CONNECTIONS 07!!!

Off to the first of many Connections 07 meetings today... (my first Officers Councils! yeah!).
I hope you've signed up to be a delegate, but if not, there's plenty of events you can rock up to at no charge. Check out the Connections page here. Make plans to be at the march, its gonna be awesome!

Well thats it for now, things are looking good here at college, the Heralds are mega-pumped for their commissioning and the Witnesses are just loving the ride....

See ya there!!!!

Equality of the sexes? where?

Here's a bit of 'holy-discontentedness':
Whats the deal with having an Army that supposedly supports equality of the sexes in Ministry, yet has a stand-alone Women's Ministry Department????
What about the men? Is there no Men's ministries? (don't try to argue the brass band line! Thats no longer acceptable!) Don't we care that men aren't being built up and discipled outside of 'banding' and leadership?

I propose that if we truly believe in equality of the sexes, we have equally-sized (staffed and funded) Men's and Women's Ministries departments (departments at THQ-level and positions at DHQ-level).

OR

We change 'Women's ministries' to 'Family ministries' and get some guys in...
Better yet, put Men's, Women's, Child Sponsorship, Playgroup ministries etc. into the Corps Programme Department (its logical!).
Then give the higher ranked Women Leaders positions that allow them to contribute to the leadership of the territory without a 'shadow' responsibility for Women's ministries.

I'm all fired up! how did we get to this place where the inequality was so blatantly obvious?
It's just not acceptable.

Come on women, step up and address this, and guys - get things happening!

Let the weak say "I am Strong!"

Thanks to Pakenham Corps I had the opportunity to attend the Global Leadership Summit over the last weekend. I heard some awesome leadership insights, but I must say its pretty weird sitting in a room full of people clapping for a speaker who is on DVD! (and even funnier when the speaker asks a question and people answer! hehe!).

Aside from having a great time, I learnt some valuable lessons about how to grow as a leader. One of the most dynamic speakers we heard from was Marcus Buckingham (who works with the Gallup Poll people). He spoke about the common misconception people have - that to improve (as people and as leaders), we should work on fixing our areas of weakness.

Marcus' view was that many societies have taken this on, to the point that our children are recieving the message that the things they aren't good at are more important than the things they do really well (their strengths). What kind of people are we setting them up to be? Adults that are guilt-ridden by the fact that they aren't good enough...

How confident can a leader be in their abilities when they are living out of this paradigm???

Instead, Marcus said to build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses. Just as we would expect Tiger Woods to work on his golf swing, instead of practicing scales on piano.

This also applies to working as a team...

Instead of trying to make every member of a team seperately well-rounded, we should realise that a team is most well-rounded when the members aren't. What this means, is that when each member is working from their strengths, the team is stronger.

Now I think that this is pretty important to us who are working with the body of Christ, in ministry teams... Lets seek to engage people in their areas of strength, use what they do well to serve the Lord! Don't try to do everything well, but work on building a team who are strong in areas where you are weak (don't forget the importance of acknowledgement, thanks and encouragement).

Personally, we each need to find our areas of strength and then get 'buff' for Jesus!

On a completely unrelated note, check out this cool photo I took at the summit...

I call it "Field of Chairs"