Learning To Lead

    Session I

Introductions
and Definitions


Who I am:

•Follower (Shepherd who has a Shepherd)
•Husband
•Father of 3 adult children
•Grandfather of 11
•Pastor (39 years)
•Leader

My Learning of Leadership

•Growing Up
•Seminary Years
•First Church
•Out to California
•Denominational and local leadership
•Return to Michigan Church

What is leadership?

850 different definitions

  Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in Leaders:

  Strategies for Taking Charge

Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by a leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers

  - John W. Gardner, On Leadership, p. 186


Leadership is influence, the ability of one person to influence others.

  - Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership


Leadership over human beings is exercised when persons with certain motives and purposes mobilize, in competition or conflict with others, institutional, political, psychological, and other resources so as to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers.

  - James MacGregor Burns, Leadership


A Christian leader is someone who is called by God to lead; leads with and through Christ-like character; and demonstrates the functional competencies that permit effective leadership to take place.

  - George Barna, Leaders on Leadership

The central task of leadership is influencing God’s people toward God’s purposes.

  - Robert Clinton, The Making of a Leader


A leader, with all his plusses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses, interacts with a group of people to define the culture (the way things are done here) in order to develop a vision for a preferable future, and then provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that future with plans and prayer.



Last modified: Monday, August 6, 2018, 12:10 PM