Live blogging from Clergy conference
A first for me, blogging live.. I am at the Anglican clergy conference in the Wellington Diocese. Speaker is Revd Stuart Robinson, the Australian Anglican National Mission Facilitator. He is an experienced church planter and in his 20 years of church planting experience he lists 4 key element s for a successful plant. They are..
PASSION the need for people to be passionate about serving God. He shared that if you don’t feel passionate that perhaps it is time for a retreat or break.
PRAYER in everything we do we are a people of prayer.
PLAN have a plan.. know what it is that needs to be done.
PROGRAMS the outworking of the plan..
He mentioned that most churches do the last two well, but lack the first two.
His passion comment really got me thinking, what exactly is the benefit of passion?
Passion isn’t a skill we employ but the natural outworking of our desire to achieve. It is the manifestation of what motivates us. But passion expressed can really inspire and fire those around the passionate person. It is not the privy of leaders, but all team members, all those involved in a ministry can inspire through their passion.
His comment about taking a break if the passion dissipates is very good. Again, our unmotivated attitude adversely affects those we work with and for. If you need a break.. take it! I believe you are more useful rested than wasted.
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2 Responses to “Live blogging from Clergy conference”
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I think passion is essential. The problem comes if it is mostly one person’s passion for too long. That might be ok at the beginning, someone has to start things, but a team needs to be gathered, the fire needs to be spread, otherwise the passion in one person will burn them out. They will continue to function and maybe it won’t be noticed that they are actually running on empty. However, the project will gradually die, maybe for no apparent reason.
Having a team allows each person to take time out and be refreshed, maybe even before they know they need that refreshment. The principle of sabbath, and sabbaticals is a good one and should probably be built into the planning from the beginning if a project is to run for a long period and flourish.
Helene you make an excellent point,a team is far superior to a single drive/leader. Seth Godin suggests that every project/organisation will eventually meet a ‘hump’, a point where the challenges will rise up and threaten the continuation of the project. Godin suggests that leadership researches similar projects/orgs.. to find out what the hump might be and then prepare for it or even make a call on whether one has what it takes to overcome it. This advice is very wise; there is a maturity about this sort of intentionality.