Boot Camp Wk 3
My feelings about leadership in general and spiritual leadership specifically is that it is an elusive quality. When I'm talking about characteristics of leaderships I compare it to "chemistry" in a relationship. Reason being in my life I haven't had much care or put that much thought into becoming a leader. If you're interested there are a giganormous number of books out there that will help on this topic.
A good example of someone in my life who has been a great leader is my high school badminton coach. Miss Buzdeiker — we used to call her "Buzz" — was a tough, disciplined, morally upright, warm, humorous, a genuinely caring person.
She saw in me what most people don't see at that lanky age of 14. She took me under her tutelage and pushed me hard to train, to not giving up believing in me, and to encourage me when the chips are down.
Aside from the fact that she can be quite vocal about practice and practice and practice, she also taught me how to laugh, how to respect my parents, etc.
It is one of seven qualities of effective spiritual leadership: a holistic approach where the leader is taking into account the whole of the group.
I always wondered how people in church identify if someone is fit to be a leader? What are the criteria? What happens if they are asked to become leader too early/too soon, would that experience if it's a negative one hurt them? There should be some sort of progression.
A couple of things that may help is the Spiritual Gift Inventory, a self-assessment of our spiritual gifts.
In order for everyone to be effective we all have to know our top three spiritual gifts and use those gifts in our small group. So if my gift is that of encouragement/exhortation then I can use that to welcome newcomers/visitors/seekers in our small group through encouragement.
Small group leadership consists of facilitators and cores. Facilitators lead studies, sometimes write up the studies, and ask follow up questions that facilitates learning. I'm wondering if facilitators, in order to be effective, would have these as the top three spiritual gifts (as defined by Acts 17:11):
+ Knowledge
+ Teaching
+ Discernment/Wisdom
But what about these gifts: Evangelism, Compassion, and Faith?
Cores would be people with these gifts:
+ Helps
+ Admin
+ Services
+ Hospitality
+ Giving
+ Exhortation/Encouragement
The list is narrowed and there are 20 Bibilical Grace-Gifts. What about those gifts and how do they fit into cores?
I'm sure though in reality our gifts are not that clearly defined and changes depending on where we are at in our walk with Christ. The difficult part is getting spiritual leadership mix up with wordly leadership. Its like I have to unlearn worldly experience and skills that I have learned and acquired over the years and focus on the basic Biblical qualities of spiritual leaderships. It is quite a humbling experience in which I hope will transform my view on dealing with others and leadership in general.
Jesus had all these qualities. If I can have the effect my coach had on me I'd be quite happy with that. On the other hand I have an entire lifetime to work on becoming more "Christlike".
My feelings about leadership in general and spiritual leadership specifically is that it is an elusive quality.
In the spiritual gifts thing my old church in Toronto did, I specifically remember there being a gift of leadership. Might help to have that one. Though, I'm sure one can lead fairly effectively without having that one, but it would really help.