We need you to lead.<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of us good people in the pews know that leadership is a difficult task. Many of us have day jobs that require similar things from us so we get how difficult it can be to inspire and motivate, placate and administrate. As understanding as some of us might be, we need you to lead because we’re not all quite so reasonable. If it appears that you are driving our proverbial car (the church) into the ditch it\u2019s likely because we (the laity) set it on fire. When you fail to lead our creativity, energy, and passion for the church begins to feel like a poor investment.<\/p>\n We need you to lead with sincerity rooted in a deep experience of our faith lived out.<\/strong> It\u2019s not enough for you to talk about the things which get a person closer to God, you actually need to practice them. It\u2019s not our place to tell you which things to do, or what things to avoid; don\u2019t let us. But we need to see that your life is different than ours in ways that literally reek of the Gospel. Again, the sane among us don\u2019t mind that our pastors are imperfect people but we may notice if you are a total mess.<\/p>\n We need you to lead in ways that move beyond cheap partisanship and model holy relationship.<\/strong> As excited as we might be at first, we will tire of sermons ripped straight from Fox News or MSNBC. We don\u2019t need to see you win a public debate. We need to see that your faith is mature enough to allow you to see, and seek out, the person beyond the ideology. We need to see that God is bigger than our politics. <\/p>\n We need to see that God is bigger than our politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We need you to lead forward and outward.<\/strong> We lay folks are like hobbits and we tend to like things that are comfortable and familiar. But in our comfort we are likely to fall asleep, literally and figuratively, as if we\u2019ve just enjoyed second breakfast. Be our Gandalf and challenge us to adapt and change with the times and remind us that God loves us no more than the people outside of our comfortable hobbit holes. But when you do so, remember that we aren\u2019t the enemy and that patience is one of those spiritual gifts of which Saint Paul spoke.<\/p>\n We need you to lead beyond fear and anxiety.<\/strong> No one wants to be on a sinking ship but they might be willing to accept a slow cruise if the toilets are all working. Despairing over the church budget may move some us to the urgency you hope to inspire but we\u2019d much rather hear about the amazing weather at some tropical locale where we are going. Be our captain and navigator and count on us to repair the hull and to kick tale at shuffleboard.<\/p>\n No one wants to be on a sinking ship…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We need you to lead with boldness and hope.<\/strong> Start some new things from time to time but try to invest at least as much hope in the crazy ideas we might bring to the table. And when an innovation fails, stop looking for someone to blame; that sort of negativity will make it less likely that you\u2019ll try something again and may burn some bridges unnecessarily.<\/p>\n We need you to lead with honesty.<\/strong> We love to hear how amazing we are, just like the next person, but when the church is literally crumbling down around us we get that we\u2019re in the spin zone. Thanks for keeping it positive but our discipleship, personal and corporate, also requires a certain amount of honesty.<\/p>\n Finally, we need you to lead with emotional intelligence.<\/strong> Our pastors can present the most amazing vision for what could be, but if they can\u2019t understand and deeply listen to what is going on in the life of the congregation, very few of us are likely to respond. <\/p>\n Dear Clergy friends, We need you to lead. Most of us good people in the pews know that leadership is a difficult task. Many of us have day jobs that require similar things from us so we get how difficult it can be to inspire and motivate, placate and administrate. As understanding as some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[135,6,37],"tags":[94,465,50,13],"class_list":{"0":"post-5288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communications","8":"category-conversation","9":"category-laity","10":"tag-clergy","11":"tag-laity","12":"tag-vital-congregations","13":"tag-vitality"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/leadership.jpg?fit=700%2C357&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-1ni","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5288"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5315,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions\/5315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Agree or disagree? Did I miss something? Leave a comment below and join in the conversation.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"