Books I have read: Building a Strategic Church

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Building a Strategic Church

David Beer was one of those church leaders you wanted to learn from, one who I had the privilege of meeting and hearing speak several times.  In Building a Strategic Church he allows us to sit in a coffee shop with him and chat about lots of different areas of church ministry.

The book covers a huge number of areas with eleven chapters, each subdivided into little sections only a few pages long:

  • Why be strategic?
  • Strong leadership
  • Team spirit
  • Relational structures
  • Application preaching
  • Training and equipping
  • Exponential thinking
  • Generous attitude
  • Involvement with the local community
  • A caring heart
  • Putting it all together

After serving as Senior Pastor at Frinton Free Church (a church with approximately 600 members) he went on to head up the Purpose Driven Church movement in Europe.  This does mean that some parts of the book come across as overly American and reliant on the acrostics and structures that come from Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.

The book left me wanting more in several areas, I would want to bounce ideas with David Beer, understanding why he does things in certain ways, and what he thinks about some of my ideas.  If you’re looking for a helpful overview to the how of church then look no further.

Servant leadership

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Lead On - CPAS

I loved the article on Servant Leadership by James Lawrence in the monthly CPAS Lead On mailing:

‘The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between a leader is a servant and a debtor.’ Max De Pree

Defining reality: helping those we lead to see things as they are. Saying thank you: expressing appreciation for what people do. And in between, suggests DePree, a leader is a servant and debtor. What does this look like?

Christians follow a servant king, one who came not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). The defining symbol of this sort of leadership is a towel. Yet servant leadership is often misunderstood. For Christians it doesn’t mean serving people, but serving God and through our service of God serving people; a subtle, but significant difference.

Serve people and we end up becoming a doormat, dutifully doing whatever they think best. Serve God and then we become a doorway, through which we enable people to walk into the priorities of the king and the purposes of the kingdom. Servant leaders serve God first, which means there will be times when we don’t do what people ask, when we say no (see Matthew 20:20-28). Such leadership is often difficult.

For example, most of us would rather avoid difficult conversations – the PCC member who is ‘bullying’ others into agreeing with what he wants. Perhaps he has been doing it for years, and no one has challenged his behaviour. The servant-leader plucks up courage, even when they would rather avoid the conversation, and does what is required.

So the critical question for servant leaders is ‘what is required of me in my leadership role today that will further the purposes of the kingdom and bless others?’

Let’s pick up our towels this month, and serve.

International Women’s Day 2014

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International Women's Day

On International Women’s Day we’re thinking especially of all the FAB young women in our youth groups and the brilliant mums and grannies we have in the church.  We’re praying for freedom and equality for all women across the world – for education, legal status, justice, freedom from violence and more:

International Women’s Day, like any event that promotes positive discrimination, is accompanied by its fair share of negative remarks.  International Women’s Day is still needed to motivate change, at home and abroad. Some of these statistics from The Independent put into sharp relief just how far we still have to go.

The Independent - International Women's Day

Violence

  • Globally, about one in three women will be beaten or raped during their lifetime. About 44 per cent of all UK women have experienced either physical or sexual violence since they were 15-years-old. Britain ranks among the worst countries in Europe when it comes to women being violently abused.
  • On average, 30% of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence by their partner.
  • 38 per cent of all murders of women worldwide are committed by a woman’s intimate partner.
  • A UN report said 99.3% of women and girls in Egypt had been subjected to sexual harassment.

Female Genital Mutilation

  • This is where girls have either all or part of their clitoris and inner and outer labia sliced off without anaesthesia, and sometimes have part of their vaginas sewn up too.
  • Over 130 million women living in the world today have undergone Female Genital Mutilation.
  • There as as many as 24,000 girls are at risk of cutting in the UK.
  • In one Birmingham hospital as many as 40 to 50 women every month are treated after undergoing female genital mutilation.

Marriage

  • Around 14 million girls, some as young as eight years old, will be married in 2014.
  • An estimated 1.2m children are trafficked into slavery each year; 80 per cent are girls.
  • In 10 countries around the world women are legally bound to obey their husbands
  • Only 76 countries have legislation that specifically addresses domestic violence – and just 57 of them include sexual abuse.

Working rights

  • In the UK, the gender pay gap stands at 15%, with women on average earning £5,000 less a year than their male colleagues. The disparity is even greater in part time jobs, going up to 35 per cent.
  • Globally only a 24 per cent of senior management roles are now filled by women.
  • The Equalities and Human Rights Commission estimates it will take 70 years at the current rate of progress to see an equal number of female and male directors of FTSE 100 companies.
  • This hurts everyone. The gender gap in certain industries is even more apparent and damaging. Zemach Getahun estimates that closing the gender gap in agriculture could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 per cent.
  • If the skills and qualifications of women who are currently out of work in the UK were fully utilised, the UK could deliver economic benefits of £15 to £21 billion pounds per year – more than double the value of all our annual exports to China.

Suarez: I’ll stay even without Champions League qualification

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Luis Suarez

Striker Luis Suarez says that he will stay at the club next season whether Liverpool qualifies for the Champions League or not.

Suarez has scored 24 Premier League goals for the current Barclay’s premier league campaign with his latest coming in the 3-0 win over Southampton which helped the Reds move into second place in the table.

The Uruguayan international who recently committed his long term future with the reds claims he is enjoying his best season since arriving at Anfield from Ajax in January 2011.

With Liverpool currently second in the table, six points ahead of fifth-place Tottenham, there is every chance Suarez could achieve his ambition of getting Liverpool back in the top four.

Quizzed whether he would stay at Liverpool if the Reds failed to secure a top-four finishes, Suárez said:

“I think so. I signed my new contract because I’m very happy here and I want to stay where I’m enjoying football and life. Playing in the Champions League isn’t dependent on that.  Any player would miss the Champions League.  We’ve not been good enough since I’ve been here to qualify, but this could definitely be our year.  It would be a frustration not to get fourth because we’ve done everything possible and given our maximum to qualify.”

There is no doubt that the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich will come knocking at Liverpool’s door for Suarez once the season ends.Do you think the Reds will be able to keep hold of Suarez if they miss on top four once again?

The experiences of 11-16 year olds on social networking sites

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Internet safety

The NSPCC earlier this week launched a new research report into the experiences of 11-16 year olds on social networking sites and the strategies they use to deal with things that upset them online.  Researchers conducted an online self completion survey in December 2012 of 1,024 11-16 year olds in the UK.

NSPCC Report Cover

Here’s some of the key findings:

  • Over one in four (28%) of children aged 11-16 with a profile on a social networking site have experienced something upsetting on it in the last year.
  • Of the children and young people who were upset, 11% were dealing with upsetting experiences on a daily basis.
  • The most reported issue experienced on social networking sites was trolling, experienced by 37% of children who had been upset.
  • Other issues experienced by children who had been upset included: pressure to look or act a certain way (14%), cyber stalking (12%), aggressive and violent language (18%), encouragement to hurt themselves (3%), receiving unwanted sexual messages (12%), and requests to send or respond to a sexual message (8%).
  • Over half of 11-16 year olds (58%) believed at least one of the people responsible for the behaviour which had upset or bothered them was either a complete stranger, someone they only knew online, or they did not know who it was at all.
  • Only 22% of the children who were upset talked with someone else face to face about the experience.

Download the full report from the NSPCC: The experiences of 11-16 year olds on social networking sites.

This “Normal Barbie” Has The Proportions Of An Average American 19-Year-Old

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Post Type Children's and Youth Work
Barbie v Real Barbie

“Average is beautiful,” says designer Nickolay Lamm, who created a “Normal Barbie” using the average proportions of a 19-year-old woman. He’s now trying to sell 5,000 of the dolls through a crowdfunding site.

If Barbie were an average young woman, she’d look very different from the toy so many girls grew up with:

Barbie

Barbie would look more like this: a doll artist Nickolay Lamm designed and built to show that “average” is beautiful.

Barbie USA

The project started last year, when Lamm, a Pittsburgh-based artist, designed images of what he called “Normal Barbie” in an attempt to make the doll reflective of real bodies.  After Lamm’s original designs went viral, he worked on building other dolls with average proportions.

He used the measurements of an average 19-year-old woman from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then molded them to a 3D model of Barbie.

Barbie v Real Barbie

Lamm has now launched a crowdfunding site to produce 5,000 “Lammily” dolls, which will feature average proportions, a light amount of makeup, and joints that bend.

You can buy the doll with a $20 donation.  He’s attempting to raise $95,000 to produce the dolls, but says it’s worth it:

“If there’s even a 10% chance that those dolls affect [body image], let’s make it.  I’ll build new clothes and accessories after this crowd funding.  My plan is for Lammily to come in different ethnicities and body shapes. But all future body shapes will be of healthy typical women.”

He says “Lammily” is an alternative to dolls with unrealistic beauty standards that dominate the market, like Barbie, or the hypersexualized Bratz Dolls.

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