David Ewart

It's Not About Leadership

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I've got a shelf full of books about leadership. In fact it is now about 50 years since I took my first leadership training to become a counselor at YMCA Camp Stephens. Since then I've done dozens of other trainings, including a Masters degree.

And maybe it's just because I'm such a thick-headed, slow learning failure, but I've come to the conclusion that what ails us is NOT leadership. Or at least, its not about having new, improved leaders.

Tell Yourself a Self-Correcting Story

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Perhaps I'm just making this up - reading into the Bible something that isn't actually there - but one of the things I love about the stories in the Bible is that they are self-correcting.

That is, just when the Holy Spirit has gifted me with a blinding revelation of THE Truth, THE Way, and THE Life, another part of the Bible will correct my unqualified self-confidence.

After many decades of resisting the notion, I am becoming a believer in the Calvinist Doctrine of Total Depravity. That is, even my best and "purest" ideas will always be faulty, always be limited, always overlook some crucial point, always be tainted with self-justification and self-righteousness; never be fully and only reflecting God's glory and purposes.

That is why the story I tell myself needs to be a self-correcting story. That is, it must contain within itself, the seeds of its own correction. Because the story I tell myself will inescapably and unavoidably contain within itself the seeds of my own (and my world's) self-destruction.

The Long Emergency Update

As I keep musing about the state of the United Church of Canada, I keep adding things to my article / sermon, The Long Emergency.

You can open an the Adobe PDF version of this update by clicking here.

The most recent change is a new footnote where I add some cautions about the successful resiliency by which the congregation has met the challenges of the past 40 years.

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The caution about the successful resilience and creativity is 5 fold:

First. The successful resilience has addressed only two of the three crucial ABC’s of congregational life: Building maintenance and Cash. It has failed to respond to Attendance.

Second. The result is that many congregations now have buildings and budgets that are way out of proportion to their actual attendance. When this happens, buildings and budgets become burdens instead of assets. They require a disproportionate amount of the congregation’s volunteer time and effort. Fewer and fewer resources are available for supporting and developing attendance.

Money CAN Buy You Happiness

Once again science is proving what the church has been teaching all along.

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In this case, scientists have found that giving money away increases happiness.

UBC researcher Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues from the Harvard Business School reported findings from 3 studies. (Click here to open an Adobe PDF version of the study media release from UBC.)