As the summer sale has ended, we patiently wait for the new album that will be coming out soon. So please look forward to that! As you all know, Alexander recently had his fan-meet and I am sure that everything went well.
As for P. Johnny, he is actually in the middle of a press conference for One Voice right now, along with some of the staff members, so let's pray that it goes well.
=) I pray that everyone is doing well and if youguys have any prayer requests, feel free to comment down below. =)
With that, I am going to end with a few words from P. Johnny about leadership. I hope it will be use to some of you leaders out there. ^^ GOD BLESS~~
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Leadership Tips
In recent weeks, I've noticed that our core leadership needs to be guided with a few helpful tips about leadership.
This note is in no way a comprehensive outline of all the things that we need to be good leaders. But these are just a few helpful tips that will help our church, and by virtue of association with our church, hopefully some of you reading this will benefit as well.
Rates of Growth -
Accountability is an important part of our church. We must speak into each others' lives. This means we must speak into sin, question things that the group may not understand, and share our struggles, albeit difficult at times. Patience is the key to helping people. Sometimes, in trying to move a group, we forget that not everyone understands, grows, and even moves at the same rate of speed. So, as leaders, we must take this into consideration and learn to wait on each other. If we learn this principle "the art of waiting", we will win people over at the right time. Waiting is not easy;waiting for people to change is sometimes frustrating. But waiting is what Jesus did with His disciples.
The Skill of Listening -
A team doesn't function well when unity is lacking. The church is strengthened when there is a united spirit for the common value and goals of the group. Even more, the world will be attracted to the church when there is unity because the church is called to be the theater of God's manifold work. To foster trust, team members need to rethink and rework trust issues.
A common problem within team leadership is the lack of good listening skills. We are not listening if we responding and justifying our actions when people are speaking to us. Good listening is letting the other person speak and trying to understand their perspective for better or for worse. You'll always have time to respond later. So it's important to sit on the conversation and to think how this person is trying to keep a team member accountable. They may be right or they may be wrong. But sit on it and trust the other person to say what needs to be said for our benefit.
Deferring to Equality -
I've noticed that people will always have different opinions. Differences in opinions lead to differences in methods. I've tried to apply in recent years a principle of deferring to another person's method if it's an equally good way of doing things. A couple of things took place that I appreciate more now than ever:
- One of the key things is that I've made a sincere attempt to make my staff my equal; in a way, lowering myself. Early on in our staff meetings, I allowed our staff to constructivelycriticize my messages. I took a lowly position and this allowed me to accomplish several things. One of which was to be able to speak into my staff when it was necessary. I have a right to speak into my staff because they have been given the right to speak into my life. "Deferring to equality" means we begin with how we view each other. We are not better than anyone else. This is why I love Romans 12:1. We are to view ourselves in view of God's mercy. Food for thought: Why would we have to view ourselves in this way? I'll leave you to meditate on this.
- Now, we established that deferring to equality has a lot to do with the art of losing oneself. In deferring to others, I've learned that if I can give away leadership, it'll garner more support from the group to be more active. Leadership becomes stifling when we're always waiting on one person to make all the decisions. To prevent unnecessary congestion when it comes to decision-making, we need to keep giving leadership away. To allow the staff to make important decisions is to give them the power they need to be their own leader. If we always fight for "my way", eventually it doesn't allow for decision-making to be put into the hands of the people. This is a key element to good leadership, I believe; letting people make decisions so that they can build experience and success. This is a much more important principle than we might realize. So if you don't have to do it our way, doing it another person's way should be worth thinking about.
