In reading about leadership, I stumbled upon research that studied people who led others out of danger. Specifically, the study focused on fires in underground mines. Stick with me, this really is interesting. The leaders who successfully led others out of danger had 5 characteristics.
#1: "The leader of each escape may be described as an aware, knowledgeable person or as an individual who is alert to his environment, attentive, and discerning. This person notices things - more so than do other people." The researchers make a point that this characteristic is not limited to mines, but rather leaders are naturally curious and are able to learn on the fly.
The fact that the PCUSA is losing thousands of members each year (172,869 in 2008) is the analogous mine fire. To effectively lead people to be the church in a new cultural reality, the study suggests that we must be alert to what is happening in culture. We have to be good students of our environment, which means spending a lot of time with people who are not in our congregation. We have to discern their hopes, struggles, and experience with God. We should enjoy our curious nature, despite the tendency for us to get bogged down by order, tradition, and memories of the way things were.
How does your work, home, and recreation environments help you lead? How can we support each other to be natually curious and nimble in our current church culture?
Stay tuned for the next 4 characteristics of effective leaders from this study....
My work, home and recreation enviornments help me to become a better leader for a few reasons - it helps me to become more focused on the immediate needs outside of the congregation I serve. It also helps me in that I have the opportunity to deal with real life issues and in some cases introduce others to Christ without any of the "trappings" of church or church language. That is how it helps me.
Thanks again for the post!
Posted by: Byron Wade | July 06, 2009 at 05:21 PM