Faith and Leadership

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Leadership is a popular topic these days. Just flipping through February’s Readers’ Digest reminded me of that fact. There was a page devoted to quotes on Leadership. Here were my favorites:

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.” – Gen. Colin Powell

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” – Margaret Thatcher

“When things go wrong in your command, start searching for the reason in increasingly large circles around you own two feet.” – Gen. Bruce Clarke

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – WArren Buffett

Some wisdom here worth considering. But what about Leadership in the Church? Leadership that relates specifically to pastors, laity, mission and ministry? That seems to be precisely what Duke Divinity’s new “Faith and Leadership” website and Call & Response blog is trying to address. From what I can tell, it is a website, blog, resource, training, and networking project all rolled into one. For RUMC folk, you may recognize the executive director, Jason Byassee, whose family has been worshiping with us this past year since moving from the Chicago area.

The site has only been live for a few weeks, but there is already a wealth of content and information worth reading and sharing. Here are a few that caught my attention:

• Holy Money – In light of my own church’s pledge Sunday coming up this month …
• This reflection on excellence, along with this one and this one are good reads – all written by Bishop Carder who I like to describe as a “bishop who can bish.”
• And this blog post on what clergy DO NOT NEED – to which I could only shout AMEN at my laptop screen.

Drop by, comment, or subscribe to the Faith and Leadership email newsletter. It is worth a look.