Healthy Leaders | Issue 16

Refreshing leaders, captivating visions, Psalm-driven emotions, improvisatory teams, and trusty old clay pots

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Welcome to Issue 16 of Healthy Leaders.

In this issue ‒ refreshing leaders, captivating visions, Psalm-driven emotions, and improvisatory teams. Let’s dive in.

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The Honorable, Shameful Service of True Leaders

From A. W. Workman, an unfolding of why the biblical models for leadership serve as a rebuke to both Eastern and Western understandings.

“The balance that Jesus models so well for us is one in which leaders are honored, but they respond to this honoring by embracing sacrificial and costly service. This service in turn generates more respect, and that respect spurs on more lowly service, in a dance of sorts of mutual submission. Ancient Roman patrons were known not to address their clients as such, but as “friends,” meaning equals. But Christian leaders are called to go even further than this, not merely using different titles to communicate that they are gracious patrons, but embracing work that actually puts them lower than their followers.”

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How To Be a Likeable Leader

Here’s Charles Stone on how to be likeable, refreshing leaders.

“You’ve probably met people like that. Even after a short conversation with such a person, you walk away feeling special, encouraged, and refreshed. My wife is one of those people who naturally does that. She has the gift of giving others soul refreshment.

Charles includes a few key components of a likeable leader; the first one is a fantastic place to start relating better to everyone you meet:

1. Be fully present with others.

It’s easy as a pastor, or as anyone who deals with people in public, to skim conversations in order to make connections with the maximum number of people. However, when we don’t look people in the eye and our eyes wander to the person just behind or beside them, it conveys a wrong message. Appearing distracted also conveys the wrong message. I suggest focusing on the quality of public interactions rather than on quantity which requires our being fully present.”

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The Psalms: A Tool for Cultivating Godly Emotions

Kevin Halloran at Open the Bible makes the case for engaging with the Psalms as a way to grow in our emotional understanding and resiliency.

“In prayer, the God of the universe invites us into His presence to experience peace beyond all understanding (Philippians 4:6–7). When troubling emotions come, our first place to turn is not to the tomato plants, but to our heavenly Father.

And yet, my emotional problems aren’t just with the troubling ones. I’ve recognized how a lack of certain emotions poses a problem. A lackadaisical attitude toward sin, evil in the world, or the glories of God fall short of God’s desire for me. He created us as emotional creatures to love what He loves and hate what He hates. …

The Psalms not only help us know what we can say in prayer (often one of our biggest struggles), they help us know what to feel. They are, as Calvin wrote, “an anatomy of the soul” and share all shades of human emotion from deepest despair to exuberant praise. We find saints processing the good and bad of life in a godly way. Reading and praying the Psalms takes us into their emotional world, how they wrestled with God and eventually found hope.”

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Practice Team Improvisation to Improve Execution

Here’s Admired Leadership with an exhortation to improvisation:

“The ability to think creatively and develop workable solutions on the fly is the essential skill when executing. Yet, leaders rarely ask team members to practice it. We collectively pour over plans and strategies and engage in full rehearsals or walk-throughs to enhance performance, but only rarely do leaders mention the need to practice situations with improvisation.

This is a big miss.

After plans and strategies for execution are in place and the team has practiced the steps for execution, it is now time to get creative. Brainstorming the possible situational scenarios and how to address them gets everyone’s juices flowing.”

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Your Vision Must Capture the Hearts of Your Followers

Malcolm Webber outlines the vital importance of envisioning followers.

“The servant-heart of the godly leader desires to transform the lives of his constituents. He is not interested in people merely going through the motions of following his vision. He wants them to genuinely share the vision. Consequently, he seeks to capture their hearts with the vision. He avoids the temptation to use coercion, reward or positional power to get the people to follow.

Sometimes Christian leaders have good goals, but they try to mandate those goals for their followers. They become authoritarian and demanding, and try to force the people to move toward those goals by brute force. For example, they may try to manipulate the people through guilt, fear, or some form of bribe.

Good leaders, however, envision their constituents. They capture their hearts with a vision of the possibilities of God in their lives. They share a vision that fires the imagination, builds a sense of dedication, and motivates into action.”

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That’s all for this one, friends. If you found something encouraging in this letter, share it with a friend. If you’ve found something encouraging outside of this letter, send it our way. We love to share what our leaders love.

Until next time, we’re with you!

 — Chris
For all of us at LeaderSource

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