Great Idea 2: Ask the Lord his Business
JOHN ADAIR
All leaders worthy of the name grow their businesses. The first question you have to ask yourself is what business are we in?
The business of the Church is the business of Jesus, ‘my Father’s business’, namely the coming of the kingdom of God on earth.
A healthy church is a community of purpose. It looks upwards and outwards, constrained only by the highest inner personal necessity, which is to love.
All healthy churches have a shared aspect. They all have that unmistakable Christian hallmark of humility. Like their individual members they simply and continually ask: ‘Lord, what will you have me to do?’
Great Idea 3: Aspire to be Great
TERRY WYNN
Aspire to be great. Don’t settle for being a ‘good’ church. If you do, you’re settling for the average and mediocre. Building something great is not a function of your circumstances, it’s a function of your discipline. God needs those who wake up each morning motivated to work for him.
Great Idea 4: Avoid Judging other People
JOHN DEVINE
Try to say ‘Yes’ to people rather than ‘No’. The Spirit speaks to us through the most unlikely people and in the most unlikely places. Never imagine that the institutional Church has a monopoly on the Spirit – the Spirit actively subverts any attempt at control. Avoid judging other people. It is usually the prelude to similar mistakes in your own life. But don’t be afraid when you make a mess of things either. My personal sinfulness is sometimes the only way that God can get through to me.
Great Idea 5: Be a Listening Church
PATRICK GOH
You are worried about many things, but only one thing is needed
Luke 10.41–42
Top Tip: Be ready to lay down your own agenda and really listen.
Business Perspective: A successful organization understands that profitability rests in the full and active participation of its members. Consequently active leaders develop an active listening organization.
During a retreat at a Franciscan friary where the theme was leadership and diversity the Abbot was asked whether he had any tips on how to honour diversity at a practical level. He replied:
If you believe that God works through all of us, you need to somehow enact this belief. One way of doing this is to enter into any conversation with a spirit of anticipation, expecting to hear how God is working through people and what God is saying to them.
On the whole, we don’t do this well. Instead, our conversations are more often about telling others what we feel God is saying to us. In a leadership context, this can lead to an overly top down approach to decision making.
To address this, my colleagues and I have developed a tool called the ‘keynote listener’. This is based on the concept of honouring the voices of the community and the importance of listening in agreeing a common vision. This is a conversational tool that reverses the normal communication process by asking people in authority not to present what they know and think, but to listen for the wisdom of others. It is an attempt to gather the collective wisdom of the whole community (church).
We have used this methodology for church events such as visioning meetings, annual church meetings and youth conferences. It works best when it is possible to bring the whole system, or as many as possible, into one place. Rather than having the usual sermons from ‘keynote speakers’, we reframe them as ‘keynote listeners’, whose role is to listen carefully to the ideas of participants throughout the day.
The idea is to structure enquiry sessions on the main issue we are addressing in creative ways, for example, using talk, posters, drama, music, dance, etc. The role of keynote listeners is to attend these sessions, listen carefully to the contributions, feedback and questions.
The keynote listeners are asked to listen out for:
Ideas, thoughts, and opinions
Common themes and shared concerns
Genuine differences
Motivating values
Concerns and worries
Passion and feeling
Visions and ideals
All the forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal
Content, passion, and perspective.
There are a number of important principles for the keynote listener:
1 Try not to influence the conversations but remain in silent listening mode.
2 Set your own thoughts and opinions aside and listen openly.
3 Listen with curiosity and fascination, even when you hear ideas with which you may not personally agree.
4 Enter the ‘grammar’ of the participants and hear the way they express their ideas. Hear their words and how they connect ideas and thought.
5 See how participants relate to and interact with one another.
6 Stay faithful to your role and remember that this is not a time for you to put forth your thoughts, but a moment in which you can concentrate on the ideas of others.
Keynote listeners are then given the opportunity to reflect on what they have heard and to share their insights in a structured feedback session. This often works well as a conversation rather than someone simply talking from the front. The following are useful questions for this session:
What surprised you in what you heard?
What moved you?
What most intrigued you?
What were the hotspots?
Did you have a sense of what was unsaid?
Were there elephants in the room?
What is different for you now after being a keynote listener?
What would you like to learn more about?
What would you say is the ‘voice’ of this community?
What differences still divide this community based on what you heard?
What is one piece of wisdom you gained today?
What are the major themes you have heard?
What new insights did you learn?
