mayo-moyle

Category: Leadership

  • this week’s round-up (april 18)

    Again a couple weeks overdue… I keep promising myself I’ll get back onto a regular weekly update schedule for these things soon. Here’s what has caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

    Donald Miller has a suggestion for Creating a Personal Life Plan I haven’t downloaded the e-book he recommends yet, but it looks like it could be interesting.

    Seth Godin: The Worst Voice of the Brand Is the Brand – a reminder that our worst experiences usually shape our larger perceptions. Certainly applicable to the church.

    Laurie Haller, a District Superintendent in the West Michigan Conference offers a few thoughts on Love Wins.

    Dan Dick has a couple powerful and convicting posts about the United Methodist Church: Three Little Words, Dead, or in Exile and a MUST READ Souled Out. He hits hard with these words:

    “We perpetually use an anti-gospel of death, decay and decline to manipulate people instead of casting a positive vision to motivate.  We proclaim to the world that we are shrinking, diminishing, poorly funded, rife with conflict — all excellent messages to attract new members.  We do try to counter such witness with some TV spots and webcast videos and some marketing spin, but that’s just slapping a coat of make-up.  Many young people see The United Methodist Church as an old maiden aunt who dresses and paints herself up like a teenager — embarrassing at best, pathetic at worst.”

     Yet there is hope that we can clarify our vision, mature in our discipleship and relationships with each other and be the church Christ calls us to be.

    In a very similar vein, a friend, Steve McCoy, writes how Win or Lose, Butler is Relevant. Are We?

    Last week there was a Call to Action web-conference for the UMC. I somehow missed the advance notice announcement about it, and was on vacation anyway, but some of the feedback that emerged has been interesting to examine. Jeremy Smith looks at the Twitter wordcloud related to the online discussion. Jay Voorhees shares some of his thoughts as well as addressing metrics that matter. Rob Rynders suggests that Cats and Cereal might be the solution (not really). The conference has been archived and can be viewed here; I haven’t seen it yet, but it certainly got people talking.

    Roger Olson with some additional thoughts on universalism.

    Brian Dodd on 12 Warning Signs of Unhealthy Leadership.

    The Love Radically blog personally wrestles with the question of a person’s weight being grounds for being denied (or deferred) ordination.

    Music this week from tUnE-yArDs – I’ve heard this track a few times on the radio and found the use of the looping vocals to be really interesting, the video (as well as the song) is a little strange, but in my opinion enjoyable.

  • this week’s round-up (august 8)

    Playing catch-up from the past couple weeks, but here’s a few things that have caught my eye:

    This video is well worth your time – “A Thousand Questions” (via Jeremy Smith)

    From Cornel West:

    “We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for non-market values and non-market activity so that love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that’s being pushed to the margins, and you can see it.

    You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit. You see it in our television culture that’s obsessed with superficial spectacle. You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It’s a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.

    It’s a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation, where people have a sense of what’s right and what’s good. It’s just stuck, and they can’t get it out because there’s too much greed. There’s too much obsession with reputation and addiction to narrow conceptions of success.

    And when I talk about love, I’m talking about something that’s great, though, brother. I’m talking about something that will sustain you. It’s like an Aretha Franklin song, brother, or a Coltrane solo or Beethoven symphony, something that grabs you to the gut and gives you a sense of what it is to be human.

    That’s what we’re more and more lacking, and it’s very sad. It’s a sign of a decline of an empire, my brother.” (via Mike Todd)

    I love that line “It’s a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation” – don’t know how I’d ever work it into a sermon (or a poem), but it’s certainly an image that gets the point across. That quote also intersects with part of what I’ve been reading in Seth Godin’s latest book which talks about how that “market” undermines “art” and “community” – rather than delve into it right now, I’ll try to pick up more on that theme later. (Actually I have this idea of doing a Linchpin for pastors/churches series of blog posts that aim to apply the lessons of his book to the context of ministry; I don’t know if it will see the light of day, but it might).

    7 Reasons Leaders Quit Your Organization

    Scot McKnight points to an article on the erosion of the middle class. Also via McKnight’s blog this entertaining little cartoon on Twitter disciples.

    Among my circle of friends and colleagues the NY Times article on clergy burnout has been receiving (needed) attention this week. NPR’s Talk of the Nation also provides a discussion of it as well:

    Insightful, short article in Leading Ideas – The Promise and Peril of Conflict by David Brubaker.

    Fred Clark on why every AG in the country should be suing the credit rating agencies. Also check out this post which is a letter written by a former slave to his former slave owner; as Fred says, “The letter provides a valuable glimpse into the atrocious reality of our history, but it should also be studied and relished as one of the all time great examples of the cheerful and elaborately polite ‘Screw you.’“

    Donald Miller put this song by Andrew Peterson up on his blog a couple weeks ago; its a lovely little song about life and marriage:

    That does it for this week. I think I will probably be moving to a Sunday posting schedule, for the handful for people who actually follow this little thing.

  • this week’s round-up (june 18)

    More links, less commentary this week:

    Mike Todd offers some pretty hard hitting thoughts on WWJD About BP? with the reminder that we all have oil on our hands.

    Neighbors for Neighbors: Chalk it Up! Love this idea! (via Heif)

    Presentation lessons from Steve Jobs.

    Andrew Conrad explains the Internet #FAIL at Church of the Resurrection Online this week. Like the lesson from Jobs, transparency is good. If there is a problem, acknowledge it, solve it, and move on.

    Seth Godin explains how we’ve moved past “slick” and what matters now is transparency, reputation, and guts.

    More on clergy appointment guarantees. (via Steve)

    Justin Wise on Mormons, iPads, and a New Way. Good thoughts on evangelism – first rule, treat the person you’re dealing with like a human being.

    Small groups are the building block of small churches. The important reminder here for me is that small groups don’t always have to fit a certain model of a home “cell group” – sometimes just adding a new Sunday School class makes a difference.

    Establishing a culture of distributed leadership good read, written from a secular perspective, but very applicable to the church. I just finished reading Ultimately Responsible: When You’re in Charge of Igniting a Ministry by Sue Nilson Kibbey which really takes this idea and examines it in depth – all about finding and training the right people for the mission and task of the church, making sure they understand and support the vision, and giving them an environment to succeed.

    Jeff Nelson hits close to home this week’s offering – No Outlet.

    Crazy week ahead. Don’t expect a round-up (but who knows, maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised).

    Another great video from OK Go

    If you like the music, check out the album: