Church consultant Susan Beaumont says that power accrues more easily to men than women in our culture, so women need to be especially savvy about how they use their power. She outlines five common ways that women can undermine themselves when it comes to using power.

Too often, female leaders undermine themselves when it comes to their use of power. These five common pitfalls are especially troublesome for women:

Power is value-neutral. It is simply the capacity for influence. Whether power is good or bad depends on the means we use to gain it, how we exercise it, and for what ends.

For some time, Laura has been aware of problematic behavior of her board chair. Harvey agrees with Laura in board meetings and in one-on-one exchanges. But behind the scenes, he gossips and complains to others about Laura’s choices and ideas. Laura ignores Harvey’s behavior in the hope that others will ignore him too. She doubles down on other influence tactics like emotional appeals to the people who listen to Harvey. In the end, Harvey’s undermining efforts turn most of the board leaders against Laura.

Can a leader simply ignore the bad behavior of others? Yes, but only if those behaving badly have much less power than the leader. If the problem player holds more power — whether granted, assigned, or earned — then ignoring the behavior undermines the leader’s influence.

Female leaders walk a fine line with respect to power and influence. If we ignore power dynamics, we are dismissed as ineffective leaders. If we appear to enjoy our power, we are negatively labelled. But our job as leaders is to use our power in service to mission, not to naively give it away. Avoiding these five influence traps will help you lead with greater authority and gain commitment to your ideas.

The families in your city will soon be in full-blown, back-to-school mode. This offers an incredible opportunity to reach out to your community. Many congregations sponsor drives for supplies and clothes to outfit returning students. Find stories, resources and videos that show school spirit at UMC.org/schools. And here are several additional possibilities.

“For us, it’s about establishing a partnership,” said the Rev. Jim Kinder, a pastor at Christ United Methodist Church, Mobile, Ala. His church began by sitting down with the principal at an under-resourced school. What was the agenda for that meeting?

“We went in asking what they needed,” Kinder said. “That was it. No specific idea, just the passion to partner with them in caring for the kids at their school.” For them, it has meant everything from trimming bushes to spending a week reading to children in the library.

Partnerships allow churches to go beyond meeting a single need. As volunteers develop relationships with the staff and the children, the outreach goes far beyond buying boxes of crayons.

Members at First United Methodist Church in Grand Junction, Colorado started serving free meals to the students at the alternative high school nearby because the school has no cafeteria, only a vending machine. Volunteers provide more than a hot lunch every Friday. “They can come and get a warm meal and they can expect friendly faces.”

School budgets are often too slim to buy the fun incentives that encourage students to grow academically and avoid discipline issues. Main Street United Methodist Church in Hattiesburg, Miss., has turned their volunteers into pizza missionaries once a quarter. They collaborate with a local inner-city elementary school to sponsor quarterly pizza parties for exemplary students.

Ministering to the Teachers

Teachers have far more opportunities to affect the lives of the children in your community than do most pastors. However, in all of the fundraising, supply drives and pizza parties, teachers are often forgotten. After the school year begins, why not cater a nice come-and-go lunch for teachers to enjoy during their planning period or order a giant carafe of gourmet coffee to place in the workroom before school starts? Minister to these ministers. Show them your church knows how much they mean.

Fresh Vegetables for All

“It was the vision of a church member,” said the Rev. Vona Wilson, a pastor at First United Methodist Church, Franklin, Tenn., to grow fruits and vegetables in unused parts of their property. They began with a small crop of pumpkins and distributed more than 20,000 pounds of fresh produce last year. Learn how to draw more than bees with a community garden.

A member who is a school teacher encouraged the Giving Garden Ministry to connect with the local school system, which now gives healthy, tasty produce to families in need.

Future Farmers

Inner-city children are rarely exposed to rural life. Offer them a healthy “taste” of country living by teaching them to grow their own vegetables. Imagine their pride in taking home food they’ve grown. It’s also a practical way to help limited income families eat healthily.

Open-House Seminars

Schools constantly try to come up with ways to increase open-house attendance. Seminars on topics such as navigating social media with children, bullying or parenting in the digital age can be perfect incentives to draw parents to a school event. Ask people in your congregation what they might be willing to lead.

Just say “no” to bullying

For some children, the beginning of the school year is “bullying season.” Your church can help prevent the current epidemic of children picking on other children. Help children learn to protect themselves by providing mentors they can talk to when things get tough. Offer them tools for coping with unkind schoolmates and be sure they know that your church is a bully-free zone.

United Methodist Ann Brownell’s daughter Amanda attempted suicide after harassing text messages. Now Ann has dedicated herself to the Amanda Network, a ministry of Cambrian Park United Methodist Church in partnership with PACT (People Acting in Community Together). The network’s mission is simple: “People of faith and people of conscience protecting kids and teens against bullying, especially cyber-bullying.”

The main message of all of these ideas is “be creative.” Ask parents and teachers what they need — and what your church might offer. Now is the perfect time as school leaders plan and prepare for the coming school year.

July-August 2017

Perhaps the most famous quote about travel is from American author Mark Twain who wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” (Innocents Abroad, 1869)

For stretching one’s horizons and perhaps enabling one truly to appreciate the blessings of home, travel is hard to beat. But, how can you “travel with a purpose?” How is it possible to experience the wonderful diversity of God’s creation, in places and people, through travel?

The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a photojournalist missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries. His assignments have taken him to the far corners of the world. Recently he journeyed to South Sudan, where he photographed refugees as they lived, simply making it through one more day.

For Jeffrey, travel can be purposeful by getting away from monuments and buildings and focusing on people.

“If you’re a photographer, for example, think of the images you’ve already seen of the place you’re going to visit,” he said. “Then commit yourself not to capture the same images. Instead, put your focus on the people who live and work there. Challenge the dominant narratives that define people into two-dimensional travelogue illustrations and recognize their complexity.”

‘Get lost on purpose.’

To experience more diversity while travelling, Jeffrey offers four words: “Get lost on purpose.” Go away by yourself, and rely on local folks to tell you where you are. “Put yourself in a situation where you have to accept hospitality from strangers. Seek surprise,” he said.

Not everyone is comfortable or able to “get lost on purpose,” but they still can experience travel with a purpose, said Mark Boston, director of specialty tours at Educational Opportunities. EO serves about 15,000 people annually with the Holy Land their number one travel destination.

“We want people to grow spirituality on one of our tours,” said Boston. “We take our trips a step beyond a normal vacation and allow you the opportunities to have those touchstones in faith.”

For Boston, the trips deepen his understanding of his faith. He recently went on an EO trip following in the footsteps of Paul. “When you travel on a bus for two hours and then you realize, ‘Paul walked that,’ it gives you a tremendous appreciation for his determination to spread the word as far as he could,” Boston said.

Millennials approach travel with new and different needs, Boston said. They want to do more than go to the Holy Land, see the sites and read Scripture. They want to interact with the people. A trip planned for 2018 will include several times of intentional discussion and learning about some of the issues facing the area. Scheduled is a stop in Jericho for “dinner and a lecture on the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and the impact of international diplomacy.”

Interact safely

“Even in other countries and places that we go,” he continued, “I’m finding that when we interact with the local people, the better understanding we have. (This is reflected) in our prayers and in our giving and in our desire to send out people to help other people. We will look at this so much differently than before.”

Safety is critically important when travelling, Boston said. EO, which mostly provides group travel experiences via buses or boats, stresses safety as its number one priority.

EO guides and drivers, Boston said, not only know their history and their routes, they know each other. The idea is to envelope travelers in a team of professionals who know how to keep the group safe while also providing spiritual experiences that can change lives.

“I don’t go anywhere by myself where I don’t feel that people are watching over me,” Boston said. “When our people who travel with EO say they want to go out in the evening, my caveat is ‘go out with people.’ If you go out as a group, you’re much less likely to have anybody address you or accost you.”

Boston said potential criminals are looking for people who look lost. Wherever he goes – even if he gets lost “on purpose” – he tries to walk/act/look like he knows what he’s doing and where he’s going.

Seek the different

Years ago, someone gave the Rev. Charles Harrell, a retired member of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, a copy of the book 1,000 Places to See before You Die. After reading it cover-to-cover, he built his own list and has been working on it ever since.

“A lot about finding diversity in your life … is about seeking out what you know is different,” he said, “and listening to what other people are seeing, doing and experiencing that is not your norm.”

He echoes Jeffrey’s tip: Be willing to leave behind a bit of comfort, get up early and stay up late. “Risk getting lost and getting indigestion,” he said.

Travel creates opportunity to experience something different. Harrell told of experiencing two of the best ice creams in his life in (what was then) Yugoslavia. Both were banana-flavored (his favorite), but they were different in their excellence.

“They both caught the deep, essential nature of banana flavor, but it was like they captured different characters of ‘banana-ness,’ or ‘banan-itude,'” he said. “The human family is like that: we do many of the same things, but if we really look and experience, we find an incredible variety of ways of being that can enhance our appreciation of the whole and each part.”

Harrell said travel should be more than just entertainment.

“As a Christian and particularly as clergy, I believe that my travel, even for leisure, should contribute in some way to the mission of life and what I’m called to. That means being thoughtful, even about rest.”

That means asking questions about who benefits because of your travel, Harrell said, and who it hurts or harms.

Harrell’s tips for purposeful travel:

As John Wesley preached, “Against hope, believe in hope! It is your Father’s good pleasure yet to renew the face of the earth. Surely all these things shall come to an end, and the inhabitants of the earth shall learn righteousness” (Wesley, John. “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, 2.” III.18). In the midst of all we are hearing, we believe in hope.

*Joe Iovino works for UMC.org at United Methodist Communications. He may be reached atjiovino@umcom.org or 615.312.3733.

Leading Ideas (Lewis Center for Church Leadership) By David McAllister-Wilson On June 20, 2018

In a very short period of time the Millennial generation will be the largest segment of clergy, says Wesley Theological Seminary President David McAllister-Wilson. Therefore, the key question for the church is no longer “How can we attract Millennials?” but rather “What kind of church will Millennials lead?”

As churches of all denominations struggle to turn around their aging congregations, a lot of hope is invested in attracting those born between 1982 and 2002. To some young visitors, an encounter with an old congregation may seem like an ecclesiastical zombie movie — the walking dead grasping for the living to survive. If I were a member of that generation, I’d run screaming.

The millennial generation is itself a disruptive innovation. The challenge for the last act of the retiring baby boomer generation of seminary and church leaders is determining how to enable and empower this generation to disrupt us.

The great debate that produced Protestantism was over the question of what is necessary for salvation. Martin Luther took his stand on sola fide, “faith alone.” We hear a distorted modern version of this from many people among my generation and older: “I come to church to be fed spiritually. I don’t want to hear about social issues from the pulpit. It’s fine for the church to do good work, but there are nonprofits that do that kind of thing. The focus of the church should be on building up faith.” But many Millennials don’t differentiate between building faith and doing good work.

Millennials as disruptive innovation

“The church is always just one generation from extinction.” This statement is so ubiquitous in Christianity the original source can’t be determined. But as Millennials rise to leadership they should consider that Christianity has within itself the capacity for its own renewal. Every new movement in Christianity grew as a new shoot on the old vine: from Saint Francis to Luther and Wesley; from the secret worship services of slaves to the church communities in Latin America who lead resistance movements to the cell churches in China. All have drawn from the inherently subversive message of the gospel.

The millennial generation is itself a disruptive innovation. The challenge for the last act of the retiring baby boomer generation of seminary and church leaders is determining how to enable and empower this generation to disrupt us.

This article is adapted from David McAllister-Wilson’s book A New Church and A New Seminary: Theological Education Is the Solution (Abingdon Press, 2018). Used by permission. The book is available at Cokesbury and Amazon.

About Author

David McAllister-Wilson

David McAllister-Wilson is president of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He is author of A New Church and A New Seminary: Theological Education Is the Solution (Abingdon Press, 2018), available at Cokesbury and Amazon.

Rev. Olu Brown started Impact Church in Atlanta 11 years ago with a group of 25 people. Now, it’s one of the 25 fastest growing churches in the country, with almost 4,400 worshipers weekly, onsite or online. He shares tips on reaching people — even those who don’t look or act like “church people.”

One key practice is what we call extreme hospitality — an attitude that all people are welcome, all people are worthy, and all people have a place. This applies across differing political perspectives and different sexual orientations. It’s the simple yet radical affirmation that all people really are welcome. This stance has won a lot of people to Impact Church and ultimately Jesus Christ. But sadly, it has also turned some people away. When some people say they want to practice hospitality, they mean, “I want to be hospitable to people who agree with me, who look like me, who are in my socioeconomic status.”

Powerful worship

At Impact Church, we want to give our worshippers an experience that makes them feel welcomed and valued and that calls them to action. We don’t refer to our worship as a “service.” Instead, we think of it as an “experience.” And one of the things that shapes a powerful worship experience is the use of metaphor. Jesus constantly used metaphors in his teachings through parables. But today, too many churches aren’t doing the hard work of developing metaphors that apply to twenty-first century life. When we give a biblical illustration, we think that a person in the pew quickly understands it. But they don’t.

A good metaphor can shape the experience of your worship from the time someone drives into your parking lot until they leave. Once we were doing a construction worksite sermon series at Impact Church. Our greeters wore hardhats and there were construction-related items throughout the building. Before the sermon was preached or even the first song was sung, people had already been clued into the driving metaphor. Metaphors can be communicated through your digital communication, your bulletin, your sermon.

Knowing your customer

One of the key cultural trends of the twenty-first century is a rise in self-designed systems where people have a lot more choice in deciding what they are offered. As much as I love big-box stores like Target and Walmart, I think the healthiest churches in coming years will be those that are small and flexible enough to change and adjust quickly to a rapidly changing context.

Relevance and relationships

Some people think if the church strives to be relevant to the current culture, it can’t remain authentic to its values and core message. But consider the example of companies selling audio players. Over many years, the purpose of their products — to provide a quality listening experience — doesn’t change. But successful companies know that the technology, packaging, and marketing must constantly evolve. One of the primary reasons a lot of churches aren’t reaching younger people is that they are unwilling to retool and repackage their message so that others can hear it and receive it.

Relationships are perhaps the most important factor. It’s hard to draw someone to church whom we really don’t like or understand. I’m finding that younger generations really want deep and abiding relationships with older adults. But these relationships have to be relevant and authentic.