Tim King Leadership

 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...

It is that time of year again when many Christian Leaders and Pastors start to get stressed and rushed off their feet. Christmas Programmes are being launched. The nativity set has been repainted but is not fully dry, The donkey has gone lame and you have a rooster instead of a lamb. The church roof has sprung a leak and the Kids church leader has informed you that Joseph and Mary have come down with the chicken pox. Your wife has phoned to remind you not miss your youngest child's recital at the local school, to be honest you had forgotten. To top it all you haven't finished your Christmas morning sermon and are tempted to rehash a sermon from 5 years ago, hoping that it will get great reviews and that Mrs Jones who is 87 and never missed a service in fifty years, will not notice,-she will. A hundred other things need to be done and time is running out. But take a moment just to pause, breathe and think about the Christmas story and what you need to do during this s...

Someone once said that the greatest act of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again getting the same result but hoping for a different one. Over the last few years this has been my problem, I have been stupid. I often tell Pastors and Christian Leaders to think outside the box but have not done so myself. I have tried to do the same thing over and over again, knowing what I am saying and offering is right and relevant but just not getting the results I am looking for.   It all started just over a year ago, I had a trip to Malaysia where I taught a master class on Emotional Intelligence. It was a fantastic trip and I enjoyed doing what I was doing, it was as though it was meant to be. This was my calling, or was it?  On my return to the UK I began to hit the same barriers of resistance with Pastors and Christian Leaders that I had experienced over the last 7 years. Who are you? What denomination do you belong to? What makes you think that you can tell me...

Christian Leaders going back is not an option. Do you as a Christian leader ever get annoyed? I know I do, I am human, if you ask anyone who knows me they will tell you that at times I am hard to get on with. But no one challenges my commitment to see Christian Leaders be the very best that they can be and for them to be successful. Dealing with people can be both exhilarating and frustrating but one thing that really frustrates me is when, leaders of churches decide to go backwards instead of forward. When they feel that going back to a particular way of doing things or going back to a particular program, that didn't work very well is in their mind, the only way forward. One church and church leadership I know have done just this, gone backwards, not in size or commitment, but in the way they do things. I can't help thinking that the issue is not the church, or for that matter the leaders themselves, but in the way the world has changed, the way their community has...

Is your church a sect? This question was put to me by a non-Christian colleague not so long ago and was only reminded of it when we met for coffee a few days ago. I think what he was asking was, are we a cult? But this got me thinking of what exactly is a sect, and is it a bad thing or a good thing? Most Christian churches belong to a grouping of like minded churches often known as a denomination. There is a set tenant of faith and an agreed formula of beliefs. Often the order of service is the same in every church within the grouping with only minor differences. For the most part the leaders and Pastors within the denomination have a loose but coherent relationship. A sect is created when one of the churches within the particular grouping does things that are radically different. This is usually in the area of presentation, not in beliefs or faith. The sect remains within the grouping as a means of credentialing and national recognition. So what makes a sect a sect? This, in m...

Information is control, or is it? In today's world information overload is common among churches. Tweets, web sites, emails, newsletters and Sunday morning announcements are rolled out with repetitive regularity. This is not always a good thing, people don't need to know everything but they do need to know that their Christian Leaders are taking them in the right direction. However it is also felt that Christian leaders should know most things and be in control of everything. This too is a dangerous thing. But, is there something to this myth? In today's society, leaders need to have a healthy appetite for information. Information gathering about what is going on in each of their church departments is vital for giving the senior leader an overall picture of their church. This information is always passed upwards and in return the control and direction is passed downwards. It is true a fter all that information is control, the more information the more in contro...