Invested

Yesterday's class session was an "Aha!" moment for me. We discussed in groups our answers to the following questions:

1. In all of the course assignments and activities, what has been the most engaging and motivating?

2.1 Concerning the concepts and processes we have engaged in class, what are you learning about the work of shaping a congregation as a learning community, what has been most important and valuable?

2.2 Concerning yourself as a learner, as one who is being shaped to help churches learn, what has been most important and valuable?

3. If you had two wishes for the remainder of the quarter, concerning the class and your participation, what would those wishes be?

After going around and hearing each person's (4 in a group) answers to the questions, we tried to sift through what each person felt were the key points/ key words in their answers to the questions. Then we distilled all the key words into some key points that we put up on poster paper on the wall near us.

The answers varied widely. Our class has a policy that if your cell phone rings in class, you must bring snacks. One person used one of their two wishes to ask for more phones to ring so we could have "more pizza." I liked that. I like when people ask for specific, concrete things. Especially in ministry, people always seem to be blathering on about outcomes like "transformation" which are really hard to put your mental arms around. Of course, transformation is specific and concrete for an individual person; they can point to how they were in sin and how now they're not, or how their perspective was small and now it's been widened and enlightened, but to look at a ministry or group of people and ask, "Are they being transformed?" That's hard to discern and quantify.

Anyway, so as we discussed all the things that have been valuable to us, what has been engaging and motivating and what we would do with two wishes, I realized that every person had something golden to offer the group. Especially in my little group, I felt bonded to the people's input. Then we took our posters and put them up with the other group's posters in the front of the room and tried to distill our posters into some common themes/wishes that we want to focus on. As I was sitting and looking at all the posters, especially our group's poster, I had my Aha moment: I'm invested. I really want what we have to say to matter and I really want all the other posters to matter. This was a conscious thought but also a deep feeling at the same time.

I want to be led by leaders who listen to those they're leading. I've been blessed by awesome pastors, teachers, mentors and leaders and I've had some definitively bad experiences under incompetent leaders and teachers. These experiences have caused me to develop a leadership philosophy that agrees with John C. Maxwell when he says, “He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk."