The eCrozier

Two articles I read recently relate well to our roles as clergy leaders. Neither article is about Christian ministry, per se, but their relevance to who we are and what we do is unmistakable. One is from the Harvard Business Review blog http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/01/three_questions_executives_sho.html. While the article is about executive performance and goal-setting, I think it speaks to how we go about our ministries. The author raises three questions at the end of the blog. I have paraphrased them below to apply to our contexts.

1. If there was only one thing I could do to improve my ministerial leadership, what would it be and how would I make it happen?
2. If there was only one thing I could focus on to improve my ministerial leadership, what would that be and how would I make it happen?
3. What messages am I not listening to or refusing to confront in my ministry and leadership of others and how am I going to overcome that this year?

I think good clergy leadership requires us to challenge ourselves with such questions, especially the third one. I might suggest we all need an “inbox,” what organizational theorists call openness to feedback. Such openness allows us to adapt our leadership style to the context and competency of the people we lead.

The other article is from January issue of the Atlantic Monthly entitled: What Makes a Great Teacher? http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/good-teaching I commend the entire article to you, but I would sum up how the author answered the question in the title with one word: relentlessness. Great teachers have different personalities and skill sets, different approaches to the discipline, but the one variable they all have in common is relentlessness. For how that relates to our ministries, we might refer to St Paul in Romans 5:4. St Paul calls this upomonh, which is often translated endurance, but I prefer stick-to-it-tiveness. Come what may, cost what it will, we remain committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

These two articles indicate for me just how challenging the art of leading congregations truly is. On one hand, we must remain open to feedback and always ready to listen to those we serve if we are going to be effective leaders. On the other hand, we must have what our Eucharistic dismissal calls singleness of heart, the capacity to endure singularly in our commitment to the Gospel of our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.

No one ever said this was easy! We have one of the most challenging vocations imaginable, what John Snow called The Impossible Vocation. God bless us all!

+Scott