Just a quick thought about leadership.

This morning I was treated to a Mr Hopley sermon. These are usually well thought out, structured for ease of understanding, and often include maps and spatial or timeline elements which help to explain and educate the congregation. Mr Hopley is a well respected teacher of Humanities. You can tell.

This morning’s message concerned the end of Moses, who led the Israelites through the desert to the Promised Land, but was not permitted to enter it himself. Only one thing stuck with me from the whole sermon, and it’s this:

Leaders are human.

I hate being in charge as much as I love it. The feeling that I can do something and make a difference is quickly balanced with the responsibility which weighs on the person at the top.

So we open our Bibles (being well brought up church types) and we find (among others):

• Noah the drunkard
• Abraham the wanderer
• Jacob the thief
• Joseph the braggart
• Moses the murderer
• David the adulterer
• Gideon the coward

So no matter how bad we feel about our leadership, we’re hardly the worst example. As a bloke, it can be a bit daunting to realise most of the strong assured and dependable leaders in the Bible seem to be women. Or called Jesus.

I’m really not going to get into a slanging match about women priests (bishops, archbishops, popes, whatever) but it makes me think sometimes.

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Approved hymns, limits on creativity

I spoke with a friend this evening at the pub. We meet regularly, over a pint (admittedly, mine usually a pint of water due to the new regime) and we talk about most things.

He told me that his church has approved thirty songs for use in worship on Sunday mornings, to use for a season in the church.

GOAL!

I can’t remember if I talked about this before, but I’ve been given a new job . It’s a great little thing – I run a distribution area and supervise the warehouse of finished goods and shipping to customers. It’s a relatively simple exercise if I’m honest – mostly making sure people stick to the processes and trying to improve the processes themselves. Of course, you sometimes get problems to solve along the way, but it’s OK.

I looked at the company I work for, took a moment to think and then came up with this little manifesto for how I want to be. This isn’t my multi-million selling idea, it’s a simple one which I believe holds the key to me not sticking my head up my bottom when I’m supposed to be leading the people who work in my team.