Writings on Christian leadership and leader development by Malcolm Webber
What is the best and most biblical way to define a “healthy” church? Should a church be considered “healthy” when it is doing well financially or when large crowds of people are coming to the meetings? Perhaps a church is “healthy” when the majority of its growth is from new converts, or when it has a strong foreign missions program? Is [...]
Malcolm Webber
When Geert Hofstede, a Dutch sociologist, published his seminal research on dimensions of culture in 1980, he found that Americans were characterized by a high level of individualism – in fact, they were rated the most individualistic people in the world.
Malcolm Webber
As have seen in previous Letters, our leadership development efforts must not be conducted apart from a living community of people in which the emerging leaders function and participate.
Malcolm Webber
In most Western organizations today, we love specialization and compartmentalization. Consequently, as we have already mentioned, it is common for us to entirely delegate the task of leadership development to some “specialist” person or group – whether inside or outside the organization itself. We identify the emerging leader who needs [...]
Malcolm Webber
In our last Letter we looked at the traditional approach to building Christian leaders: the local church sends its emerging leaders to a specialized, independent, external entity (the “factory”) that takes responsibility for training them and then sending them back.
Malcolm Webber
An ancient African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Similarly, it takes a spiritual community or family to build a leader.
Malcolm Webber
The Christian life is personal union and fellowship with Jesus (John 17:3). Church life is knowing God together. Moreover, together – in the context of the community of believers – we can know God in His fullness.
Malcolm Webber
All leaders can improve in their leadership. In our previous Letter, we saw that we can help our leaders improve by overcoming the barrier between leaders and followers, by being realistic in our expectations of them, and by striving to understand them.
Malcolm Webber
At some point, most followers complain about their leaders. Some of the most common complaints are: • “My leader will not listen to me.” • “He will not encourage me.” • “He will not recognize my efforts.”
Malcolm Webber
Everything does not depend upon the leader. If our churches and Christian ministries are to be healthy, every member must take responsibility for the whole, functioning actively and thoughtfully.
Malcolm Webber