Six months ago, our church reached out to Jim Herrington and Trisha Taylor of The Leader’s Journey for their help in building our Pastoral team in the absence of a senior pastor.
Shortly thereafter, I purchased and read their book The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation, which was co-written by our church’s long-time senior pastor, Dr. Robert Creech.
As the authors put it, the need has never been greater for leaders who understand living systems and the power of calm leadership in the face of anxiety and enormous, ongoing change. An effective leader—one who can galvanize individuals and groups, and who has the potential to help transform society—is a person who has the capacity to know and do the right things. We cannot lead others in transformation unless we are experiencing it ourselves.
Most leadership-development processes focus on “leadership techniques”—essentially a bag of tricks for the leader to use on those they lead. The authors go in a different direction, understanding that leaders are part of living human systems of engagement and relationship, who must learn to become aware of these systems and navigate them wisely. They focus on leaders managing themselves rather than managing others.
To clarify this way of thinking about leadership, the authors use concepts and terms that are rooted in the seminal work of Dr. Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory. Dr. Bowen understood human behavior in families as natural systems (living systems). These living systems play by a set of rules that we can see and name.
Click here for more from Herrington, Taylor, and Creech
