{"id":9902,"date":"2016-10-27T15:17:33","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T22:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9902"},"modified":"2016-10-27T15:17:33","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T22:17:33","slug":"leadership-links-for-the-bivocational-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leadership-links-for-the-bivocational-pastor\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Links for the Bivocational Pastor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Leadership Mystique<\/em> by Manfred Kets De Vries is a textbook for leaders who want to lead successful organizations in the 21st Century. I say it is a textbook because it is not just jammed packed full of rich material on leadership, but it also has a wealth of charts and many questions for the reader to answer. This amazing work reads more like a series of deep conversations between an expert in the practice and a student of leadership. This blog lifts the key points of the book and applies them to bivocational pastors in the United States. For me, there are three leadership links that bivocational pastors should incorporate into their leadership.<\/p>\n

Linking Soft and Hard<\/strong>
\nIn the now-old-fashioned business world, leaders were addicted to data. As we learned from Friedman a couple of weeks ago, it\u2019s time to ditch the data and focus on other things. Kets De Vries picks up where his fellow psychologist left off, and argues for an emphasis on emotional intelligence. Typically when we talk about feelings we use the word, \u201csoft.\u201d Emotionally unaware leaders fail more often then those who appreciate the \u201csoft\u201d areas of leadership.<\/p>\n

Bivocational pastors know this intuitively and it is essential for them to follow the advice of Socrates and \u201cknow thyself.\u201d Emotional intelligence means we recognize our own emotions. Bivocational pastors can only survive having two jobs if they daily recognize their \u201cfalse self\u201d and are in touch with their own shadow. Bivocational pastors must also manage their emotions in order to be successful. It\u2019s okay to feel hurt or angry, but they must act on these emotions in productive ways. Finally, they must have the capacity to deal with other peoples\u2019 emotions. This is the most difficult part for bivocational pastors because they are constantly dealing with other peoples\u2019 emotions in at least two different contexts. A helpful skill to aid with this is to become an \u201cactive listener.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linking Creativity and Study<\/strong>
\nKets De Vries points out that many leaders are shocked when they learn that their employees are so creative and imaginative when they are NOT at work. This comes from the old way of leading as a parent would lead with command, control, and compliance. One issue that we started to delve into last week has to do with exit and voice within an organization. Leading as commander in chief, or \u201cchief control-freak officer\u201d and demanding 100% compliance leads to people leaving the organization.<\/p>\n

Bivocational pastors would do well to adopt a healthy personal link with being creative and studying. This means doing good theology, and good art. As leaders of a local church, bivocational pastors can pursue hearing new ideas from their staffs and teams. It is imperative that they also pursue accurate information from members in their church. Third, bivocational pastors can improve their leadership by interacting more with their church leaders and members. This is difficult because the number one scarce resource for leaders who hold two jobs is time. Good interaction with people costs a lot of time. However, being bivocational is at it\u2019s core an exercise in creativity so they must create new forms of interaction where voices can be shared and heard. Bivocational pastors must become the chief storytellers and chief listeners in their churches.<\/p>\n

Linking Present and Future<\/strong>
\nMany workers and leaders focus exclusively on their professional goals to the harm of their personal lives, their families, and their own passions. They sometimes do that in the name of the future. This is known as the \u201cdeferred-life strategy\u201d and is a leadership and organization killer. Many bivocational pastors suffer from a strain of this syndrome by promising their family and self that they are only going to work two jobs until their church gets big enough to support them full-time. Then when the pastor can quit their second job, they will magically have more time to be with family and therefore be happier.<\/p>\n

Instead of deferring happiness and life, bivocational pastors should pursue a \u201cwhole life strategy.\u201d There are many helpful steps to live a \u201cwhole\u201d life. 1)Spend time alone. Jesus did it so can bivocational pastors. 2)Drop trying to be a superhero. Bivocational pastors are the church\u2019s unsung superheroes already, they don\u2019t need to develop a superhero complex. Let\u2019s let Jesus build His church too. 3)Devote plenty of one-on-one time to family. The world doesn\u2019t need another pastor who’s family hates them because they simply don\u2019t know each other. Bivocational pastors need to show up for their families. 4)Set life goals. Bivocational pastors need to set realistic goals and determine what is important and then spend time doing that. 5)Measure quality, not quantity. Bivocational pastors mostly pastor small churches. As my wife says, we might be small, but we can be mighty. 6)Say no. Bivocational pastors tend to be yes people. They would do well to make time for recreation by saying no more often to certain things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Leadership Mystique by Manfred Kets De Vries is a textbook for leaders who want to lead successful organizations in the 21st Century. I say it is a textbook because it is not just jammed packed full of rich material on leadership, but it also has a wealth of charts and many questions for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"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":[675,246],"class_list":["post-9902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dmlgp6","tag-ketsdevries","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9902","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\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}