For the week of January 17, 2005

From Program Manager to Transformational Leader
By: Tom Bandy
One of the hardest shifts for clergy to make is the shift from program manager to transformational leader. This is a shift from program development to leader development, or, a shift from “shepherding” to “midwifing”. The key is to develop an ability to nurture and celebrate wholeness … to reunite lifestyle and ministry, and to blend private time and public ministry. Program managers have been busy separating these things in order to avoid burnout and protect their families, and they fear becoming a breakthrough leader.

In order to celebrate wholeness:

• Experience healing in your own life and relationships, and concentrate on becoming a healer for hardworking program leaders in your church;

• Prioritize and customize a discipline of spiritual life for yourself and your family, and recover the original focus of your calling to multiply disciples;

• Confront, recover, or release the repressed emotions of anger and guilt that dominate the program manager’s life, and center yourself around a core Christology;

• Refine all communications with others to reveal and share the essential joy that lies in your heart as you align yourself entirely with God’s purposes.

Do these things, and you will find yourself less preoccupied with “time management”, and more concerned with finding the “right timing” to intervene in the life of any leader to move them along in their spiritual growth. Program growth will follow personal growth.