Barnabas File

As part of the requirement for graduation, the five students in Central Seminary’s 2014 Women's Leadership Cohort in Nashville must complete a Capstone project.   Three of the students are nurses, one works in the health care field, and the other is an educator.   Of the five projects, three consider opportunities for the church to minister to older adults.   (The others address mental health education and breast cancer awareness in congregational settings.) Churches often emphasize ministries with youth, young adults, and families as an investment in the future, but older adults contribute to church health and provide significant opportunities for meaningful ministry. One of the students cited a typology of older adults used by Walter Schoedel in an article in the Concordia Journal . He describes three groups of older adults based on their independence, interests, and matches them with ministry opportunities. The Go-Go's are independent, ac...

Although you make get tired or reading articles about how to work with, recruit, and mentor millennials, each of us needs to be aware that this new generation of leaders is ready and willing to become engaged if we will acknowledge what is important to them.  Mary Verstraete, a professional leadership consultant and coach, had written a very helpful article about millennials and made some practical suggestions about how to make the most of their abilities.  Let me adapt Verstraete’s comments to the church context. First, she says to “look for ways to satisfy their desire to be creative, to have important and interesting roles, and to engage them.”  They are bright and innovative individuals.  We need to give them the space to come up with new ideas and then let them pursue those ideas to completion.  If we are not willing to give that latitude, then we are saying we really don’t want them as part of our ministry. Second, we...

In The Fifth Discipline , Peter Senge explains the value of alignment: “[W]hen a team becomes more aligned, a commonality of direction emerges, and individuals’ energies harmonize.” He goes on to write, “Individuals do not sacrifice their personal interests to the larger team vision; rather, the shared vision becomes an extension of their personal visions. In fact, alignment is the necessary condition before empowering the individual will empower the whole team.” (pp 234-235).   Alignment precedes empowerment. Senge’s idea is that everyone is going somewhere but is there some way to get everyone to either put alter their goals so that everyone can move in the same direction?   Very often an individual’s goal can even be seen as an important part of attaining the larger organizational goal, becoming a win-win situation for all concerned. One of the biggest challenges of leading a church is achieving some level of alignment, at least in vital functions such as doing...