Tim King Leadership

I saw these stats on line and thought them interesting. In the West, this is the season for consumers and is the season to spend huge amounts of money on food and drink, on Christmas presents and puppies that may be abandoned after the festive season is over. My grandchildren get more fun out of the boxes and wrapping paper than they do with the contents. What is interesting though is that much of the earth’s Christian population; do not celebrate with the West in the obsession with consumerism. For them the celebration is not about feasting or buying huge amounts of Alcohol. Nor is it about presents and gifts or family stress and arguments. To them it is all about Jesus and what God has done for humankind. Take a step back this Christmas and focus on the real reason for this celebration. In the year ahead let us forget the stress that comes from life and reignite the passion many once had for that little baby born in a stable and placed in a manger. Jesus, Saviour of the...

Are old people irrelevant in today’s church? This question was posed to me in a Christian youth forum that I had been invited to attend. Part of my answer was to say that I believed that old people in the church were no more relevant or irrelevant than they are in secular society. However, in many western societies old people were seen as non-entities or rather as an unseen sector of the community. When challenged to explain I put it this way; The world is getting faster, faster broadband, new faster technology that is unintelligible to older people. The world of older people is a lot slower they are about face to face encounters with friend and people, they don’t like talking to a faceless corporation and when they do talk to a human that human lives in India or the Philippians. Today it’s about being part of a global citizenship rather than a vital and productive part of a village community. Older people are being bombarded by new political and social movements. They are be...

Ramblings from my addled brain.   “Is it my imagination or has there been a sudden spike in Christian Leaders suffering from some sort of Mental Illness?” This question was put to me by a friend, the pastor of a fairly large church here in the UK. He explained that two of his team had taken time off, for stress leave, on the advice of their doctor. One of these men had admitted to my friend, that he had been prescribed anti-depressants. My response to my friend was to tell his people to man-up! A quick Internet search revealed that the last 10 to 15 years has seen a dramatic increase in mental illness across all sectors of society. The national average for the UK is 1 in 4 people suffer from some sort of mental illness. That is 16 million people. The same average affects Christian Leaders. More Christian leaders are reporting symptoms of mental Illness than ever before; Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, social anxiety and PTSD. In 2018 there was 71 million medical pr...

Part Two Further to my last blog post and carrying on with the idea of Christians in politics, I must add that I firmly believe that it is right for young Christian leaders to start to get involved in politics. But politics starts at the grass roots level, in the community. It is there that any young Christian Leader who is shepherding a church congregation must start.   If they are interested in knowing what is going on in the local community then it is at local level that the politics start. Many Ideas come from grass root local community groups. These are past upwards to people on parish, town or city councils, they are debated, appraised and in some cases legislated. For the young Christian Leader it is these ideas that they will have more hope of influencing, if they are involved. Not long ago I was working with a local charity that was primarily concerned with looking after the mental wellbeing of young people, especially young women. During one staff room strategy ...

Part one. I love talking politics, I am not sure I am very good at it. I don’t have the analytical mind or ego that seems to go with being in politics. I also come from a denominational background that discouraged any involvement in politics or political debate. But that was a different time and a different place. The world of the young Christian leader has changed out of all recognition to my day. The challenges they face are very different. The voice of Christian reason and values, its morals and ethics have in many places become a whisper. The left wing secularists and the media openly discourage Christians from expressing their views, as being out of step with modern society. I think that Christians in Europe are more reluctant to engage in politics than our cousins across the pond. While we aspire to uphold freedom of speech, we do so very quietly, a whimper almost. In the United States freedom of speech is ingrained in the culture and in their founding documents, Ameri...

"There is too much month left at the end of my pay packet." Pastors pay and salaries has always been an emotive issue. In the past, this most contentious of subjects has pitted congregations and church boards against clergy and preachers. The war cry was “God you keep him humble and we will keep him poor.” Last week, when talking to a group of young pastors this question of salary and pay came up. Questions such as How much am I worth? Is it right for me to ask for a pay increase? Firstly, let me say that for many, times have changed. The average pay for pastors in the UK is £25000 per annum and in the USA the average is about $46000. Secondly, let us also remember that when looking at the issue of payment, church boards have to remember that the pastor or church leader sends his children to the same schools, his wife shops at the same shops and goes to the same doctors as the rest of us. There is always a cost to that, and pastor’s fork out the same amount of mon...

Command and Control management is all about establishing and maintaining power and control over people. On the surface it’s a great management tool and principle. But that is all. What we have to remember is it is a secular management process, the question we have to ask ourselves is does it work for congregations? Churches and the needs of congregations are a lot more complex than what they were 20 or even 50 years ago. Most Christian Leaders will tell me that their leadership style is one of developing, empowering and inspiring people into leadership. "Do as I do follow me just like Jesus asked us to follow him!"However while this is true in part I often find that the unspoken tag line is one "I do all this as long as people do as they are told and adhere to our churches cultural expectations". Let me give you an example; a member of a worship team who was and is very faithful and conscientious was late for a worship team practice before a Sunday night meet...

Christian Leaders and taking time off. Just got back from having had a few week’s vacation and   I am now feeling refreshed and ready for the next season that God has in store for me. While sitting in my chair absorbing the rays of the sun and getting my daily dose of Vitamin D, I mused about why it is so important for us to have time off. There are obvious reasons; like good stewardship and the fact that it’s good for your congregation to have a break from their senior pastor as well. (That may hit home at some egos) Some years ago a church leadership suggested to their senior pastor, that after 20 years of service to the church that he should take a fully paid sabbatical for six months. To go and refresh him and to relax and perhaps go hear other great Christian leaders and get ideas and new thoughts on taking the church forward into the next season. The pastor flatly refused, fired his leadership as he felt they were going to take over. For the next five years he nev...

Musings for young leaders.   A short while ago I was visiting church to discuss strategic planning with a young pastor and his team. While there I noticed that the pastor and his PA go into his office for a meeting and close the door. They weren’t there long, both came out and the PA went to her desk to carry out the tasks she had been given. Over the three days I was there I noticed that the assistant pastor had team meetings with his worship team and a one on one meeting with his chief vocalist. He would invite them into his office and close the door. His one on one was also behind closed doors. The vocalist was also female. Over lunch I brought it up in conversation with the senior pastor that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to be seen going into a room alone with a person of the opposite sex. I quoted the 1Thess 5:22 where Paul tells us to avoid the appearance of evil. He felt that I was taking the scripture out of context as nothing evil was going on. He assured me that ...

This weeks ramblings. Last night I had a discussion with a church leader over why people of an older persuasion no longer wish to be involved in church.   However unlike some negative discussions I have had on the subject, this was in fact very positive in tone and attitude. The Christian leader was telling me how in recent months a number of people both old and young had come to his church. He told me how this group of people, of all different ages, had gelled together and become firm friends. The young couples, many of them new Christian, had been drawn to the older (middle aged) people who for the most part were more mature Christians. The results were fantastic and resulted in renewed enthusiasm on the part of the older Christians for life and their faith. For the young people it was building on the foundation that had be laid by Jesus and these people found Christianity meaningful, mystical and faith driven. Below are two blogs I have written about baby boomers that...

More and more in the media we are hearing about the damage we humans are doing to our environment, through our use of Single use plastics and our polluting habits in our oceans and wilderness areas. Our children are being bombarded with green and environmental issues at their schools. Many children bring those issues and concerns home and expect parents and even their peers in church to give a lead and have a view, which helps them understand what is going on. Do we as Christian Leaders have a responsibility to shoulder some of the ecological burden to look after our planet? When God told us to subdue and to rule over the earth in Genesis 1 verse 28, was he giving us an ecological responsibility to sustain our world? Please don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these enviro warriors or radical greenies. I also believe that there is some uncalled for hysteria about our use of plastics, not all plastic is bad. However I do feel that as Christians and especially as leaders, that we do...

This weeks ramblings. I was asked this week if it was OK for Christian employers to fire other Christian staff.  Firstly let me state that it is always important to follow the laws of the country that you live in, but the question should be; Do I as an employer have the right to fire other staff Christian or not. The short answer is YES! Let me give you two examples I have come across; Case Study 1; The CEO of medium sized Christian organisation dealing in books and other Christian Literature had a problem with one of their staff. The person concerned, let’s call him Pete, seemed to push everybody’s buttons. Pete had been with the company 2 years, his first six months were just great but after that everything went downhill. He always complained, he bad mouthed his managers. At company social gatherings, when sport was played, he never played with any great sportsmanship; it seemed that every decision was wrong or somebody had a beef with him. But, Pete went to the same c...

Today's rambling. Looking over some of my old school reports the other day and was amused at how some of the comments, that teachers made about me have shaped my life and in many respects made me who I am today. One teacher wrote that I didn’t play well with others, I was 5 at the time maybe I had an excuse. Another teacher in my high school years, the wood working teacher or wood shop teacher for my American friends wrote; “If you value your life you will keep him away from power tools and other dangerous equipment. I can’t remember why he wrote this, obviously I did something that made him fear for his life. Today as an adult I have to say that I don’t do well in committees, for most of my life I have been self- employed. I have steadfastly stayed away from power tools and other wood working equipment, basically anything that can cut something off and is a danger to life and limb. Over the last 10 years I have been looking at and teaching about Emotional Intelligence ...

 Just some ramblings. I have been off the grid for the last few months, life just happens. Work and projects just take over. In recent times I have taken on a new project that is taking more of my time and focus than I have been used too for many years. Steering it through people, who for the most part want the results but don’t necessarily want the change, is tiring to say the least. Many people can’t see the wood for the trees.   On the home front my wife is complaining that I am home in body only, my mind is still at work, still working through the details of my strategic plan. All in all it would seem that I have forgotten that needy people are just that, needy, and that they can drain you very quickly with their demands and expectations. It is time for me to step back and reassess, after all I like everyone else only have 24 hours in a day. I was reminded, this last weekend at church, that the most precious resource and gift that I can give someone is time, my tim...

I remember as a new Christian being invited into a Christian Coffee shop in the town where I grew up. It was clean and tidy, the table tops were all brightly painted in different colours,  but mainly yellow and scattered on top were a random selection of Christian tracts. Fish symbols and Christian posters proclaiming that there was but 'One Way' to heaven were everywhere. The music playing out of the stereo was The Bill Gather Trio or Dolly Parton singing Gospel. The crockery, was a mixed assortment of coffee mugs, donated by keen supporters of this outreach to the unsaved sinners and ungodly people living in the city. The coffee was a local brand heavily mixed with chicory. In all the years the Coffee Shop operated, I never saw a non-Christian go in and I never heard of a person coming to faith through having coffee there. I never really understood its purpose. Fast forward to today, when I was asked recently, to advise on helping a local community church open a c...