I’ll be back with new reflections next week! In the meantime, this week’s guest contributor is L. Roger Owens. Roger serves as the Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he teaches in the areas of spirituality, preaching and leadership. He has pastored both United Methodist and Presbyterian churches in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Roger is also the author of a number of books, including “Everyday Contemplative: The Way of Prayerful Living” and the forthcoming “Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them.”
– Prince
I was having coffee with a former student, now on a ministry staff and trying to birth a new initiative she’d been designing. “I’ve never thought of myself as an entrepreneur,” she said. “What do you think I should do next?”
As she asked her question, I remembered something I heard a church consultant say once, a nugget of wisdom that has never left me: “There are three kinds of people in every organization: thinker-uppers, worker-outers and getter-doners.”
The young woman sitting across the table from me was solidly in the first group. I should know — I’m a thinker-upper myself. When I took the CliftonStrengths assessment, all of my strengths clustered in the same category: “ideation.” This is a sophisticated way of saying I’m good at sitting around and imagining possibilities.
As a leader, knowing this about myself has opened two pathways. First, I’ve learned that while most of my energy should go to using my strengths, I can also grow. I can learn, for instance, how to catalyze new ideas or improve my ability to see a project through. I can develop other strengths.
More importantly, I’ve become more thoughtful about the teams I put together to lead ministry initiatives, looking for people with gifts different than mine. While I love to hang out with other thinker-uppers, I know I need people in the room who can initiate action and execute plans: people who will say, “It’s time to stop talking and start doing.”
Isn’t this an approach that Paul would advise leaders to consider? After all, he couldn’t help but think of the church as a body with many gifts (1 Corinthians 12).
So I asked the woman I was having coffee with: “Who are the people you could invite to join you that would help you move this idea forward?” I was suggesting she think about moving this from an idea she alone was imagining to a project a diversely gifted team could build. She needed to make sure to include someone who would perhaps annoy her out of dream mode sooner than she would like so the dream could begin to inhabit reality.
Resources
How to bring about change in your church
It’s a difficult time for the church but it has a bright future if leaders help their congregations adapt to a new, diverse world, says a co-author of the book “Future-Focused Church.”
Q&A with Kara Powell
Working better by working together
Leadership based on collaboration benefits everyone involved. And the work improves, too.
By Alaina Kleinbeck
How to ruin a team ministry in five easy steps
Building a thriving team ministry is difficult, but ruining one is easy, says a Lutheran pastor. Follow these five simple steps, and any team ministry is certain to implode.
By A. Trevor Sutton
The pastor as quarterback
As the Super Bowl approaches, a social & clinical research specialist thinks about the leadership parallels between quarterbacks and pastors.
By John James
Between the mini and the mega
The mid-sized team can be like Goldilocks: not too big, not too small. But there are risks as well, says a university chaplain.
By Craig T. Kocher
Before you go
In the summer, my family loves to eat a sandwich that, described by its list of ingredients, sounds awful: bacon, avocado, watermelon, basil, goat cheese, mayonnaise and Dijon mustard on toasted and olive-oil-drizzled ciabatta.
Often when we eat this sandwich, we have a conversation about which ingredient is the most important — the sine qua non of the sandwich. And we can’t agree. One son is happy to leave off the mayo. No one could do without the basil, watermelon or avocado. And would it be the same without the tang of goat cheese? Definitely not!
When I think of the kind of team a church needs to imagine, launch and sustain new initiatives, I picture this sandwich and ponder my family’s conversation. Would the team work without the thinker-uppers or worker-outers or getter-doners? As Paul said of the church, so of the team: each member is indispensable.
When I asked my former student to imagine the people she’d want on her team, she paused and started to think. “You don’t need to tell me now — or ever, for that matter,” I said. “Just don’t let go of the question.”
Because it’s a question worth coming back to.
L. Roger Owens
Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
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