Pastor's Growth Group

Well, I'm out. It was a meeting apparently set to laugh about the generation gap I've created. The rest of the pastors are much more related by affinity. I significantly affected the median age of the group. (no offense to anyone who attended).

They laughed at me for showing up with a laptop, made fun of my cellphone/handheld PC, and couldn't get over that I posted a blog on the internet during the meeting. BUT I made it through.

I really enjoyed myself. Gary Butler is a great presenter and has a lot of wisdom to share. I was disappointed by the number of rabbit trails we went down, and confronted by a differing paradigm of leadership/management, but I think that it's a great move for the section to have this group. The real influence of the group is what I heard from several of the pastors, the value is the relationships among the group that are growing. I think there's great potential in pastors/leaders who are open to listen to others in similar situations.

Today's lessons focused on managing good conflict. Some people would think that's an oxymoron. I think that you either promote good conflict or you have dirty conflict and you don't want that. It's why at SRC we meet with our leaders and have an open floor for disagreement. Monday night in fact we had a very reasonable (though I might be biased) proposal about an improvement and someone jumped right in and let me know why it was a bad idea and wouldn't work. Because of the conflict I think we're going to end up better than if everyone had just said ok to my idea. Janet R. has commented that one of her favorite things about SRC is that she can disagree with her pastor. She's welcome to in our meetings. Once we come to an agreement though we're on the same team. We walk away loyal to the decisions we reach.

That's a great thing about the Operations Team here. I'm so thankful for them. They make the ministry great.

--Ben