Confusion about Leadership

Bob Robinson is a Great Servant Business Leader

The number of articles, books, and conferences with "Leadership" in the title indicates several thing to me. 1. The need for leaders is great. 2. Need for people already in positions of "leadership" are not very effective and want to learn how to improve. 3. A lot of people think they know something about leading and are eager to lecture the rest of us. 4. Nobody knows what leadership is and everybody is scrambling to find out. 5. ___________________ Fill in the blank.

I have a "pet peeve" on the topic. I think there is great confusion about leadership and many times people are stuck in positions where leadership is needed and required but they are over their heads. Leading, to me, indicates a gift of facilitating a movement of people and ministry toward a mission, a vision, and a goal.

That can be a big problem in churches if the designated leader, the Minister/Preacher is a gifted talker but lousy at leading. Steve Griebling and I were consulting with a church of about 1200 people several years ago. The Preacher was chosen because he was a terrific speaker that drew Christians to hear him by droves. However, he had no ability to lead the organization. He preached at every board meeting, staff meeting, and committee meeting. In a congregation of over 1,000 people he had never even led a committee planning meeting successfully.

Yet, he faithfully attended high power leadership training conferences at the suggestion of his Elders who desperately wanted him to improve his leadership skills. Every conference was filled with great speakers that gave him five to ten points of leading. They did not know how t lead either, but they knew how to preach.

We learn how to lead big organizations by trying our skills out at home and in small groups. 

I. Timothy 3 1-7 If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife, cool and collected, accessible, and hospitable. He must know what he’s talking about, not be overfond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin-skinned, not money-hungry. 

He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect. For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God’s church? 

He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head and the Devil trip him up. Outsiders must think well of him, or else the Devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap.

In fact, I think that few persons gifted in Preaching are also gifted in leading.  Find people gifted, talented, educated, and experienced in LEADING in home, house church, committee, staff, and Elder meetings and place them as the daily leader. 

Want to lead, teach, or minister? Go here to learn. 

Selective Outrage at Evil?

A Wall Street Journal article said: "For the record, of the 20th century’s malign ideologies, Nazi ideas of who should be murdered and why strike me as slightly more odious and frightful than Maoist or Stalinist ideas of who should be murdered and why. The applicability to current U.S. events is slender, though." This confuses me. Why is mass murder because of race ethnicity/ religion worse than mass murder because of class/ economics?  Today's mass murder of people with a disability, being unwanted, or being an inconvenience seems just as evil to me.  Is there a difference in the morality of Leftist Nazis and Leftists Communists?  Both violate the Commandment, "Thou shalt not murder".  Both hate their neighbors. Neither honors their fathers and mothers. See our web for love!

Can't Forgive?

Those that are engaged in Past Pain will be stuck in the present and unable to think about the future.

Come to Be Trained as a Mentor

We get to do it again! For the third year we will train adults to Befriend high school kids. The goal is to be a caring, supportive adult to a young person. That alone can encourage them to take positive steps toward achieving more in life.

If you have some warm friendship to plant as a positive seed in a kid's life, try it.  98% of the Mentors we trained last time said they loved the training and the practice of helping the young men and women. It helped them personally and in their volunteer work other places. 

And, it will last forever! 

Come and join in the fun and challenge of helping a young man or woman make it in life. 

You can sign up here with Megan Sanchez.  

You can visit the website to discover the information and deadlines The final deadline is September 30st not August! 

You can find other information here.  

Gifts, Talents, and Personalities on a Team

We had terrific people on our staff at College Hill Presbyterian. The gifts, talents, interests, and temperaments were varied and we worked hard to communicate. It is not easy for each and every member to be included and needed. All of us took the MBTI and discussed it in many staff meetings. We had a lot of fun and it helped us reduce irrational conflicts. 

Conflicts and anger are inevitable, but bitterness is optional. Jerry was a great communicator and we enjoyed each other despite some big differences in type. 

We also wanted our sermons, teachings, and writings to take the Personality Preferences of our audience into account. We tended to add time for silence and some quiet music for Introverts in services but that often resulted in the High Extroverts being fidgety. 

Since over 85%of Ministers nationally are Extroverted iNtuitive Feelers, a staff must work hard on communication when others are wildly different. Thankfully, not everyone was an N or F. As a result, we had a good balance. 

Go to Sweeten Life for more interesting stuff unless you want to stay unhappy! 

The Personality Preference at Work and Church

During my years at College Hill Church, several thousand people took the MBTI as well as the Spiritual Gifts Check List. We asked 
all new members, small groups, ministry teams, Deacons, Elders, and staff to take each one and discuss how they thought it helped them find a place  to fit into a church ministry. 

We also taught about how these self assessments could help them at home, at work, and life. I still get notes and comments about how much the teachings helped them in family life. Since some were quiet Introverts, we developed group processes to help the quiet ones to speak when they want! 

We asked the strong Extroverts to make sure they pause and encourage the Introverts time to get a word into the conversation. Extroverts can certainly dominate any discussion unless we intentionally open the door for a quiet I!

If you are not using some check-list like the MBTI, Strength Finders, or the Enneagram I suggest you start. It can be liberating and a lot of fun, especially when everyone takes part. Add the Spiritual Gifts Check List and discuss how they fit together.

Go to my web page for more information about healthy living.

Cross Cultural Communications at Home

Humans are diamonds created in the image of God with many facets and places we can interact with love or clash over differences. Let the Light of God shine through every facet!


When Dr. Winter taught us about the various Levels of Cross Cultural Communication I was struck by how hard it is to communicate accurately and positively in my own family. I did not need to fly across salt water to discover the challenges of miscommunication. I had seen it with my parents, brothers, wife, and children. It is the cause of most angry conflicts and divorces in marriages as well as the cause as most church splits.

Karen and I attended a conference back in 1974 that introduced us to the Myers-Briggs Personality Preference Self-Assessment. (As a Therapist I cannot call it a Test.) The MBTI allows people to check preferences for things like Extroversion or Introversion, Structured or Spontaneous, etc. As a result we came back to CHPC and started asking friends to use the preference check list so we could discuss our similarities and differences. It was a blast!

When we developed the Teleios Wholeness Center at CHPC we used the MBTI to foster better interpersonal communication  between and among our Lay Helpers and the people that came to Teleios for prayer. We discovered that knowing people had different Temperaments made communication easier and understanding faster.
Gary:ENTP/J
Karen:ISFP
Julie: INFJ
Tim: ENTP/J

As I aged I was able to develop a stronger J Structure because being  High P Spontaneous does not help me get things done fast. 

Knowing these tendencies helped us communicate better but not perfectly. Knowing that Introverts can be drained when with people and Extroverts can get energized by others, helped us understand and reduce miscommunication and blaming.  

Harmony at home and church will pay off big time in outreach, evangelism, church growth, and reducing anger and judgmentalism. Get our equipping materials to help you grow. 

Cross Cultural Communication and Influence

Several years ago, Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the US Center for World Mission, came to our church for a weekend missions conference. He and his family had been missionaries for years and discovered that he had needed more and better training to communicate with positive influence in a different culture.

As a Counselor that insight made a lot of sense to me because our training had said the same thing about the importance of understanding people that are different from us so we could better help them grow and heal.

Dr. Winter also gave us a way to think about reaching out beyond ourselves to others. He laid out four different levels of cross cultural communication.

Missions Level I:
Communicating to the people in our own church and culture. Since this certainly includes different age groups and different sexes, accurate, appropriate, and influential communication also requires understanding even at this level.
Men and Women are different
Singles and marrieds are different
Parents and non-parents are different
Generations are different
Family backgrounds are different
Human experiences are different
Race and ethnicity are different
Socioeconomic experiences are different
Educational experiences are different
Theological convictions are different
Other differences?

So, accurate, appropriate, communication that is positively influential demands sensitivity even in a church congregation. The key to great communication is an ability to relate with the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. Love, Joy, Gentleness, Kindness, Patience, etc.

The most important thing leaders can do to foster shalom in a congregation is to teach the skills of peaceful relationships at home, work, church, and community. Listen, for Heaven's Sake!

Want to learn about these skills?  Go to our web page and get our materials. They can help you grow in caring.

Our Love Can Heal People that Dislike Us

The late Dr. David McClelland of Harvard University was an expert on inner motivation and healing. He researched the impact of Mother Teresa on a group of students. He set it up so they watched a film about her to see its impact. He wanted to discover whether she influenced people in a positive manner. 

Before the film, Dr. McClelland wanted to find out how the students felt about her as a Nun doing good deeds. He discovered that some of the students appreciated and affirmed her ministry. Other students were "turned off by her religiosity." This gave him a base line to test them afterward to see I their beliefs going in made a difference.   

The way Dr. McClelland judged Mother Teresa’s impact was very interesting. He did a pre- and post-test analysis of the immunoglobin A secreted in each student's saliva.  

He said; “We decided to work with movies of healers, to see if a film could transmit the feeling of caring and loving and then see if that had positive effects on the immune system and it did." The following dialogue between the interviewer and Dr. McClelland is fascinating.

Dr. McClelland:  If you watch this documentary on Mother Teresa you see that in addition to performing an incredible service, she is also a wonderful person.

Interviewer:  It really comes through, this love and caring that she has.  I'm tempted to call it divine love and caring.

Dr McClelland:  Exactly.  Not everyone reacts to it consciously as you and I do, but the interesting thing is that their bodies react anyway.  The curious thing is that their opinions of the movie in no way related to whether their immune functions improved.  

Immunoglobulin A (IgA) is the body's first defense against cold viruses.  We found that salivary IgA increased even in people who disliked Mother Teresa...[S]he was contacting these consciously disapproving people in a part of their brains that they were unaware of and that was still responding to the strength of her tender loving care...[B]elief in the healer is [not] necessary to get healed.  At the conscious level a person may not believe at all, but at the unconscious level, something in the person may still respond to the healer.

Interviewer:  What was it that correlates to the release of IgA?

Dr. McClelland:  The students who responded to Mother Teresa by releasing IgA in their saliva have motives of "doing something positive to help someone, or to establish a love relationship.” But the curious part of it is that the person is not invested in the outcome of the thing.  There are no statements about anxiety of tension if it fails. (People of Peace.)

Interviewer:  The unconditional love?

Dr. McClelland:  That's right, unconditional is exactly the same sense as Mother Teresa's activity is unconditional.  She's asked in the film "How can you expend all this energy on these dying babies when you know that they are going to die anyway?"  

And she says that it is irrelevant, that whether they live or die isn't important to the act of love.  It's a variation on the old instrumental argument if you are in love with somebody because of what it gets you somehow it isn't love. Traditional healing and religion [always] stress non-involved striving.  I mean, striving without being concerned about the outcome.  

We have a computer label. We call it ‘div luv’ for divine love, but obviously we can't use that terminology for science.  I wish that somebody would give me a nice name for it.

This report gives us a real insight into the power of love. Loving behavior can bring positive changes even to observer. Mother Teresa was able to touch people deeply even through a film.  

Her love and grace caused a positive physiological response even in people who consciously disliked her.  This is a stunningly profound way to show that God's love impacts non-believers. Of course, we are not at the level of Mother Teresa but with God’s grace, truth, and love flowing through us, the impact can be wonderful. This must be at least part of what the Scripture means when it says “Jesus went about doing good."

Dr. McClelland found that love in both the seeker and the caregiver was important. This is not to say that God cannot use His supernatural power to heal someone's broken body or emotion despite their lack of love. It is obvious that God can heal anyone at any time. However, motivation is important in both people.   

It helps me better understand people who relapse from illnesses, addictions, and spiritual growth. Could it be that they did not appropriate God’s healing because of their own a lack of love? Jesus said in the Model Prayer that to be forgiven we must also forgive those who have wronged us.

Is this research pointing to the reasons why Jesus taught forgiveness?

Does this have an implication for a new definition of faith?

Does blessing people with peace bring healing?

How do we help people develop more peace and love?

If we love and serve others unselfishly will our health improve? 

As Jesus said in Luke 10. “Go meet people and bless them with peace”. That alone will bring healing to a fallen world. We need to learn to love and you learn to heal and develop places where there is no condemnation or rejection. Places of peace and serenity. Places where people are like Jesus and “Do good things as we go about the places we live and work. So, when people come in contact with us they will feel better and their bodies will react positively even if they disagree with us.

This report is a summary of the full article found in “The effect of motivational arousal through films on salivary immunoglobulin A by David C. McClelland and Carol Kirshnit” Psychology & Health Vol. 2. Issue 1, 1988

Want more love and more power? 

What it Takes to Bring Peace to People

                                                                    Facebook Bombs!

I have been examining my Facebook posts and comments to see if I have been following the scripture passages below.  For the most part I have been OK, but not always. I am posting it for myself and anyone else that wants to be a peacemaker not a troublemaker.  Many of the posts are fostering anger and division, I fear. 

The single greatest reason folks divorce in America is an inability to resolve differences large and small.  Differences can be resolved when we have the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Contentment: At peace with myself, the world and God. Complaints mean we are unhappy and want something in life to change.  The only way to bring positive changes is to complain so complaints are good.

Being out of step with my spouse, however, brings distress that causes us to lose our contentment. There are two ways to handle a Complaint. Handling them with love builds trust and a deep relationship, but that is difficult. It is tempting to attempt to be right and prove the other person wrong.

Ephesians 4¹⁴Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. ¹⁵Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. ¹⁶From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

    ¹⁷So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹Having lost all sensitivity they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

²²You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. ²⁵Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor. ²⁶"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷and do not give the devil a foothold.

²⁹Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. ³²Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Positive Attitudes----------------------------------------------------------Negative Attitudes

Go to our web to get more materials on peace within and without. 

Let's Fight

Over the past few years our social fabric has been frayed and fraying. People are so raw that the slightest comment can start a war. When we see people jump angrily at what may seem to be very innocent statements we know that we are overly sensitive.

A week or so ago a Satire Web page put up a ridiculous piece about two famous preachers signing a contract for over 100 million dollars. The internet was set ablaze by people in Twitter and Facebook who attacked both preachers for their greed and heretical positions. 

It was satire! It was a joke!

Could Jesus teach with parables today without being accused of terrible thought crimes? One time when the Disciples were fighting over who was the greatest and best on the team, Jesus took a little child as an example of the people who could get into His Kingdom.

A simple picture of humility? You are so naive. It might seem to be child abuse today!

Whose child was it?

Did Jesus get permission to use that kid in His teaching?

Did He pay royalties?

Was is sexual harassment?

If a Democrat makes a reasonable comment about history some tiny, radical, permanently aggrieved group will attack him.

If a Republican makes a joke about Putin some radical leftists will say he is on the staff of the KJB!

Chill out! Great reactivity is a sign of gross immaturity and it seems that we have a nation of crybabies.

Pray for peace. Go over the statements by St. Francis and ask God for a peaceful heart and tongue.

Go to my web page for materials on growing up as adults.

Praying for Peace for Individuals

Last week I posted the Prayer of St. Francis and suggested we pray it for others. Lord, Make me an instrument of peace as I relate to my wife, _________.

PRAYER FOR PEACE

St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,

Grant the I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

And it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

Then go through the entire prayer that way for her.

Start over each day and look for her to have more signs of peace.

Do this for a week.

I asked a couple a few weeks ago to practice the prayer with each other and their three children. It had a wonderfully positive impact on the whole family with the exception of one child. Four out of five family members had improved peace.

Try the Lord and see what happens then let me know.

Go to our web if you need more great, uplifting support.

Thank God for Healing

I have written many time on this blog about the need for inner healing in the churches so people can be set free from ,many adult diseases and addictions. The notion that the answer to the heroine problem is simply too many people taking prescription medication is ignoring a lot of research data. For example, see this article.

Addiction is caused by inner pain that is reduced by drugs and other substances, behavior, and ideas. I can get dependent on medication but I will not get addicted.

I understand why the government is focusing on medication. It is an easy target. It is something an official can manage to appear to be successful at controlling. But it will fail.

Prayer, counseling, and understanding the root causes is essential so I beg every Christian to learn how to help people with deep, psychological pain. Get this book and it can assist you.   How to be Me in My Family Tree and Breaking Free will assist you.