Barnabas File

If we have learned anything from the last two years of pandemic, it is that leadership emerges in response to need and sometimes it is manifested unexpectedly.  Churches and other organizations that have adapted to the challenges of COVID-19 have done so by encouraging and empowering emergent leaders.   I have long been a fan of the leadership model presented by James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations.   I encourage you to learn more about their model, but one element is essential if your organization is to meet the still undefined challenges of 2022--“Enable Others to Act.”  This is done through fostering collaboration, strengthening others, and creating a climate of trust.  How do we do that? By developing a culture that embodies these actions.   In a recent webinar, Kouzes asked these strategic questions about creating such a culture:   Does ev...

The season has wrapped on Hawkeye , a Disney+ plus series featuring Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), the most human of the Avengers.    The character has come a long way from an uncredited cameo role in Thor (2011) and an enslaved lackey for Loki in The Avengers (2012).  He evolved into a key member of the team and my favorite (next to Steve Rogers—Captain America).   In the series, Barton is coming off a tough patch.  He lost his family for five years in the blip (half of all the life in the universe destroyed) and became a vigilante assassin known as the Ronin during that time.  He rejoined the Avengers to bring all of humanity back but lost his best friend Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) in the process.   As the series opens, his family has been back for a year, and he has taken his three children on a Christmas jaunt to New York City (where they see Rogers , a musical version of the Avengers which is wildly satiric).  In addi...

When I grow up, I want to be like Barbara Brown Taylor.     I long ago realized that Taylor is one of the finest Christian writers of our time but reading Holy Envy:    Finding God in the Faith of Others reminded me of the humility and inquisitiveness that makes her work engaging.   This book recounts not only Taylor’s experience of teaching world religions to undergraduate students in a liberal arts college, but her own growing understanding of what it means to learn from other faiths, embrace truths that enrich one’s own spiritual journey, and wonder how far “holy envy” can be indulged without becoming covetous!  Simply put, holy envy is discovering that another’s faith tradition may provide something that is missing in one’s own.   Early in the book, Taylor quotes the late Krister Stendahl’s three rules of religious engagement:   When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies....

I t’s probably happened to you.     You’re at Walmart or the grocery store.     You see a person you think you know from church.     He or she comes over and makes sure of who you are (because you are probably still wearing a mask in public).     They ask how you are doing, then immediately start telling you about the church they are attending now: “It’s so friendly.     The pastor really preaches from the Bible.     I love my Sunday school class.”    You politely mumble something like, “I’m glad that you are happy there” and move on as quickly as possible.   There will be more moments like this especially if you are staff minister or active in the life of your congregation.  Those who have moved on will want to take the time to let you know that they are much happier since they left your church.   Please don’t get me wrong.  If a person has come to the point where they no longer feel the...

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” --Paul Romer, economist, Stanford University Despite the pandemic and all of it unexpected consequences, this is a time of opportunity for the church.  Our weaknesses are clearer than ever, but our strengths have risen to the surface.  Changes that we knew were on the horizon are now right in front of us.  Choices that we thought we could put off for several years are now call for immediate action.  Every church is going to have to ask itself some tough questions to identify priorities, ministry realities, and action plans in the coming days.  When I work with individual coaching clients, I often find that they are having to make difficult choices.  They are motivated and capable people, but they have their limitations.  They can only do so much and sometimes the choices about how to use their time and talents are difficult to make. In these coaching situations, I sometimes suggest t...

One of the challenges of Advent is keeping the events and persons fresh and relevant.     There is a tendency to come up with some basic ideas and become stuck there.    In an effort to get some new perspective, I have been reading Adam Hamilton’s book The Journey in recent days. He combines biblical reflection, observations about the places mentioned, and some preaching imagination to bring new insights to Mary, Joseph, and others in these familiar stories.   As he writes about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth (which probably lasted several months), Hamilton identifies the mentor and protégé relationship that was established between the two women. It is one worth unpacking.   First, when Mary finds herself miraculously pregnant, she must have thought of her kinswoman Elizabeth who also had been unexpectedly blessed.  Through the family grapevine, Mary learned that elderly, revered woman was expecting.  Although their circumstances were differ...

In a recent conversation, a pastor friend asked this question: “Does God require all the things I think my congregation needs?”    Great question!   Depending on our experience and faith family, we each have ingrained idea of “this is what a church looks like.”  When I was involved in a church start several years ago, we worked hard to offer everything that our denomination (at that time) told us that good church needed—Sunday morning and evening worship, Bible Study (Sunday School) for all ages, Wednesday night service, and financial support for missions.  It was a lot of work for a small group of people, but we did quite well!   Over the years, what has come to be expected of a church has changed and even more so during the Pandemic.  We have pared down to the essentials and it has not looked the same in every case. I wonder, however, if we have included God in the conversation about what is “essential”?   Most often, God speaks t...

Every believer has struggled with some aspect of the biblical story.  It may be the slaughter of Israel’s enemies at the direction of God.  Perhaps it is the parallel accounts in the Hebrew Bible that seem to conflict with each other.  Most often, we wonder how the four gospel writers could see things so differently. Scholars take various approaches to these challenges.  Some deconstruct the writings and, in the process, deconstruct God.  Seeing inconsistencies between the written word and their concept of God, they end up rejecting God.  In The Bible Tells Me So , Professor Peter Enns take a different perspective.  Although he addresses major questions about the Bible, he never gives up his faith in God.  It is God who is holy, not the book about God.  The book represents the efforts of God’s servants to construct meaning out of past and present events in their culture.  We should not al...

Virtual meetings have become a way of life for most of us and—for better or worse—they are here to stay.  In Making Virtual Work:  How to Build Performance and Relationships , Betty Johnson goes beyond the mechanics and etiquette of virtual meetings to help us understand how to make them productive and engaging. In this age of virtual meetings, Johnson emphasizes humanity rather then technology.  She calls upon wise leaders to use empathy in designing and conducting meetings online.  She suggests three steps:       Understanding how participants feel.       Resonating with what they feel.       Doing what they need to make things better.   The book includes a self-assessment to help leaders understand their own tendencies in leading virtual meetings.  The self-assessment is practical and provides great insights for putting together meetings that are human-centered.   Although brief, ...

After a summer of plans to return to some semblance of normalcy, we find ourselves continuing to face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The reasons are many, but the reality is that our best laid plans will not be realized.  We each have our own stories to share.  The reality was brought home to me this morning when I heard a report that many Americans have come to the point that they believe we will “just have to learn to live with COVID.”   This is discouraging for all of us—businesspeople, health professionals, teachers, parents, students, clergy and lay leaders in congregations, and more.  The marathon goes on and nerves wear thin.  One option is to seek someone to blame, but this only leads to further frustration and anger.  Another option is to acknowledge that this is, for present, our lot in life and seek the strength to endure.   We can find that strength in the Psalms, where writers are very transpar...

During a recent webinar, my colleague Mark Tidsworth observed, “Every congregation is in redevelopment or transition.”    I agree, but my question is, “Do they realize it yet?”   In his classic work The Frog in the Kettle published in 1990, George Barna shared the metaphor of the frog residing a kettle where the temperature was steadily rising.  Barna suggested that the frog would not be aware of the rising heat until it was be too late to escape the boiling water. His take-away was that churches were in a similar situation. Things were slowly changing, churches were ignoring those changes, and they needed to respond before it was too late.   Societal and cultural changes in recent days have turned the heat up drastically and the change would be hard to ignore.  Even so, some of us are doing our best to try to get back to a “normal” that no longer exists.  The pandemic has accelerated cultural and societal changes that were already pres...

We take a lesson where we can find it—even on National Public Radio.  On Weekend Edition Saturday , host Scott Simon interviewed the owner of three  restaurants in Albuquerque, New Mexico, about the challenges of coming back from COVID.  Her remarks caught my attention on two points—employees and customers—and made me think about our churches.     Now, I know that we should avoid thinking of our staff leaders as “employees” and that congregants are not really “customers” (although some think they are), but there are some insights here for those who serve and especially for recipients of that service.   First, she pointed out, “ There's a lot of pressure on the team that is in place. We don't have a lot of depth to allow people time off, to allow people a break. We're losing the people that have been here because they're exhausted, fatigued because we're so short-staffed.”     This is certainly true of ministers.  Clergy st...

I visit three medical providers on a regular basis—each one every six months or so.     As I waited recently to see one of the doctors, I reflected on the difference in the way that they deal with patients.      One is a well-run, professional practice where I am always greeted by a friendly nurse who makes me feel at the ease.  The doctor is a capable person who asks good questions and includes me in making decisions about my health.   Another is very much a family-type practice.  I know everyone in the office.  The doctor is rather laid back and always outlines options for my treatment.   The third is very much oriented toward providing a service and moving patients along.  The doctor is a very competent person but works more from a prescriptive approach, telling me what the best approach is for my treatment.    Now, I am very happy with the service provided by each of these practices, but I am also a...

"Leaders, you can have control, or you can have growth, but you can’t have both.”   This statement at the 2021 Global Leadership Summit by Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church, was my key takeaway.  If you want to be in complete control of everything, then you are limiting the possibilities for growth in your organization and in your life.   Being in control of anything or anyone is really a myth.  You guide and discipline your children, but ultimately, they go on to live their lives for themselves.  You can employ and coach people in your organization, but you can never motivate or control every action that they take.  You can create and launch an organization, but if you attempt to micromanage it, you limit its growth.   Growth comes from creating a healthy environment and then letting its components thrive.  Perhaps gardening is the best metaphor to use.  You prepare the soil, select and place the pla...

If you assume that Kim Cameron’s book is about making people happy at work, you are shortchanging this contribution to leadership literature.     Cameron’s thesis is this:     All human beings flourish in the presence of light or of positive energy. This is called the heliotropic effect.     The kind of positive energy that usually accounts for the flourishing of individuals and organizations is called relational energy.    In this book, Cameron explains how relational energy is created and enhanced through the demonstration of virtuous actions by leaders.   Those familiar with leadership literature will find a great deal of commonality with the work of others such as Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee in Resonant Leadership but Cameron offers another model for leaders to consider.  His contemporaneous engagement with the pandemic makes his writing especially fresh and engaging.  He reminds us, “In order to effectively mana...

The Gallup organization did a meta-analysis of 100 million employee interviews to identify what makes a highly engaged team.  The key factor is the manager, but one with a particular style of leading.  In a recent blog post , Jim Clifton reported, “ Gallup has discovered -- through studying what the best managers do differently -- that great managing is an act of coaching, not one of directing and administrating.”   At the center of compassionate accountability is coaching.  Good managers engage in regular coaching conversations to encourage, develop, and support team members.  In the blog, Clifton suggests several ways to implement this game changing strategy in an organization.   1.        Recognize that Millennials and Generation Z individuals want to learn and grow.  Coaching provides this opportunity. 2.       Announce to your organization that your leaders will move f...