Leadership Development

Leadership Development equips churches and ministry teams to identify, train, and empower leaders for long-term discipleship and mission. Explore practical, Bible-based resources on mentoring, coaching, apprenticeships, and building leadership pipelines for elders, staff, and volunteer leaders. You’ll find guidance on cultivating character, clarifying competencies, delegating responsibility, and creating a healthy culture where leaders grow and multiply. Whether you’re developing emerging leaders, strengthening current leadership, or building a repeatable process for your church, these articles help you invest in people who can faithfully lead in Jesus’ name.

December 15, 2016

Christian Standard

Many Gifts, Much Service: A Profile of Eleanor Daniel

By Bruce Parmenter I call Eleanor Daniel “The Queen of the Deans” because, to my knowledge, she is the only woman, aside from Dr. Dinelle Frankland and Karen Diefendorf, to serve as academic dean in seminaries of the more “traditional” side of the Stone-Campbell fellowship. Daniel has been dean at not one, but three seminaries. She is also a missionary, and a missionary to missionaries, a scholar par excellence (summa cum laude graduate of Lincoln Christian College, master”s degree and PhD from the University of Illinois), and an extraordinary teacher and preacher. Tucked in among the plethora of her gifts,

December 15, 2016

Christian Standard

Training the Next Generation of Women in Ministry: An Interview with Anne Menear

By T.R. Robertson The back of Anne Menear”s office door is covered with dozens of photographs of smiling young people, mostly women. “Those are all my kids,” she says, with a proud smile. “The ones over there,” she adds, pointing to more photographs arranged on a world map, “are all in missions. They”re all the girls that I”ve had contact with that are working in places like Germany, Japan, and Mexico. “It was great to have seen them graduate and now they”re grown-up adults, and to see them as such””it”s cool.” As director of the Christian Education department and dean

December 13, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

What Women Can Do

By Mark A. Taylor While opinions differ about what women should or should not do in a Christian church, no one can deny that God is working through women today. And, as Matt Proctor, Jennifer Johnson, and Chad Ragsdale remind us this month, women have always been at the center of God”s work on earth: “¢ Several significant and surprising women are included in the genealogy of Jesus. “¢ Mary, the mother of Jesus, demonstrated strength, character, and obedience to equal that of any male Bible hero . “¢ And in this virgin”s submission, God showed the divinity of her

October 24, 2016

Christian Standard

The Sisterhood

By Jennifer Johnson A few years ago I planned a special event for women in ministry, open to any lady on staff at a church or parachurch organization. A few guys I know found it hard to understand. “So it”s a women”s ministry event?” “Not exactly. It”s for women who are in ministry.” “Oh, you mean like women married to pastors?” No. I don”t have anything against celebrating women or pastor”s wives (I happen to be both) but that”s not the audience I”m most interested in. Those groups enjoy plenty of conferences, blogs, and books developed especially for them. However,

October 23, 2016

Christian Standard

Helping Women Live Well, Lead Well

By Jennifer Johnson Blessing Ranch (New Port Richey, FL) is well known for its intensive counseling services and spiritual formation work with pastors and their families. Facilitating personal transformation is at the core of what they do, and now with “Beyond Her Story” they”re hoping to multiply that work among women across the country. “Over the last year or two I started feeling like God was leading us to make more efforts to reach women in ministry,” says Dr. Charity Walker-Byers, executive director of clinical services at Blessing Ranch. “We”ve worked with women in leadership here in the United States

September 29, 2016

Christian Standard

To Kill or to Keep an Intriguing Idea?

By LeRoy Lawson This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress John Brockman, editor New York: Harper Perennial, 2015 The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe Thomas Levenson New York: Random House, 2015 The Cross and the Lynching Tree James H. Cone Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2013 (reprint) So you are running into resistance to change in your church, are you? So you believe religion alone is the great resister of new ideas, do you? So you”ve been thinking science, on the contrary, is always based on objective, bias-free research and

September 22, 2016

Michael C. Mack

10 Business Books Every Ministry Leader Should Read

By Michael C. Mack We asked ministry leaders to tell us what book written primarily for business leaders they”™ve found helpful in their ministry leadership. “¢ The Contrarian”™s Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample. “It helped me think past the clichés of leadership to practices that reflect what I think is a leader”™s honest self-evaluation before God.” “”Jon Weatherly, professor of New Testament, dean of the School of Bible and Theology at Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Kissimmee, Florida “¢ The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, by Patrick Lencioni. “So much good stuff about why

September 17, 2016

Michael C. Mack

How to Control Your E-mail Instead of Letting It Control You

By Michael C. Mack E-mail can be a productivity killer or, if used wisely, a productivity booster. Here are six tricks culled from LearnVest to make it the latter. Keep It Short. According to a 2015 user analysis from e-mail scheduler Boomerang, the messages most likely to get replies were in the range of 50 to 125 words. Productivity expert Chris Bailey, author of The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention and Energy, strategically keeps e-mails to three sentences or less. Anything substantially longer than that should be a phone conversation. ADDENDUM: Keep your e-mail signature short

September 6, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

Shattered Certainties and the Challenge to Change

By Mark A. Taylor Good changes lead to happy results, right? Consider: The alcoholic decides to quit drinking. The dieter sheds unhealthy weight. A family, once separated by a parent”s overseas assignment, is reunited. But then: The addict doesn”t replace the payoff he has been receiving from his fix, and so he returns to his habit. The dieter doesn”t realize he must make a lifelong attitude adjustment about food and exercise, and so he regains the weight. The no-longer-single parent must give up some of her own autonomy now, and the result is conflict. Anyone experiencing or hoping to lead

August 10, 2016

Christian Standard

Loving Through Listening

By Jim Tune I”m pretty good at talking. It”s a big part of what I do for a living. When I look for leaders, I look for someone who can communicate. I”m convinced, though, that speaking and writing are only part of what it takes to be a great leader. Leading also involves listening. “Listening comes first,” writes Adam McHugh in his new book The Listening Life. We started listening before we were even born. Listening is a key part of what it means to be human. “Somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural order of things,”

July 22, 2016

Christian Standard

Carrying to Completion

By Earl Winfrey I can”t remember a time when church was not part of my life. I was baptized into Christ at 12 and felt the call to ministry and started pursuing a deeper knowledge of the Bible at the age of 14. Unfortunately, I got mixed up with the wrong crowd during my senior year of high school. I got married two weeks after graduation, and we had our baby five months after the wedding. For the first year and a half, I lived in denial, thinking my marriage was good. Then one day I woke up to find

July 18, 2016

Christian Standard

I Knew I Was Called

By Bart Rendel In the summer of 1985 my life changed forever during the North American Christian Convention in Anaheim, California! For years, my family had attended the convention for inspiration and connection. That summer we made the trek out west to visit family and friends. The convention was the centerpiece of our trip. I was between my 10th and 11th grade in high school. With college in the offing, I was seriously contemplating my life”s direction. How did he want to use me? Where should I focus my education? It was at the convention that I felt the Lord

June 3, 2016

Christian Standard

With Eyes Wide Open

By Chuck Sackett Immediately before worship was to begin, a leader in the congregation dumped a boatload of complaints on the preacher. As the preacher entered the worship area, his once light spirit””which had been anticipating worship and preaching””bottomed out in a wash of questions. Instead of worshipping, he fidgeted throughout the singing, trying to get his heart and mind back on track. He was agonizing over the complaints, frustrated by the timing, and momentarily incapable of preaching. Fortunately, Communion was served before the sermon that day. As he continued to try to settle his spirit, he felt a hand

June 1, 2016

Christian Standard

Perfectly Executing the Wrong Vision

By Jim Tune In his acclaimed book Why Smart Executives Fail, Sydney Finkelstein describes a fictional situation about a meticulously planned military operation. In his scenario, a special forces unit moves in with devastating efficiency and successfully accomplishes every objective; the forces kill or capture everyone in the base they were attacking. The unit suffered very few casualties. There was only one problem. The target they had attacked and captured belonged to friendly forces. Central command launched a massive investigation to figure out what went wrong. Several missteps were eventually identified. Operational protocols were reviewed, changed, and corrected. The only

May 18, 2016

Christian Standard

The Edge of Fear

By Jim Tune A great power is unleashed when a person confronts her worst fears and steps out in faith anyway. As an example, consider Katharine Graham. She ran the Washington Post during the Watergate era, taking on President Richard Nixon and the White House at considerable professional risk. Long before Watergate, Graham was a 46-year-old housewife when her husband, Phil, committed suicide in 1963. Though grieving, she took control of the family company at a time when there were few women in senior positions anywhere in the corporate world. She was, in a word, terrified. She had no female

May 11, 2016

Christian Standard

Creating Culture

By Jim Tune Pixar founder Ed Catmull had always dreamed of using computers to create a great animated movie. He achieved this with the release of Toy Story. “We”d been the first to make a movie with computers,” he wrote in his book Creativity, Inc., “and””even better””audiences were touched, and touched deeply by the story we told.” The problem? “Now that this goal had been reached, I had what I can only describe as a hollow, lost feeling.” Running a company didn”t seem to be enough. Catmull began to scratch beneath the surface, and realized things weren”t as healthy at

May 1, 2016

Michael C. Mack

Ministry Synergy

By Michael C. Mack Church ministries often find themselves working as silos, fixating on their own specific objectives and depending on their own resources. Imagine what could be achieved for God”s kingdom if different ministries learned to work together to make a difference in their towns, cities, and the world! For the body of Christ to work effectively to carry out Jesus” mission, ministry leaders must first learn to listen to the Head, that is, Christ, as well as to local church leaders who can coordinate teamwork. They must also see themselves as stewards of the ministry; they refer to

April 13, 2016

Christian Standard

Hacking Ministry

By Jim Tune One Saturday in November, hundreds of programmers and designers arrived at George Brown College in Toronto. They were armed with laptops and sleeping bags, although few of them would sleep. For 30 hours, they worked nonstop on creating products to improve the lives of people living with dementia, a disease that affects 47.5 million worldwide. Their reward: the opportunity to change lives, $175,000 in cash prizes, and the chance to pitch their ideas to influencers. DementiaHack is one of many hackathons taking place around the world. There are even Christian versions, like Code for the Kingdom, “where

March 28, 2016

Michael C. Mack

How to Create a Collaborative Culture

By Michael C. Mack In his newest book, Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster, Ken Blanchard, in collaboration with Jane Ripley and Eunice Parisi-Carew, shows leaders how to empower themselves and build collaboration by empowering a team. “Effective leaders learn early in their careers that they can”t manage whole projects singlehandedly,” says Blanchard on his blog, HowWeLead.org. “They need an empowered team working collaboratively to achieve goals.” In the book, the writers use the acronym UNITE to describe what it takes to build a collaborative culture: “¢ Utilize differences “¢ Nurture safety and trust “¢ Involve others in

February 24, 2016

Christian Standard

Safety

By Jim Tune A word has been on my mind lately. I”ve been thinking about what it means for me personally, and as a preacher. The word: safety. I encountered the word in an excellent book, Crucial Conversations. “In order to speak honestly when honesty could easily offend others, we have to find a way to maintain safety,” the book says. “When it”s safe, you can say anything.” We often focus on the content of our conversations, but content isn”t usually what makes or breaks relationships. Safety is. Feeling safe allows us to talk about difficult things and to speak

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