Tim King Leadership

The Myth of Christian Leadership. I have been teaching on leadership and related subjects for a number of years now and the more I do the more I feel that leadership or what we say is leadership, is in fact a myth. A quick Internet search showed that there were over 100 different definitions of leadership We talk about "great visionary leaders" but the fact is that these people were not born "great visionary leaders." nor do they seek greatness. Any greatness is projected on them by their followers, but these followers tend to ignore the pain, sacrifice and personal development undertaken to get to the place the leaders are now. However this does not mean there is no such thing as a "great visionary leader."   Someone once made the statement that leaders are good and effective in their leadership. To me these are two different concepts. You have good leaders and you have effective leaders. In the same way you get ambitious leaders and you get hu...

Five Further Results on Healthy Churches. There was such a great response to my health check blog and the healthy church results that I went looking through my archives and found the following 5 categorisations that I found were synonymous within healthy churches both big and small. 1.   In all churches visited, fellowship was both strong and warm. Both regular congregation members and visitors were made welcome, felt welcomed. Visitors were made to feel as though they were part of something vibrant and vigorous. They were greeted in the parking area, welcomed enthusiastically at the door and invited to sit near the front of the auditorium. After the service people took time out to speak to them, they felt that people in the congregation were really interested in them as people. Over 80% of congregation members attended a mid week home group. Over 45% were involved in some other sort of ministry within the church. 2. All churches had   deep and meaningful ...

Following my last blog. Here are a few conclusions that resulted from the health checks that I have conducted.. 1.       A healthy growing church is always willing to try new models for ministry in an effort to make disciples of Christ. 2.       Leaders of healthy growing churches always give permission to people within the church to conduct ministry and even make mistakes for the sake of winning the lost for Christ. 3.       Leaders of healthy growing churches always encourage full participation in ministry by any and all in the congregation while recognizing that the primary role of the pastor is for leadership, teaching, and facilitating such ministry. 4.       A healthy growing church never allows those with greater than normal pastoral needs to hold and demand the attention of the church and/or pastor for any longer than possible. 5.       A h...

Health Check Questions . Over the years I have been asked, from time to time to do a health check for a church. It is a way of seeing if the programmes and vision of the leadership is working, or if there is a need for adjustment. Please feel free to use or comment. Questions asked of congregational members were as follows:  ·          Is your fellowship/assembly/church a healthy place to be for your spiritual growth and relationships? ·          Do you feel connected into the life of your church? ·          How important is good biblical teaching to you? ·          How important is growing in Christ to you? ·          How much time are you willing to put into your faith development? ·          How much time are you willi...

Leadership types to watch out for. This blog may seem to be a little negative and also seem to put church leadership in a bad light. However the blog comes from a very genuine question asked of me by a number of young leaders about a month ago. "Are there dangerous leadership personalities that we should watch out for?"   The list below represents the type of leaders one MAY come across in churches. WHAT I WANT TO EMPHASIS IS THAT WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS AND HAVE A FALLEN NATURE! Read on. Narcissistic leaders   Narcissists are highly motivated people; they do this in order to gain the esteem of others. They want affirmation of their superiority. However these desires are driven by a need to compensate for repressed feelings of inferiority. Their self esteem is very fragile. In their quest for admiration, it is not unusual for narcissists to seek out positions of leadership. Initially, their boasting, charm, and sense of entitlement can be charismatic ...

Leaders get you discipleship right. A number of months ago I sat with a pastor discussing his leadership Development programs and evaluating their success. He then asked me a question that on the surface seemed easy to answer but when I thought about it I saw that perhaps we as leaders were getting some things wrong. He asked; "Can you teach discipleship in a class room environment." The right answer to be really honest is NO. Firstly you need to choose those you want to disciple Identifying those you wish to Disciple.   Look for character—disciples must be stable and humble. They should be teachable and have integrity (for example, the local gang leader probably doesn’t fit into this category!). Look for passion—a disciple needs to be passionate about what they do and to do it with energy and drive. It doesn’t matter if they are passionate about something outside the church (motorbikes or rock climbing, for instance). So long as being passionate is in someone’s DNA...

Christian Leadership needs effective team leadership " No individual even a monarch- like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all key obstacles, generate short term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects and anchor new approaches deep in the organisations culture." [1] In other words major visionary change cannot be accomplished by one person alone no matter how large or successful their churches and leadership styles may be. In order to see changes take place in a church and these changes take root, - the way you see those taking root, there is a need therefore for the creation of an effective team. Jagelman makes the following observation; "I have realised that inflexible structures that are legally or traditionally difficult to change    hinder rather than protect the work of God....The absence of a stable and well thought through structure does not create freedom, it create...