There was a room in my church immediately off the foyer.\u00a0 It was carpeted, with giant shadow boxes and faded Assemblies of God mission\u2019s posters in them.\u00a0 The furniture was a collection of new and what was left over.\u00a0 There was an infamous lounge chair that had matching duct-tape to hold the seams together on the side.\u00a0 This room would be one of the first things you would see if you came into the church.<\/p>\n
As I came into my third month of ministry, I decided to have a month dedicated to missions.\u00a0 The strategy was simple.\u00a0 We will support missionaries, missionary projects and church planting.\u00a0 With this in mind, I decided to take that room off the foyer and renovate it to become our mission\u2019s caf\u00e9. It would reflect what we do around the world and therefore it must be excellent. \u00a0As I cast the vision of what we were going to do, my point person for the project pulled out all these designs and brought them to my door.\u00a0 As I went through the pages and the pictures, I asked, \u201cWhat are these?\u201d She stated, \u201cThese were all the pages I pulled for ideas on this room.\u201d\u00a0 I continued to ask questions and found out that there was a planned remodel of this room.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, it was going to be very similar to what I had in mind.<\/p>\n
As we discussed the plans, I found out that it would probably only take about $1800 to finish the project.\u00a0 I also found out that the project was never finished because the senior pastor had people give their own opinions on what needed to be done, so he stopped the project because he was afraid someone would get their feelings hurt.<\/p>\n
Call it naivet\u00e9 or being in a honeymoon period, I cared less about people\u2019s feelings and more about creating a space that would point to where we were going.\u00a0 It took us two weeks and $2100, and we finished the room, and no one complained or left the church.<\/p>\n
There have been many moments like this one.\u00a0 Some of the indecisiveness nearly sunk the church financially.\u00a0 As I enter in the second year of ministry, many people have asked how the church is doing or what was the main problem with the church? My answer is always the same.\u00a0 The church\u2019s problem never had to do with the people, the church\u2019s problem had everything to do with the leadership or lack thereof.\u00a0 The church which I have been stewarding needed someone to come in and lead and not be afraid.\u00a0 This is the whole essence of Edwin Friedman\u2019s book, Failure of Nerve.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n Drawing upon the example of Europe before the enlightenment, Friedman explains that leadership, creativity, adventure and decisiveness go hand in hand.\u00a0 In other words, current leadership models focus on safety and security that lead to quick fixes, but never lasting change.\u00a0 Friedman calls upon leaders to not to accumulate data, but rather be willing to act with strength, stamina and responsibility.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n REFLECTION<\/strong><\/p>\n There are so many real-world examples that tie into Friedman\u2019s work.\u00a0 I will point out one thing that our friend Aaron Cole told me before I took my position here at my church.\u00a0 He told me that if I was afraid of losing my position here at the church, then I would become an ineffective leader within the church.\u00a0 In other words, a person who opts comfort will sometimes fail to do what is right for the organization.\u00a0 That has stuck with me, and I think it applies a great deal to Friedman\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Leadership is not for the faint of heart.\u00a0 Leaders at times have to make very unpopular calls for the good of the organization, family or nation.\u00a0 If one fails to make those decisions and opts for an easier route, then it will inevitably lead to stagnation, decline and ultimately death. Leaders must lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a room in my church immediately off the foyer.\u00a0 It was carpeted, with giant shadow boxes and faded Assemblies of God mission\u2019s posters in them.\u00a0 The furniture was a collection of new and what was left over.\u00a0 There was an infamous lounge chair that had matching duct-tape to hold the seams together on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[236,35],"class_list":["post-9661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friedman","tag-leadership","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}