Membership and Belonging

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What are you a member of? What groups and organisations do you belong to? Within the Church we sometimes talk of membership, and we sometimes talk of how some of our most committed folk are not members, and yet many of our members aren’t active in the community of faith. The understanding of membership has certainly changed over the years. In our post-modern world… are we still ‘post-modern’ or gone…

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Make time for the Important

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Stephen Covey spoke of ‘First things First’, important things first. He borrowed Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Matrix Michael Heppell and others speak of allocating time to the categories: ‘Me’, ‘Key’, ‘stuff’ – where ‘Key’ projects are the mission critical important ones… yet how often all the urgent stuff pushes out the important. ‘Me’ times – are, well it says it on the tin doesn’t it – times for YOU – and that’s…

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Respond don’t React

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In our fast paced world when communication can be instant there can be the temptation to react swiftly with an email reply. Remember though the slightly older technology that facilitates full duplex synchronistic conversation – the telephone – and its modern counterparts the Voice call or video call. You can engage much better, reach a full solution rather than just the next step… and there’s less opportunity for misunderstanding. See…

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Where are the bottlenecks?

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The late Eli Goldratt (1947-2011) was a scientist who building on models and ideas from the natural world and turned the focus of his work to the leadership of change. He coined the phrase ‘Theory of Constraints’ – which at its simplest says ‘No system is operating at maximum potential, if it were there would be infinite and perfect output, there will always be at least one limiting factor, or…

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How many light bulbs does it take to change the Church?

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You’ll have heard the one that asks, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?” “Change! Change! Really, is there something wrong with the old one!” What if we flip it and ask, “How many light bulbs does it take to change the church?” Light bulbs are a metaphor for ideas… and I’ve heard countless ideas over the years, I’ve had countless ideas, and shared them… only…

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Change 4,5,6

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time for change sign with led light

You can only change 3 things: structures, policies and mindsets… but you have to change them all… and mindset will always be the hardest! To effect those changes, you need to do three things… I call them steps 4, 5, 6 in honour and recognition of the change that has already happened! Change is all around and change is hard… particularly within the Church context, where despite a core belief…

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