Tim King Leadership

I like to look at the Christian job websites and love reading the job descriptions posted, when churches are looking for pastors or senior leaders. It makes me wonder if they are looking for someone who will fit their understanding, their vision and their dreams or aspirations, or whether they are looking for what God wants. Below is a letter received by a church for such a position. Names and places have been changed to protect the innocent: To the Leadership Fickle Fellowship. Fickle-under-Lyme. Re: Senior leadership Pastor To whom it may concern, I would like to apply for the above mentioned position advertised on the Christian Jobs website. I have many qualifications that I think will impress you. I have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach with power and have had some small success as a writer. Some say I have a gifting as an organiser, I have planted a number of churches but have not stayed very long in any of them. The longest I ever stayed in on...

All great church leaders, rely on their teams of fantastic volunteers, to help build amazing churches. Those leadership teams need to be hardworking, fully committed, influential and responsible leadership teams. If Jesus was a church leader and was around today, and his twelve disciples were his leadership team, then there is no way that his church would ever reach that often sought after, mega church status. Just take a look at the type of people on his team. Simon Peter was emotionally unstable and prone to temper tantrums. Andrew, Peter's brother had absolutely no leadership qualities at all. James and John placed personal interests above, church loyalty. Thomas always questioned everything and was not good for team moral. Matthew had business habits that many people outside of the church community questioned. James and Thaddeus had radical cultural leanings and their doctrine was a little off, to put it mildly. As for the rest, they lacked initiative, enthusiasm a...

7 Principles for every Christian Business Leader. Not a fan of things like 10 things you need to know or 21 Laws of you can't do without, but when someone I was talking to the other day asked me to list those things that I had learnt in business. I ended with seven. Here are seven principles I tried to live by when I ran my own business: 1.  Christianity is your Culture;       Culture defines you, it is who and what you are in all issues of ethics and morality. You are Christian before you are British or American or Australian or even French. The world has a different culture to yours, but in all your dealings the Christian culture should be dominant. 2. People do Matter;      Always treat your staff with consistency and respect, reward loyalty and always take their side when dealing with a difficult client until proved otherwise, then be fair and consistent in your response. 3.Be Generous;     R...

Over the last few months my mind has not been on leadership it has been on writing a History of a small Pentecostal movement in Africa. I was thinking about the different leaders in this church their styles and personalities and how these men grew churches. So this got me thinking about the different types of leaders you get today in our churches. Here is a short biblical homily on my thoughts on the subject: 1 Corinthians 3: 5-7 What after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe- as the Lord as assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters it is anything but only God who makes it grow. For many years I ran a construction projects management business, I dealt with architects who envisioned and designed the buildings I built. I dealt with engineers who saw that the structure was sound and the foundations and fr...

Manifesto: We Promise to do the following- with intent, when in Christian leadership: 1) People Matter. People are our purpose. People are not a means by which we can create our own ends. When we reach out to people they are our objective. 2) We will help people think. If people are our objective we will not get bogged down in the process. We will help people to think through our process in order to recognise our objective rather than just getting them to do and blindly follow. 3) Create great environments. We need to help people become great, not just fix their problems. We do this by creating great environments by which they can grow and build their relationship with God. 4) Create opportunities for initiative. People need to see and experience a spirit of excellence. They need to see opportunities where they can succeed rather than just avoid errors. 5) Be curious. As a leader you don't need to know everything even though a little knowled...

The opening lines of me new book: Pastoral Intentionality. A Manifesto for Christian Leadership. Study is rarely a substitute for life experience. I don't know about you but my Bible College never prepared me for pastoral ministry. They instilled in me doctrine and theology gave me a summary of church history. Taught me how to read and interpret the Bible and communicate it better, they gave me a run down on governance and practice, but they never once said to me this is what you are going to experience in your church. Nor did they say these are the types of problems and people you will come across and this is how you can handle the problems. Nor did they tell me how I could grow a successful church and develop great leadership teams. If you want to read more over the next few months watch out for my blog posts.

Parasites verses Symbiosis. For those of us brought up in Africa we know what tick bite fever is, I think they call it Lime's disease in the USA. It is a nasty little parasite that sucks the blood and leaves behind a nasty bite and a little later a fever and sickness that will leave you feeling really unwell. Whenever I think about the word parasite I always see it in a negative sense and think about that little tick that inhabits the African bush. "So why the sudden interest in ticks you may ask?" As Church leaders there is a great need for us to choose our words and the way we phrase what we say very carefully. This is one such occasion when a church leader used, I believe, the wrong words to put across a good idea.  The other day I was having lunch with a young leader who in all sincerity said to me that in church he felt there were two types of people, those who were parasitic in their relationship or those who had a symbiotic relationship with...