leadership
In sorting through some boxes from my previous life (finally!) I came across some scruffy notes containing some reflections on leadership. With it coming up to the one year anniversary of moving on from a senior leadership role as Principal of Carey Baptist College, I thought to myself … why not? Drawing on all that…
READ MORERegular readers of this blog might remember my enthusiasm for the books by Simon Walker known as “the undefended leader” trilogy. I have posted lengthy blogs on each of the three books here, here, and here. This morning I received an email from Simon Walker. Here are some extracts: “Over the past six months I…
READ MOREWhat comes to mind when you hear the word ‘hosting’? I think of hospitality, welcome, warmth, service, humility, quietness, graciousness, inclusion, generosity, making-space-for-others-to-shine … Within weeks of finishing the middle book of the Simon Walker trilogy on leadership where he suggests this idea of the leader being a ‘host’, I find myself reading a book…
READ MOREThere is something of the concentric circles in this trilogy… We shift from the personal character of the leader (vol 1) to the pragmatics of leadership, specially in its use of power (vol 2) and now the politics of leadership as we discover its influence in the broad sweep of large populations of people over…
READ MOREI don’t usually rehash sermons on this blog but on this occasion I have found the four imperatives in 2 Timothy 2.1-7 to be so compelling – particularly as I work away at the interface between the Post-Christian West (P-CW) and Post-Western Christianity (P-WC)… “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2.1)…
READ MOREVolume Two is subtitled “training in the exercise of power” – and that is exactly what the book covers. Volume One was about locating the source of freedom as a leader and Volume Two moves on to articulate what it means to be a leader – and it is about power. Simon Walker opens with…
READ MOREIn recent months I have been discovering a treasure… Back in 1997, in the months leading up to taking on the principalship at Carey, God reassured me in His call through a (secular!) book called The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes and Posner). Its impact on me was enormous. Now in the months after finishing as Principal…
READ MOREMy Dad turns 80 on Easter Sunday. I reckon that is pretty cool. It has caused me to reflect on some of the things for which I am grateful about my Dad (and my Mum) who is now more frail as Parkinsons accompanies him through these later years. I’d like to pay tribute to him,…
READ MOREYesterday I stumbled across the notes from John Sturt (a well-known counsellor here in NZ) about the difference between stress and burnout. Here they are… Burnout is characterised by disengagement;Stress is characterised by over-engagement. With burnout emotions tend to be blunted;with stress emotions tend to be over-active. Burnout leads to a loss of motivation and…
READ MOREThere are times when mature people really frustrate me. Seasoned pastors and leaders (and lecturers themselves, it must be said) can peer into a training programme like ours at Carey and be a little too hasty to contribute into it out of their current and exciting ‘growing edge’, rather than rewinding to what was useful…
READ MOREAbout Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.