Posts filed under ‘Impact’
Impact leadership retreat
I forgot to post some pictures from our retreat. So I thought I would put together a slideshow for you to enjoy. The first picture in the slideshow is the headline to a local newspaper the morning of our leadership retreat. Kinda cool and very applicable to our retreat.
The Friday night of the retreat we went to Wild Wings and then we went to our rooms. Some of the young adults hung out in the rooms watching Star Wars and others went straight to bed–no names mentioned–just the old boys. Then the next morning bright and early we continued the retreat learning about leadership.
BTW the food was amazing all day. A huge thank you to James for making this retreat a reality.
I hope you enjoy the slideshow as much as we enjoyed our time together.
Impact Leadership Retreat. Part 3
This post is a continuation of our Impact Leadership Retreat. This particular post is a continuation of Part 2 of the unique SHAPE God has given to us.
Abilities. The things you born with that you are naturally good at. I gave the group a huge lists of natural abilities that they could simply say this about themselves: I love to do it and I am confident at doing it. A good example of this is my big brother, he was a natural athlete, no matter what sport he tried, even for the first time, he was fantastic at. That was one of his many natural abilities.
Then I encouraged the group to take their top 5 abilities and think of small things you can do for others every day to naturally express your love and heart to serve…at home, work, school, church and Impact.
Personality. Discovering how God made you to be. Just as God gave us all spiritual gifts, passions and abilities the personality we have also is a gift from God. He created it and gave it to us to use for his glory.
We then discussed the four temperaments that most have heard of at some time or another: sanguine, choleric, melancholy and phlegmatic. I wanted to warn everyone that there is no right or wrong temperament or personality. God can use all personalities to make the church function. But the one constant in all of the temperaments is God has instilled a unique personality in each one of us for his glory. And understanding your personality will help you more effectively express your spiritual gifts, heart and abilities for his sake. Here they are:
Choleric. People of this temperament are energetic, ambitious and passionate, and often want to instil these values in others. They tend to be doers and as leaders are dynamic and independent, but can be compulsive. They are principled and decisive and want to be right, not popular. Confident and independent, they are not easily discouraged, but can be impatient and quick to anger. At work they tend to be highly goal orientated, with good judgment and decision-making skills. They may be impatient with meetings and other members of staff though, and can be blind to their effect on people around them.
Sanguine. is cheerful, talkative and entertaining. These people are fun-loving and enthusiastic, with good people-skills and a confident and spontaneous flare. They are emotional and demonstrative by nature, but can tend towards arrogance and self-indulgence. At work they provide a positive atmosphere and often volunteer to help out. However they can be day dreamers and battle to complete work, juggling many tasks at once. Their creative and enthusiastic energy can inspire others, but they tend to lose focus on the task when the novelty wears off.
Phlegmatic. are relaxed and easy going. They stay calm and quiet for the most part and can be thought of as all-purpose and able. Although they are slow to anger, if pushed too far they can be explosive. At work they are steady and have a good sense of process and timing. They are good mediators and work well under pressure, but need deadlines to work towards. They sometimes find it hard to be heard in the workplace and will avoid conflict.
Melancholy. They are deep and thoughtful people who appreciate beauty and are sensitive towards others. They can be philosophical and poetic, self- sacrificing and conscientious. They can become easily depressed and self-critical. They tend to be principled and idealistic. At work they are goal orientated and well organized, with very high standards, keeping their work spaces neat and tidy. They ask difficult questions and are persistent and thorough, being conscious of detail. They can find creative solutions but expect the worst. They may resist change if there is no good precedent.
After everyone had figured out which temperaments they had we then got them to dig a bit deeper into their personality type, by answering 2 questions: how they relate to others and how do they respond to opportunities. I won’t get into all the details but they were given scenarios and had to answer how they would respond accordingly. Here’s an example:
You walk into a crowded room full of complete strangers. What do you do?
take this opportunity to meet new people and mingle OR look for a place to hide. —> how would you respond?
Then I finished off by simply saying we need to be true to who God made us to be. In other words don’t choose a volunteer role where you are constantly having to lead a team when you prefer to working alone. And if you like to be part of a team and not lead, don’t take on a role where you need to tell people what to do.
Experiences. Discovering where you have been. I got everyone to think back over key life experiences they had that shaped who they are today, both painful and enjoyable.
We looked briefly at past achievements and painful experiences in 5 areas of our life: personally, vocationally, relationally, educationally and spiritually. I shared an example of each. One example for me was when I found out I had cancer at 17 and then going through a very tough year of chemotherapy and all the pain that came with such a painful experience. But the important thing was not so much that I could recall it but that I could take the experience and learn from it. For one thing because of that experience, I am the person who I am today. If you had told me back then that I would be a pastor and serving God, I would have told you, you were crazy! But God took that experience to refine me and teach me to trust him. It was because of this experience I chose to go to Bible College and then eventually through other experiences become a pastor. But each experiences (and achievement) brought me to where I am today. Another thing I was able to do because of my painful experience is to minister and serve others who are affected by cancer, either have cancer or their relatives do. What a great blessing to be able to use my past experiences to serve!
We finished off this session a review of all we have learned and discovered about how we are uniquely SHAPEd by God to serve him and others. I got the group to take a few minutes to fill in the SHAPE inventory sheet I provided.
We then took a break and spent some time dreaming about the future of Impact. It was cool however one in the group (both current leaders and potential ones) had dreams for Impact. It showed me clearly that Impact was a very important part of their lives and they had thought about it!
The last session we had was an overview on Baptism & Membership at City Centre. Then Drew shared a bit of what our leadership needs are at Impact and closed in prayer.
Just before we left we got a group picture taken (see part 1 for the best picture), and the leadership team thanked both Drew and I for all the work we put into the retreat. We even got a gift card–to Golftown! Yay!
***if you need anymore info or would like some of the handouts we used, please write a comment below and I will send you whatever you need via email***
Impact Leadership Retreat. Part 2
This post is a continuation of our Impact Leadership Retreat. There will probably a few more before I have reported on all the sessions.
The next two session where all about discovering each person’s unique SHAPE. The acrostic SHAPE stands for Spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personalities, and experiences. I will briefly touch on each so you get an idea of what we discussed.
Spiritual Gifts. These are God-given abilities, given to each believer at conversion by the Holy Spirit to share his love and strengthen the body of Christ. One thing that is very important is discovering your spiritual gifts is not the ultimate goal, using them to bless other is.
The list of spiritual gifts are the following with all the Scripture references:
1 Corinthians 12:28-31, Romans 12:6-10, Ephesians 4:11, 1 Peter 4:9-10. Administration, apostleship, discernment, encouragement, evangelism, faith, giving, healing, helping, hospitality, interpretation, knowledge, leadership, mercy, miracles, pastoring, prophecy, teaching, tongues & wisdom.
I gave each person a chance to fill out a spiritual gifts assessment test so they could figure out what gifts they have and then I exhorted everyone to start using their gifts if they haven’t already started to. And I warned them to not compare, the problem with comparing is sometimes we put bigger value on more visible gifts (teaching & leadership) and lesser value on those not as visible. Just because a gift is visible doesn’t mean it is more valuable or significant. All gifts are important to the building up of the body of Christ.
Heart. The spiritual passion God has given you so that you can glorify him here on earth.
To find out what your heartbeat is we discussed 5 questions: 1. What drive you? What doe you dream about, what do you desire, what do you really want to do for God, what motivates you to action, what do you crave? 2. Who do you care about? God has placed people in your life who he wants you to help him reach. 3. What needs will you meet? What are the top 2 needs I love meeting? What lessons have I learned that I could pass on to others? 4. What cause will you help conquer? What cause or issue makes my heart race? Where could I make the greatest impact for God with the gifts I have? 5. What dream will you fulfill? What pursuit would release the passion in my life for God? What God-centered dreams can I identify that have been buried in my life? What would I attempt to do for God with the rest of my life?
Then I asked them to take the next few minutes to “paint” their emotional heartbeat God has given them by answering the above questions.
Impact Leadership Retreat. Part 1
Last weekend we had a great time at our Impact leadership retreat. I was so honoured to be asked to speak at the retreat.
We started off the retreat on Friday night with just the current leaders by hanging out at Wild Wings. We did what most do, orders a pound of wings each and shared them with everyone at the table. It was a feast made for kings and queens! After our feast we headed to our hotel to decide what was next … bowling, watch a movie, what? No bowling, and the guys hung out in James’ room and girls in Leanne’s. Oh and us old guys stayed in our room. haha. Truth be told I had some last minute printing to do so at 11pm I headed back to the church to get that done for the next day. I think everyone crashed around 12:30 or so.
The next day was a full day of leadership development and learning and growing. It was so cool to see each of the participants affirming each other in their leadership styles, gifts, abilities and even personalities. I especially enjoyed hearing how different individuals were blessed and encouraged by another person on the team because of something they did or said. There was a lot of love in that room! haha.
I am going to post about this retreat for a few posts, just to break-up all we learned into bite size pieces for reading. Just following the “Impact Leadership Retreat” posts. Enjoy.
We started off Saturday morning with a bit of an explanation of what we were there for and what we were going to learn together. The main reason for us to be there was to give everyone in attendance a chance to assess themselves as a leader and as a follower of Jesus so they could find the best place for them to serve in Impact or elsewhere. The secondary reason we were meeting which went very well with the first, was because we were hoping to recruit new leaders to help with the leadership of Impact.
We first discussed what leadership is and used the ultimate example Jesus, himself when he washed the feet of his disciples in John 13. We all agreed that we needed to be servants as we led. Some of the things we discussed were those in our lives that both where leaders and influencers and how messed up our views of leadership were by the world’s views. Those who influenced us were just as much leaders in our lives as those who were the people standing in the “spot light” and with the biggest mouths. We also discovered that being a leader with skill and integrity of heart were important, not one without the other, however you can learn skills of leadership but you can’t learn integrity! As we discussed this issue we were influenced by the Psalmist’s writing when he said in…
Psalm 78:72 “And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.”
Notice how integrity comes before skill! I think this is because in God’s eyes our integrity is more important that the skills and abilities we have as a leader. The word “heart” is actually translated “source of man.” A person’s heart is the source of his passion, knowledge, and character. If you have no integrity it’s like you are a spring that has been polluted and if you pollute the spring, then all the water that flows from it into the ocean will be polluted too. A perfect example of someone who was a very gifted leader and had all the skill in the world but had no integrity was Adolf Hitler. Don’t get me wrong I am not a fan, but I have to admit he was a huge influencer of thousands of people. Imagine if he was led with integrity of heart! That is the reason God says in Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
The next session we spent a great deal of time looking at what kind of leader am I by discussing the 10 styles of leadership from Bill Hybel’s book Courageous Leadership. Each person was able to assess themselves as to what style they were, or styles. Here are the styles with a short description. Which one best describes you?
1. Visionary: a leader who cast a vision and they believe in the vision and believe if tell people, write about it, and share it, it will become reality. But they can’t always make the vision reality.
2. Directional: they have the ability to choose the right path for an organization or ministry as it approaches a critical intersection–course change or stay the course?
3. Strategic: they can take the vision and break it down into a series of achievable steps. They stay with the plan until the vision is reality.
4. Managing: they have the ability to organize people, processes and resources to achieve a goal or vision. They like to motivate team members by establishing mile markers on the road to the destination.
5. Motivational: they can get a team fired up about the vision ahead. They have the ability to see those on the team that need inspiration or encouragement to get their part of the job complete.
6. Shepherding: they build a team slowly, love the team members deeply, nurture them, support them, listen patiently and prays for them. The whole style of leadership is around a caring community experience that energizes the team to achieve the vision.
7. Team-building: they know in order to achieve the vision they need teams of leaders. The have the ability to choose the right people to make this happen.
8. Entrepreneurial: they have to give birth to a new ministry or idea regularly or they will get bored or loose energy. Once a new ministry is up and running they need to move onto the next big idea. They are not concerned about the managing and they shouldn’t because they can’t do it, it will drive them crazy and they will start to die inside.
9. Reengineering: they can take a troubling situation–ministry lost its vision, people in wrong positions, ministry is dying–and turn it around where it is flourishing and growing and healthy. They evaluate people, strategy and values to discover how to get the ministry back on track.
10. Bridge-building: they have the ability to listen, understand and think outside the box. But above all else, they love the challenge of relating to a diverse group of people to negotiate them all the meet the same vision. After building a relationship of trust, this person would try to refine the vision each sub-leader to meet the overall vision of the larger ministry or organization.
We finished off this session with a chance for each person to review the different styles and discover which one they are. It was very cool to see each person affirming others in the group. Some people were shocked to find out they were one type leader when others commented. It was a great time of confirming and affirming the leaders of Impact.
Look for the next post on what we learned about our unique SHAPE…
