harkavy points out each of us contributes something unique to our organization.   He refers to these as “high payoff activities.”   These are the things that each of us offers that “bring the greatest value to your organization, team, or customer.”   Harkavy argues, of course, that we should seek to maximize these skills for the benefit of ourselves and others. The big challenge for ministerial leaders is identifying these activities and then giving them priority.   Most pastors would argue that preaching is a key activity that has great consequences in the life of the congregation.   The pastor is most highly visible when it comes time to step into the pulpit and share a word (hopefully) from the Lord.   I rarely find a pastor, however, who does not recount how hard it is to find the time to read, study, and pray in order to prepare their sermons.   Too many other things get in the way.   There are fe...

Several years ago, a friend shared an interesting story with me about a community development organization in his area, an area with a great deal of poverty and unemployment, but also an area where many people of means choose as a place to retire.   The newcomers saw the needs in the community and organized a program to meet them, but in setting up their board they did not invite any long term local residents as directors.   They feared that these indigenous people really did not know what was needed to respond to local needs.   Of course, my friend noted, who knew the issues better than those who were forced to live with them each day of their lives? In missions and ministry, Christians have often adopted a paternalistic mindset characterized by a belief that those of us who are the “professionals” and have been doing this longer know what the uninitiated or immature believers need.   Fortunately, many mission and ministry strategists are starting to see the ...

The Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt begins his blog post with this sentence:  “Our seminaries are dying and the Master of Divinity degree has been discredited. ”  He goes on to recite all of the problems with contemporary theological education, especially from his perspective as an Episcopalian, but also suggests some ways to revise the system. I am sure that Dr. Schmidt has specific situations and examples in mind.  I know enough about the ministerial preparation processes in various denominations to know that they often operate much like the Marine Corps, seeking out only “the few, the proud, etc.”  These processes are often more concerned about winnowing out the weak and uncertain than equipping the called.  Of course, I come from a Free Church tradition that is all over the map on theological education.  Many Baptist churches will call a pastor if he (yes, I do mean to use the male pronoun) looks good, sounds good, has an attractive family,...

I still have the newspaper clipping inviting readers to come to a local Baptist church and hear “a real live missionary.”  Some of my earliest heroes were missionaries.  I grew up with a high regard for them, whether they served in the United States or overseas.  I can remember when I was a college student and had the opportunity to actually host a missionary who had served in Africa and to take her to dinner.  I bombarded her with questions about the country where she served and the work she did, and she graciously responded with information and insights about the people she served and loved.  To many in my generation, being a “real, live missionary” was the highest calling a Christian could attain. Times have changed and the way that we do missions is certainly changing.  Although we have been encouraged by leaders in recent years to “keep your mission gifts coming or we will have to bring the missionaries home,” the truth is that most denomination...

Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry , recently shared a very positive report on this year’s Martha Stearns Marshall month of preaching.   This initiative encourages churches to invite a woman to preach on one Sunday in February and share that information with BWIM.   Durso reported that 183 churches hosted female preachers this year, up from 107 last year. I wonder if churches are really ready for this.   If a church chooses to invite a woman to fill the pulpit, there may be some unexpected consequences (please note that I write this with tongue firmly inserted in cheek and a twinkle in my eye). For example, congregants might be forced to confront their prejudices that a woman cannot preach.   Of course, since most Baptists in the south have never heard a woman preach (even though women give “devotionals” and “testimonies” very often), they really don’t know whether a woman can preach or not but avoid assuming that is even a possibil...

Today many will celebrate the life of Saint Patrick of Ireland with green shamrocks, green clothing, green beer, and even green rivers.   The day has become a time to celebrate the mythos of Eire, the Emerald Isle, and to party, but we can also take advantage of the day to take a second look at Patrick the churchman and his legacy. As one might expect, much of the story of Patrick is shrouded in myth. The accepted story is that he was kidnapped from Britain by Irish raiders when he was 16 and taken to Ireland where he was a slave for six years.   He eventually escaped and returned to his family, but he took vows with the Church and returned to his place of enslavement as a missionary.   He is credited with converting the island to the Christian faith.   By the seventh century, he had come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland. The genius of Patrick seems to have been his ability to contextualize the faith in order to win converts.   He took adv...

When you begin planning in your church, what is your beginning point?   For too many years, the beginning point has been, “What does the denomination have for us?”   Churches simply adopted the latest denominational program and plugged it into their congregation whether it fit or not.   The same mistake is made today by those who surf the Internet looking for new and attractive programs and choose them for the congregation based on their authors or their graphic design without regard for the realities of the church’s members and its context.      I hope that we are making from progress when it comes to church planning and are moving from the mindset of “Here is what we have for you. Come and plug into it” to “Where are you in your Christian journey and how can we help you live for Christ each day?”   The difference is between an industrial approach and an organic approach.   The industrial, “one size fits all” approach assures church member...

  In recent months, I have become aware of people in our congregation who have significant ministries in the community: ·          the lawyer who volunteers with the domestic violence center; ·          the former heart patient who spends time each week visiting heart patients and sharing insights about how to live with their disease; ·          the busy mother who tutors at-risk children; ·          the business person who finds himself the “chaplain” in his workplace. This is what missional Christians do; they serve in the world. These are not church-sponsored activities. These are ministries that they have identified and pursued. In Missional Renaissance, Reggie McNeal notes: “People don’t go to church; they are the church. They don’t bring people to church; they bring the church to people.” Whe...

One of the concepts of leadership that I have found helpful in recent years is the idea of leading from your strengths.  This approach is based on that idea that God has gifted each of us in special ways.  Each believer has particular spiritual gifts, skills, backgrounds, and experiences that make that person unique.  Because of this, there are certain things that person can do in the Kingdom of God that others cannot do. If this is true, why would we want to spend time identifying our weaknesses and trying to improve on them?  No matter how much I work on it, I am not going to be an accomplished musician.  I do not have the temperament or skills and it is a little late in life for me to begin!  This is not meant as an excuse to revel in complacency or irresponsibility; rather, it emphasizes that we can be more productive if we build on what God had already given us.  God has “wired us up” in a particular way, so let’s make the most of it. T...

We often talk about improving the world, but what are we doing to improve ourselves?   In Becoming a Coaching Leader , Daniel Harkavy writes: As a coaching leader, you need to figure out how your product or service connects to some larger contribution.   How does it help people to gain a higher quality of life?   How does it enable them to operate more efficiently, contribute to their health, improve their outlook, or enrich their relationships?   Regardless of your business, you must identify what need you’re serving that helps to improve the world. Although Harkavy is not specifically writing for a Christian audience or for church leaders, his point is still applicable.   How does what we are doing help others move further along on their relationship to God?   What is the “value added” dimension of our work as lay or clergy leaders in a faith community? My suggestion is that one of the most important “services” that we can provide to others...

The role of the fool or court jester in medieval history is a fascinating concept. This person, who was either mentally deficient or acted that way, was employed to tell jokes and provide general entertainment by a monarch .   The fool could say or do things that no one else would attempt.   He provided a slightly cockeyed view of the world.   Of course, the role has been romanticized by authors like Shakespeare, so we are not sure exactly how much latitude the court fool really had! Sometimes we need a person like that to help us clarify our plans and get a new perspective on a project.   Too often we are limited by our own experiences and preconceived ideas. We need people who can think “outside the box” and encourage us to do the same.   Where do we find these people? One possibility is the novice, one who is new to the field and is unencumbered by the expectations and presuppositions that we as “experts” bring to the table.   In his book The...

As friends were saying goodbye to their sons and daughters leaving home to attend college last fall, I made the comment, “Don’t worry. They’ll be back.”   Many of us who know and love young adults can expect that at some point we will experience the phenomena of a return to the nest for some period of time.   This seems to be a rather new thing and many of us are struggling to not only understand it but to live with it! I gained some new insight last week when I attended the C3:  Christ, Church, Culture Conference at St. George’s Episcopal Church.     I was introduced to a new area of sociological research by Christian Smith , the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.   Smith runs the National Study of Youth and Religion , a longitudinal study  funded by the Lilly Foundation designed to identify the “dispositional culture” of this age gro...

Churches spend a lot of time on visioning processes and strategy planning.   Of course, sometimes these are a waste of time and effort.   The work is done and put on the shelf, leadership changes, or the ministry context changes due to unforeseen circumstances (economics, demographics, etc.).   This does not mean that we should not think about the future and the opportunities that God will provide in coming days, months, and years.   There are always open doors for those who look for them. In his e-book The Knight and the Gardener , futurist Cassidy Dale writes: The future cannot be “won” for any one party, group, nation, or religion.  Instead, the longer term we think, the more we realize we can only enable good futures to emerge by building robust capacities for people to solve problems we cannot yet foresee. Dale suggests that rather than pursuing a simple “problem-solving” approach, we should seek to discover a “meme”—a contagious idea—or a “m...

Planting a new   church   is not for the faint of heart!  You need all the friends you can get.  I am currently working with two friends to develop a teleconference peer group for church planters.  When I made contact with one potential participant, he expressed some concern that his church was different and he might not necessarily fit with the group. As I have continued to encourage this church planter to join our group, I have realized that every church start, like every church, is unique with its own story and special challenges. No two church plants or churches are exactly alike!     Even so, there are some things that all church planters do have in common. First, each church planter has to not only champion but nurture the vision for the new church.   Whether the desire is to reach a particular geographic area, a specific demographic group, or propagate a particular ministry, someone (hopefully the planter) initially discovered an...