An Unhurried Leader (eBook)

The Lasting Fruit of Daily Influence

Alan Fadling (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
IVP Formatio (Verlag)
978-0-8308-9091-0 (ISBN)

Infos

- 15th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year - Also Recommended in LeadershipWhat does grace-paced leadership look like?Spiritual mentor. Pastor. Executive director. Parent. Professor. Spouse. We have many roles and relationships. And in the midst of all we do, we're tempted to frantically take control of situations in hopes of making good things happen. Alan Fadling, author of An Unhurried Life, writes: 'That kind of unholy hurry may make me look busy, but too often it keeps me from actually being fruitful in the ways Jesus wants me to be. Jesus modeled grace-paced leadership. To learn that we begin not with leading, but with following.'In these pages Alan Fadling unfolds what it means for leaders to let Jesus set the pace. Through biblical illustrations, personal examples, and on-the-ground leadership wisdom, this book will guide you into a new view of kingdom leadership. Along the way you just might find that the whole of your life has been transformed into a more livable and more fruitful pace.

Alan Fadling (MDiv, Fuller Theological Seminary) is president and founder of Unhurried Living, Inc. in Mission Viejo, California, inspiring people to rest deeper, live fuller, and lead better. He speaks and consults internationally with organizations such as Saddleback Church, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Cru, Halftime Institute, Apprentice Institute, and Open Doors International. He is the award-winning author of An Unhurried Life, honored with a Christianity Today Award of Merit in spirituality, and he is also a contributing author to Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard?s Teaching on Faith and Formation. Fadling is a certified spiritual director, and he lives in Mission Viejo, California, with his wife Gem and their three sons.

Textauszug

Becoming an
Unhurried Leader

AS I BEGAN WRITING THIS BOOK, I decided that taking unhurried opportunities to write might help me capture the spirit of what I want to communicate. I’ve long enjoyed road cycling as a way of getting some exercise and—maybe more important—of slowing from 65 mph to 15 or 20 mph, outside and in. So I packed a couple of cycle bags and left the house on my bicycle with my computer and a few changes of clothing. I rode to the nearest train station, took a train south to the coastal California town of Carlsbad and booked a couple of nights in a hotel room. As I traveled, I felt that familiar inner drivenness fueled by the false formula that busyness equates to productivity. I know slowing down inside is crucial to spiritual health and productive leadership, but slowing down remains a difficult spiritual discipline for me.

On my way south, I realized that both my dependence on train schedules and the limitations of cycling versus driving exposed the reality of just how little control I actually have in this world. Still, this little trip was one of many ways to become a more unhurried leader. I want to be unhurried enough to discern God’s voice and sense his guidance for my life, my relationships, and my writing. When my heart is a hamster wheel, my inner life becomes a blur.

My train route takes me south along the Pacific Ocean. I find that even a glimpse of the ocean helps my soul rest. There is something about the blue horizon that reminds me of God’s immensity and just how spacious his love for me is. The ocean unhurries my soul.

The truth is that whatever progress I’m making, I continue to wrestle with my addiction to drivenness and anxious activity, and I expect I will struggle with this addiction to some degree for the rest of my life. I also expect the most challenging aspects of this journey will involve my roles and relationships of influence.

I’m a parent to three young adult sons. I’m a spiritual mentor to leaders. I’m the founder of a new nonprofit. And in these roles and relationships, I’m often tempted to frantically rush to take control of situations in hopes of making good things happen. That kind of unholy hurry may make me look busy, but too often it keeps me from actually being fruitful in the ways Jesus wants me to be.

Jesus modeled grace-paced leadership. To learn from him, we begin not with leading but with following.

LEADERS AS FOLLOWERS

So what kind of book is this? A how-to book with simple-but-not-easy, clearly defined steps to leadership success? I’ve learned much from such books, but that’s not the book I have written. Do books like these give me insight I can put into practice? Of course. Do they offer wisdom for all of us? Certainly. But this book is something different.

In these pages I hope to offer an inspiring vision of leadership that is less hurried and more fruitful, less hectic and more joyful. I will provide practical insights I’ve learned along the way to help you make your way fruitfully into all the unhurried leadership opportunities God has for you. I hope you’ll discover with me that an unhurried leader grows ever more confident that all the truth and all the wisdom we need is available to us in Jesus (1 Cor 1:30). There is no kingdom-fruitful wisdom apart from him.

Jesus sets the pace of my following, and I’m not trying to be super spiritual here. This is just basic kingdom reality: I cannot lead for the good or the honor of God’s kingdom if I am not seeking his kingdom first and foremost in my life and my work. Otherwise, I end up promoting my own little kingdom agendas, all the while assuming I am doing so in the name of Jesus. It happens all the time. It’s happened far too frequently in my own leadership.

Too often I’ve lived and led fueled by the idea that the one who hurries gets the most done for God. This is so different from the spiritual wisdom that the one who hurries delays the things of God. What I’ve been discovering is that unhurried leadership is actually more fruitful because it is more unhurried, not in spite of that slower pace. My mentoring of others, for example, is among the most unhurried ways to have lasting kingdom influence. There are no instant strategies to becoming a faithful disciple. Just like anything relational, such influence takes time—years or even decades. In this book, I’ll share what I’ve been learning in my unhurried journey as a disciple of Jesus. After all, kingdom leadership is rooted in followership. I’ll share from God-given successes and all-too-familiar personal stumbles along the way.

HAVING A HOLY INFLUENCE

When I talk about leadership in this book, I’m not limiting that to people like CEOs and senior pastors who have a wide span of organizational responsibility. I certainly hope that what I have to say will be a significant help to fellow organizational leaders. But I’m writing not just about organizational leadership. I’m writing about life leadership. I’m talking about spiritual influence, about kingdom of God influence. Each of us has been planted in particular places among particular people whom we might bless and benefit by sharing something good we’re receiving from God’s good kingdom.

We all have some scope of influence in the lives of others. We need not have a position of influence to be a person of influence. Many influential people in my life over the years had no position of organizational authority in my life, but the way they lived and worked inspired and motivated me to a better way of living and leading.

I would love for us to learn together how to live as blessed members of God’s good kingdom who can share with others from his abundance in our lives. What a beautiful impact we would have on our world. We could grow in our trust of God’s grace shown us in Jesus so that our lives actually become like an ever-expanding river of not only his grace but also his goodness and generosity. God might fill our lives with more of his love and compassion than we can contain so we can share that “more”  with others. Our influence would be the overflow of God’s very presence filling us and spilling from our lives in ways that bring refreshment, encouragement, and holy energy to others.

What if each of us lived this way? Imagine the changes that might come to our little place in the world! Wouldn’t this be significant, even life-changing leadership influence? What if parents found the roots of their life sunk deep into the infinitely vast love of their heavenly Father, so much so that their parenting was simply the expression of that abundant divine love? What if men and women in business found in God inspiration for a creative, powerful, and unselfish vision of their work? What a profound impact they would have on their fellow workers and clients! So I’m speaking to anyone with an inner hunger to have a holy influence in this world. Where our lives touch the lives of others, may we enrich them rather than diminish them, may we generously give and not selfishly expect something from them.

Our influence will grow as we cultivate a way of living and working that feels far less draining over time and far more energized by the Spirit to the point of overflowing. We will experience more and more moments when we feel as if we are living and leading from abundance rather than out of sheer willpower or our own detached-from-God human efforts.

Let’s learn together how to more closely follow Jesus in his way of being open to the people the Father brought across his path. Let’s learn how to put down our agendas and welcome divine surprises that weren’t on our calendars or to-do lists. Let’s learn to stop labeling as interruptions to our work what may actually be God-given opportunities to do his good work in that moment. Let’s learn to make good plans rooted in our fellowship with God, but may we hold those plans loosely enough for him to guide us when we implement them. Jesus has invited us into this reality of an ongoing conversational relationship with God. I love this way of living and leading.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

One of the ways inner hurry has hampered my leadership is when I’ve rushed to the conclusion that I am not a leader because I am not like a leader I admire. That person seems more like the ideal leader I imagine I’m not. But many leaders like me are more like Timothy than Peter: more tempted by fear than by pride, more likely to be self-deprecating than self-promoting. Unhurried leadership operates from a peaceful confidence that God has made me, that God is remaking me, and that God has invited me to live a life of influence from that very place and as that very person. God is making me to be the person of influence I was meant to be.

Some people might want to call being an unhurried leader “spiritual leadership.”  There’s truth there, but I would use that phrase with a bit of caution. Some will hear spiritual as meaning somehow detached from a real life of parenting, earning a living, paying our bills, mowing the lawn, and such. I use spiritual, however, to describe the most essential inner reality of who we are. Therefore, I don’t limit spiritual leadership to a leader’s prayer life, moral character, or religious observances. Spiritual leadership is leadership rooted in the deepest reality there is: living in vital relationship with God through Jesus, and then bearing the good fruit of that communion.

Furthermore, the term spiritual leadership can help us remember that while what leaders do matters immensely, who leaders...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.6.2017
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Moraltheologie / Sozialethik
• Schlagworte: Christian leader • Christian leadership • Christian Life • church leader • hurry • Leader • Leadership • leadership training • Mentor • Pace • Pastor • Relax • retreat leader • slow down • Slowing • unhurried
• ISBN-10: 0-8308-9091-2 / 0830890912
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-9091-0 / 9780830890910