However much we try and support the conviction of the priesthood of all believers, what the minister says and does continues to have a pacesetting effect on Baptist church members.
The language we use as leaders either empowers people to access opportunity or can make it difficult to access.
Christian leadership has and still is predominantly influenced by the words brought to bear by the minister. Quite rightly the pastors of local churches have historically carried a vital leadership role in communities but what they communicate has played a part in the effectiveness of that leadership.
Above all else what a community is looking for in their minister is not perfection, but rather authenticity and transparency in how they communicate their life, successes and failures, in how they share their life journey.
The language leaders use to communicate their life journey has a direct bearing on the community they serve either helping or hindering it. Like those in the business world we have our own buzzwords, and they can be pretty hard to decode.
Because as Baptists we are masters at
Author Mueller author of Buzzwords: A Guide to the Language of Leadership says
buzzwords not only make business and professional conversation lively and amusing but they can be used either to convince other persons or to obscure the issue and throw everybody else into helpless confusion.
Mueller gives an example of this by a rewrite of the twenty-third Psalm.
“The Lord is my external-internal integrative mechanism, I shall not be deprived of gratifications for my vice-rogenic hunger’s or my need-dispositions. He motivates me to orient myself towards a non-social object with effective significance. He positions me in a non-decisional situation. He maximizes my adjustment.…”
We grow from here by listening
So if we want to help others grow from here, leaders need to set a personal example in this season of how they hear God speak to them personally, and then to summon the courage to share that in a simple way demonstrating in this current season how they begin to prepare for the next season when lockdown ends.
This is a prophetic season
Luke 21:29–33 (NIV) — 29 He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
We are meant to extrapolate from what’s happening in the
The Holy Spirit brings innovation and enlarges not just our capacity but our imagination. So our job in this season is to allow him to give us new or updated instructions. To allow him to bring to us whatever innovations are needed to make Christ known. And to clearly communicate what he is saying to us. What we will invariably find if we do is that he is saying the same or complimentary things to others.
MISSION IS THE NATURAL RESULT OF HEARING GOD SPEAK
God always speaks to those who choose to listen and it almost always results in what could be categorised as one of three things; Mission, restoration or instruction.
When Moses heard God in the secret place he received a call to set his people free. Listening often results in divine instructions about how to bring freedom to those around us. I’m thinking now about Breathe Communities and the amazing pioneering work of Karen Golder and her pioneering team in Cornwall. Innovative and imaginative go check it out.
Let’s use clear and accessible language to describe our pioneering or missional callings so that members of our community can access what God is saying and more importantly get past the buzzwords and other unnecessary barriers to their mission.
Let us make pioneering accessible together – sign up here http://eepurl.com/cnqnqf
Sources
- Encyclopedia of 7700 illustrations
- The Bible
Keeping things simple in communications leaves less room for confusion. Multi-tasking too much at the same time confuses the message.
“The further you go from the source, the mountain, the rock the more polluted the water becomes”.