About three years ago, I discovered (another) love of my life: Leadership. After ALOT of study in theology and ministry, leadership studies were an answer to prayers. They helped my marriage. They helped my church. They helped me get to know myself. They helped me relate to others. They helped me raise my kids. and much much more.
Like always, I went "all in" to leadership. I found a great doctoral program and by the grace of God got accepted. I saw how much I didn't know about leadership - how much there was (and still is) to learn. I began to understand that everyone is a leader of some kind. And I slowly started to pick up new leadership theories and how to use them.
Fast forward three years - to January, 2013 - and I knew over 100 leadership theories and how to use them. (Right now, though, for the life of me I can only remember 2). I've put many of them to work all over the place - and even used them to consult and help other churches. But down the way I've also noticed a trend: everybody is an expert in leadership. Amazon.com just gave me 102,806 book results for "leadership." The situation looks worse than what happens in some churches - where everyone knows what the Bible means and won't hesitate to show you where you're wrong about your interpretation! Everyone that has had any kind of success in any situation, will give you a list of leadership principles. Of course, this is a good thing, because there is some good advise out there. On the other hand, (1) it can be hard to tell the good advise from the fluff and (2) sometimes the context is so fundamental to leadership that someones ideas will just not work anywhere else.
Beyond the popular press (books like Bubba's 12 Steps to Effective Leadership), right now there are well over 5000 leadership studies by psychologists and social scientists - studies that develop, propose, and scientifically verify everything related to leadership: leader behaviors, leadership styles, motivational theories, organizational behavior, conflict resolution, leadership development, organizational design, organizational culture and climate, risk management, organizational strategy, organizational development, communication. . . and much, much more.
Despite the incredible mass of literature of all types about leadership and potential confusion about quality, validity and possible use of information, I still believe in leadership and in reading and learning all we can about it. Why? simply because leadership study promises to help us help others.
Why study ecclesial leadership? Because some of what we learn in organizational leadership is also very useful in church settings. To that potential usefulness we can also add that Jesus and many other biblical figures showed a knack for leadership (and followership) - the Scriptures also shed some insight on how we can help others in a group setting, and especially in the Church.
1 comment:
Leadership is an individual definition. Some people think leaders give good advise, can get people to follow them, tell people how to grow, what to know, are strong speakers. In my definition, that is power - not leadership. Leadership is personal and not the impression you want to leave - it is the type of leaders you want to grow and become independent.
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