5 Ways to Make Sure Your Meetings Don’t Suck
Leader can easily have their time wasted in meetings, Josh and Tony talk about some best practices in running meetings, and some ideas on how to get out of them!
Mistaken Identities of Leadership
Leadership is a term that seems to be used as loosely as the word love. You love hot dogs and your love your wife, same word but it doesn’t really mean the same thing. The same is true with leadership. People who are in positions of authority, especially in a church, are always called leaders. And if they are doing poorly with their people they are sent to develop their leadership skills. I actually think there are 3 kinds of authoritative positions (sort of like there are 3 loves), and just one of them is a leader.
1. Manager
Managers aren’t really leaders. They do need to have a respect and competence that the people they are managing are willing to submit to. But managers are followed not because they are leading, but because they have perspective to understand their environment and to keep it running smoothly to expectations set elsewhere. Managers are detail people, they are organizers, they might even have a streak of strategic thinking in their blood, but they don’t have to be a leader to do well.
2. Commander
Commanders don’t really care to value people as long as they fall in line with their ultimatums. Commanders have been given command of a group, a team or a staff. They get orders handed down to them and results are expected. There is often a fear and intimidation around these individuals because of the authority that has been given to them. But they aren’t leaders, because if you took that authority away, no one would follow them. People can respect a Commander, but they are rarely inspired by them. A commander is barely concerned with the way things are done (unless it concerns the authorities that preside over them), they are much more interested in the end result. Commanders are the easiest to spot because of all the human collateral that surrounds them.
3. Leader
A leader is more a state of being than a role, even though people with these natural talents often can rise to positions of authority. Leaders are people that seem to effortlessly exert influence from anywhere in an age range or chain of command or organization. A leader is someone you trust beyond their occupational responsibilities. Leaders are disruptive, and are often the centers of crisis from the creation of their ideas and vision. Leaders know results are important, but also care about how something has been done (especially when people are involved). Leaders don’t have to be the smartest (or most specialized) person in the room, they do need to be the wisest and most trusted, with a heavy dose of integrity. True leaders are born, not produced from seminars and best selling books.
How or What?
When it comes to ministry and working with people, is it more important what you do, or how you do it?
What are your thoughts?
How to follow under a boomer leader
If you are a young leader then you have a high chance of following a leader who is part of the boomer generation. In this episode Josh and Tony talk through some best practices and understanding in how to successfully work under a boomer leader.
Courage
It takes incredible courage to be a good leader. The courage to act in humility. The courage to treat people with respect, even in the midst of conflict. The courage to say a hard thing IN THE RIGHT WAY, and in love. The courage to deal with criticism. The courage to own up to your mistakes, especially when they have implications for other people. The courage to speak the truth behind your decisions, even if you know it doesn’t sound good.
I don’t know that there are a lot of leaders who stand in that sort of courage consistently, but the ones that I have seen I would follow anywhere, and I bet you would to…
Levelator (by Chris Walker)
The Levelator by GigaVox media is a free download that will help with leveling out the your audio files. I have seen a lot of podcasters use this to clean up their audio file after recording. I have listened to many podcasts that have issues getting volume balance between speakers because they are sharing a microphone or they are not able to mix their sound during recording. If you have the money, you can invest in the high-end headsets and a mixing board and level out volumes that way. Or you can try the free download and drop your audio file into the program and it will clean everything up for you automatically. So if you are just some guy like me trying to put together a cost efficient podcast, then this is the tool for you. It can be downloaded from GigaVox for Windows, OSX, or Linux for free (Non-Commercial Use). Let us know how this works for you or if you have something else that you use to correct sound issues.
(Thanks to Chris for sending us this tip, I am sure our podcasts could use it!)
Join me on Twitter!
Twitter is this amazing little web site that is a conversational “one to many” tool. It allows an element of networking with brief messages. Anyways, it would be awesome to build a network of young leaders and youth ministers who could ask a question or have a quick conversation through this great tool.
So, if that sounds like something you would like to connect to, my twitter is at twitter.com/tonysteward, click to add me!
Darth Vader Funky Chicken Pre Episode 7 (10 Things to Hate in Ministry)
Unclear Expectations, Politics, and Shiny things, here goes our 7th pre episode. Maybe we will get to real episodes soon…
Attitude as a choice
As a young leader in ministry it is very easy for cynicism and negativity to creep into your attitude. The reasons abound, from frustrations of just being younger and treated as a part of broad 
stroke of assumptions towards your generation, to really desiring to make a contribution but not being able to have a voice.
Regardless of the reasons, it seems like cynicism and a “whatever” attitude creep in very quickly in the ranks of young leadership. I know I have struggled with this and I have been praying and studying the Bible for a solution. My answer comes through the life of Joseph. Yes, we have all studied and even taught on the life of Joseph a lot of times, even with the lame curriculum’s that portray Joseph as a “clip art” figure – ugh when was that ever good?
But as I have been studying his life I think the biggest lesson taught by his example is that our Attitude is a choice based on our level of Trust in God. I have heard that attitude is a choice, but that choice isn’t random. If I choose to follow Joseph’s example and be positive and content no matter my position or situation or age, I can’t just “will” that to happen. The power to live as Joseph did is supernatural, it requires faith, it requires trust that God is working even when it would seem obvious to the rest of the world that he left you a long time ago. So the choice to have a positive attitude is the same choice of deciding to trust in the Promises of God. I think that gets lost in the translation to my heart a majority of the time.
In previous attempts to have a positive attitude, I have attempted to just “will” it, or make it a value, and have usually come up short, or inconsistent. But when I realize that attitude is a faith choice, the power for consistency comes from being feed spiritually and trusting in God. It isn’t a “fakey” pretend everything is okay, it is being fully aware and admitting when things are hard, but having made a choice of Faith that God is in control, and that I actually, truly trust him with that control – no matter what.
That is what Joseph had to do, he trusted God even when he was thrown into a pit to die and then was sold into slavery. He trusted God when he made a choice between his faith and his career, and he trusted God when he was in prison and forgotten by those he helped. And because of that faith, and that trust, Joseph was far from cynicism, he was blessed in whatever he did, and when the timing came, he was READY to be a strong leader. There is a big difference in wanting to lead, and being ready for it.
So, for us young leaders in the church of 2007 – can we trust God in the midst of budget cuts? In the midst of staff conflict? In the midst of financial hardship? In the midst of being lead by poor leadership? In the midst of being left out or forgotten? In the midst of being attacked? Etc…
All that stuff is hard, all of it can work our emotions over like the new recruits in boot camp, all of it takes the center of our attention and leaves us with a choice. Will we chose to trust God with the details that are out of our control and move forward in a positive attitude? Or will we try to grab the reigns back`from God and let our cynicism do the talking?
The choice is ours, and what we chose strongly determines what we will be READY for when God’s timing is right!
Coffee Mold and Rectums
I went to college with Josh and he has always had a fascinating mind and a way with words that I envy. Here is an excerpt of an article on his blog, great stuff…
“I went to make coffee today. When I opened the lid to put in some grounds, I realized two things: 1. I hadn’t made coffee in a long time. 2. I left the grounds in the coffee maker last time I made coffee. 3. There was mold all over the place. So naturally, I started thinking about the old notion of spontaneous generation. (What can I say, I’m a geek.)”
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