Barnabas File

In two previous blogs, I shared the responses of Charity Roberson, Leadership Communities Coach on the Emerging Leaders team at the Virginia Baptist Mission Board on the philosophy and strategy behind her position.  Her comments led me to several observations. First, people in most congregations know more than they are doing.  We have individuals who possess not only significant gifts and skills but also innovative points of view.  If they are not doing what they do best, what’s the problem?  Perhaps the structures that we insist on maintaining are getting in the way. Second, people in our congregations want to be involved in decision making but they don’t want to waste their time on minutiae.  They want to help set the direction of the church and then get down to work.  They don’t want to be micromanaged. Third, there are many people in our churches who have both a teachable spirit and want to share what they learn with others.  As Char...

This is the second part of my interview with Charity Roberson, Leadership Communities Coach on the Emerging Leaders team at the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.  In this blog, Charity responds to questions about developing intentional communities of ministers. We hear a lot today about “leadership communities” or “learning communities.”  As a coach, how would you define a "learning community”? “I know it sounds trite, but I define a learning community as any group of people that is committed to learning and growing together.  Again, these communities may be a short one hour online conversation, they may be a group that studies together for a set length of time, or they may be groups that journey through a longer learning process.  The goal is also to create a large learning community of all of us in ministry, tapping into resources that already exist and learning how to better communicate and share them.” What are the key ingredients to making a communi...

When you see a Baptist organization do something right, you just have to say something about it. The Virginia Baptist Mission Board recently called my friend Charity Roberson to a new position.  Charity will use her skills as a life coach to develop church leaders, something she has done previously as a campus minister and pastor. This is an example of putting the right person and the right position together. I asked Charity several questions about her new position and will share her responses in this blog and one later this week.  What is the exact title of your new position and to whom will you relate (target group)? “I am serving as the Leadership Communities Coach on the Emerging Leaders team at the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.  My primary target group as I start will be children and youth ministry leadership, lay and staff positions. Over time, the goal is to create leadership development communities that expand to other areas of ministry as ...