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We often think about what our team owes us -- what we expect from them.
But there are four things we owe them, as well:
1) GRACE: Not expecting them to be perfect.
2) HONESTY: Shooting straight and being transparent.
3) PROPER PLACEMENT: A place where they can thrive.
4) PRAYER: This opens our hearts to them and provides wisdom and insight to love them.
Are you an inspirational leader?
There are three steps you can take right now to become more inspirational:
#1 = Lead with the why
People need to know the purpose behind the work. Particularly over the past few years, team members have determined that they want to give their lives to something that matters.
#2 = Celebrate progress
Look back. Make sure everyone on the team knows that you see what they’ve done well.
It’s easy to point out flaws (and, for certain, we should coach our team and help make everyone better at what they do), but true leadership entails so much more.
#3 = Encourage the team
That is, breathe life into them. Be the wind in their sails.
Remind them that you are for them— both personally and professionally.
Recently I started serving as a Hospice Chaplain in addition to serving at Life Church. With my ADHD, choosing to do chaplaincy visitations is not my strongest gifting. It’s part of a huge shift I’ve intentionally made in my life and leadership.
My reasons for serving the terminally ill and dying in this way is two-fold. The first reason is because I have felt deeply challenged by Bob Goff to live out Matthew 25: “Love is sacrifice and commitment. Jesus wants us to love hungry people, thirsty people, naked people, sick people, strange people and people in jail. That’s it. That’s what I’m trying to do. It’s a weird business card. I want to help people.”
One way Amber have lived this out over the years is by adopting five infants and creating a new kind of family. Now I am embracing hospice chaplaincy to also live out Matthew 25 in my own life. By holding the hand of an elderly, declining patient with Alzheimer’s, I am (hopefully) being Jesus to them in their final weeks of life.
The second reason for this big shift in my life springs out of my own struggles with depression and loneliness. Over the past two years, all of my closest friends have either died or ditched me. Literally. It’s been brutal. As I’ve sought God in prayer and through Scripture during this season of being alone, I’ve sensed the Spirit telling me to focus on others who truly experience deep loneliness: the dying.
What I’ve discovered along the way is that we all can slow down and spend time listening to people who are not like us, especially when they are unable to leave their homes or their assisted-living facilities. There is a special grace to be experienced in simply being present for patients and compassionately listening.
I hope that this small new endeavor spreads love and hope into the lives of those facing hospice care in our area. And I hope to find healing in my own heart as I continue to extend a hand in love.
Reading Luke at the moment. Gotta love Jesus.
Puts down the hammer aged 30 (Luke 3:23) and, in his distinctive northern accent announces he's the long hoped for Messiah (4:21). He's like a car mechanic from rural Ukraine telling the crowd he's destined for world domination.
In Luke 5 he starts recruiting for his kingdom and heads straight for the docks to head hunt a few unsuccessful fishermen, next a leper, then a paralysed man, then the most despised wretch in the region, a tax collector. The religious authorities object but he brushes them off.
"I'm not here to police spiritual health," he says, "I'm a doctor for the sick." And on he goes, doing his rounds, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, lifting the lowly and blasting the lofty. They eventually catch up with him and do their worst but he doesn't make a peep.
He spreads his arms to the world, bleeds for his enemies, prays "Father, forgive" and he's dead and buried aged 33. Turns out though the Jesus movement did not die. Far from it. Turns out a carpenter from Nazareth has done exactly what he said he'd do: take over the world.
Don't know if you believe in miracles but 'water into wine' has nothing on this. How do you turn godforsaken execution into world domination? Whatever you think of miracles, Jesus has pulled off a marvel far greater than water into wine.
Christianity rose from death in the first century. To believe that Christ himself rose is not to add to the list of improbable events you affirm. It is to explain events that would otherwise be baffling. The man on that cross has built our world—we can see that culturally.
We live inside that miracle today. And Christians say: He made our world because he is Maker. And what a Maker!—a carpenter from Nazareth surrounded by nobodies and no-hopers. But his movement grows today. He's still recruiting. Pick up Luke and read. The Doctor will see you.
- Glen Scrivener
