ken wilson online

Young pastor, prepare thyself for the not-so-local church. You grew up, perhaps, in a local church, or you were drawn to pastoral ministry through your experience in a local church (if not, get thee to one pronto, unless you plan to give away what you haven’t experienced). You may have been to seminary and taken classes on leadership in the local church–teaching, managing budgets, working with boards, and all that. These leadership classed may have been based on the assumption that the local church is led by local leaders. But the local church has changed, and it has changed rapidly and dramatically. It’s not so local anymore. And that means that you, pastor, aspiring or actual, are not in the same position of leadership that pastors once were. You will find within the local church, the powerful influence of leaders you don’t know and will never meet, some of whom you admire at a distance, others who make your skin crawl, and here’s the kicker, most of whom work at cross purposes with each other.
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Skills, gifts, knowledge, passion, all pale in comparison to the emotional intelligence you’re going to need, young pastor. Of course, there are many other jobs with intense emotional demands–teaching, parenting, medicine, running a business–but this business is surely one of them. The emotional intelligence that’s needed involves the cultivation, simultaneously, of a thick skin along with a tender heart.
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