Leaders

The church is in disunity for several reasons including gossip, self-serving leaders and lack of prayer. This breakdown of unity severely hinders our mission of reaching the lost and building the Kingdom of God.

Forgiveness is hard work. You are dealing with a reality of pain and loss that cannot be pretended away. As leaders we must ask forgiveness as well as forgive, even if it seems impossible.

Leaders need people they can trust to give them honest feedback, however uncomfortable. Without such people, leaders will not see their blind spots. They will lose their humility. Their growth will be stunted.

Another 1,262,775,000 people reside in 533 cities over 1 million up to 10 million. This adds another 35% of the world’s urban population living in these cities of 1 to 10 million people. So, where are the rest of the urban people of the world?

Expatriates are often put into positions of leadership simply by nature of our physical presence or because of a certain number of years lived in a place. Sometimes it is because a person is a gifted leader, sometimes they are a reluctant leader, sometimes it happens organically, and sometimes it is an appointment.

What might coaching one of your staff look like? Even if you don’t see yourself becoming a coach as a main ministry, these skills are so useful in everyday life that I would encourage anyone, and especially leaders, to at least get basic coaching skills training.

Both experienced and emerging leaders dealing with weariness will hopefully find encouragement in this nugget of pure gold – George Mueller’s description of his daily practice of spending time with the Lord. In his day, Mueller raised the equivalent of millions of dollars in funding, which he used to build and run several large orphanages for many years, entirely by faith. These are Mueller’s words.

Christian leaders, or any leader for that matter, face a kind of fatigue that can rob our energy and diminish leadership effectiveness. “Decision fatigue” refers to the way decisions degrade in quality after a long string of successive decisions. In other words, the more decisions you make, the more the quality of those decisions declines.

We've all seen this in our meetings. Some people will begin speaking and keep talking until something valuable comes out of their mouth; they engage their minds with their mouths open.

Studies have linked empathy to greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes, decreased physician burnout, and a lower risk of malpractice suits and errors. Doctors need to understand people, not just science, and healthy leaders need to cultivate empathy in order to affect the lives of those around them.

To be unhurried like Jesus is to abandon outcomes to God. You’re not trying to make anything happen. You’re not trying to get anyone to do anything. You’re waiting on God. You’re patient. You’re free to enjoy the moment, love God and be loved by God, and love your neighbor.

How often have we been challenged by the “problem of evil”? If there really is a “God,” then why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? In fact the existence of evil, and our distress over the unfairness of it – this angst over evil ‒ is a strong evidence that there is a powerful God who cares!