Revitalization Is Not For Sissies: Remember the 4- "S's"
Written: 11/1/2009
a monthly article with content you can use in revitalizing your congregation from our CAN District Disciple Making Congregations Focus team, Lynette Decker , co-chair.
To share comments contact: Lynette Decker
Conflict within our staff and/or congregation can suck the energy right out of pastors and church leaders. Sometimes the chaos is a result of pettiness, narrow-mindedness, or personality differences. But other times it is really a holy time, a birthing time, you know like labor pains, when God stretches our comfort zones, or shifts our paradigms, or we make bold decisions that result in a rebirth for our people. It is at those times that we need to keep our focus on God and to lead with a non-anxious presence. For me, that non-anxious line only adds more anxiety because I am the one whose comfort zone is being made uncomfortable! I am the one whose paradigms are being shifted! But for the sake of what God is doing, we need to learn how to hold on, ride out the storm, and midwife the new life.
Years ago I attended a seminar led by the late Edwin Friednman, the author of Generation to Generation, Family process in the Church and Synagogue. Knowing that the only person we can control is ourselves, he gave us a tool to help us endure the necessary chose that is created by going toward healthiness, wholeness, and rebirth. He called it his "FOUR Ss"
Be SELF AWARE-know yourself, how you think, what makes you tick. Know your emotional buttons and how they are triggered. Maybe even spend time with a therapist to become self aware. (Not self-conscious or self-absorbed!)
Be SELF REGULATED-once you know how your emotional hot buttons are pushed, can you control your reactions. I am responsible for my own behavior.
Be SELF MOTIVATED-remember your boss is God, and even though you are serving your congregation, you are working for a higher power. What is on God's agenda for you today?
Be SELF DIFFERENTIATED-don't take everything personally. Allow folks to be upset It is OK, we do not have to have it all figured out right now!
May your heart be non-anxious as you serve as midwife for your congregation's new birth!