Discipleship

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Seven quick steps to deal with conflict

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Seven quick steps to deal with conflict

Most of us dislike conflict, and run from confrontation as fast as we can.

And in one sense we should. My spiritual father, Duane Harder, used to say that anyone who loves confrontation is a dangerous person. And yet in all my life I never met anyone who handled conflict and confrontation better than he did.

He did it by modelling the ideal: someone who is fearless in confrontation without actually enjoying it.

It is so critical that we learn to deal with conflict rightly. If we can come without fear when we sit down at the table, then we can come in principle and not in emotion.

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Letting go

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Letting go

It’s hard to let go.

The conversation I was having was with a young pastor in a large church in another country. He had been disappointed in a discipling relationship and was struggling with how to emerge from it in a positive way.

Leaders make lots of mistakes. None of us is perfect. And people only fall off pedestals we have put them on. And yet the discipling of leaders is so important we have to do better than most of us have done.

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The greatest key to successful leadership

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The greatest key to successful leadership

Yesterday I turned 65. I don’t believe I’m that old, but neither the calendar nor my 97 year old mother lie. Here’s another statistic. I have been in Christian leadership now for 44 of those years. I started leading a student group at the University of Toronto at the age of 21, and never managed to escape leadership in one form or another. I have at long last laid down local church leadership, but have exchanged it for something that in the end will probably prove more demanding yet.

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The downfall of leadership

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The downfall of leadership

I came across a sad story the other day. It involved another Christian leader who had got himself into a major mess.

Why does this happen?

No doubt there are lots of different causes. Love of money, sexual immorality, false teaching and so on. But I think the downfall of many leaders is caused by something else. And that something else is ambition.

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How to stop the revolving door

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How to stop the revolving door

“But our church isn’t anything like that!”

I was having coffee last week with a young man new to our church. He was asking about our history. And I was telling him about the ups and downs, and how long it took for the church to take root. At the end of my description, those were his words.

And I agreed. I replied: “You’re right. This is a whole new church.”