MIM Ezine, August 7, 2007

-- Book Review: "A Dad-Shaped Hole in My Heart: How God Wants to Heal the Wounds Left by Your Earthly Father," by H. Norman Wright, 2005,reviewed by Teena Stewart.

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Jeff had always wondered if God had really called him to ministry leadership. But in those early days when he returned from military service, he had bills to pay and a family to support.

So when the invitation to join the ministry team at the Maple Street Church came, he was elated to think he could still answer that call. Five persons were working together to serve seven churches holding nine worship services in eight locations. Jeff would preach twice a month and lead a weekly Bible study. His pay was minimal, but that didn’t matter. It was an opportunity to answer God’s call.

The first few months were exciting. Jeff enjoyed the preparation study. Even though he continued to hold his usual full-time job, he couldn’t wait to get to the church to meet with people. And when people approached him for prayer and pastoral counsel, he was eager to listen.

So, I admit I was surprised when I discovered Jeff in my office contemplating quitting. Didn’t he enjoy the preaching? Yes. Didn’t he enjoy the people? Yes. What was the problem?

His lead pastor did not know how to encourage and support the growth of other leaders. Jeff was discouraged and ready to walk away.

Luke tells us that a man named Joseph sold a field and brought the money to the apostles to address the needs of the many who came to the early church after Pentecost. Joseph was nicknamed Barnabas, son of encouragement. Barnabas had such a gift of encouragement that it became his name.

It was Barnabas who went and found Saul. Barnabas brought him to Antioch where Saul was nurtured and encouraged before the first missionary journey. It was Barnabas who went back and rescued John Mark when Paul refused to take him on the next missionary journey.

Encouragement is not only a gift, it is also a learned skill. A ministry leader can learn to develop this strength so that others can grow and mature in their leadership skills. Here are four techniques a leader can use to grow other leaders.

One, catch your team doing things right. A wife was cleaning off her husband’s dresser when she discovered a handwritten note on the back of a business card. Their pastor had written a comment thanking him for teaching a Bible class. The note was 8 months old. Of all of his accomplishments his wife was surprised her husband had kept this scrawled reminder.

Why? It was a personal affirmation. It was a note of encouragement. Even people who appear successful and accomplished in other fields value words of affirmation. How do you catch your leaders doing things well?

Two, develop a posture of learning from your team. Leaders who communicate that they can learn from others will encourage their team members and learn some new tricks, too.

There are several styles of leader/team relationships. Here are the two extremes: A. The leader is the expert. Everyone else is there to support and assist the leader. This might be the case if the leader is a brain surgeon and the rest of the team are nurses, technicians, and administrative personnel. B. The leader is the center of the nervous system that stimulates, networks, and communicates with the team for the accomplishment of the mission. Everyone on the team is an essential part of the whole. It is the leader’s task to bring out the best in each individual as well as creating possibilities of synergy for the whole team. Generally, the second style is more appropriate and more effective for ministry leadership.

Leaders who seek to learn from their team members will create an environment of learning and team building. Each member will sense they are valued and appreciated.

Three, play to the strengths of the team. If an individual has no strength or gift to offer to the ministry of the team, they should not be on the team. On the other hand, the best way to create a synergy is to encourage team members to discover their spiritual gifts and discern how to deploy them to accomplish the mission.

Leaders who work to restrict team members to some prior image or model of team will lose many opportunities and discourage their team. The mission suffers and effectiveness drops. Even highly committed team members will look elsewhere to utilize their gifts.

Four, healthy leaders lead healthy teams. Healthy leaders have a secure, but not self-absorbed ego. They are confident, but not arrogant. They know when to take the reins of responsibility, and they know when to hand those reins to another.

This requires a leader to engage in counseling, spiritual direction, or life coaching. To hold one’s leadership up to the examination of another trusted and experienced eye is a healthy pattern. This is more than implementing a new program or developing a new technique. This is growing the capacity of leadership in the leader.

Tom Hanover has served in a variety of pastoral leadership roles for over 30 years, the last four as a District Superintendent supervising the ministries of more than 100 pastors and churches in southwest Ohio. He has a BA (cum laude) from Taylor University, and MDiv and DMin degrees from United Theological Seminary in Dayton.

Sunday morning was bad. I had a lot on my plate, including our youth service, two trips coming up in two weeks and, right after church, I had to leave for a 4-hour drive to a denominationally required conference. After the first service was over, I had to set up for the youth service. In addition to the bands switching over equipment, the computers have to be switched over too.

That was when everything went bad. I disconnected one computer from the wall outlet connection and then plugged in our computer. The projector registered that it was connected, but we had no video. I messed with the software… still no picture. I looked at the clock and we were running out of time. I switched cables… still nothing! I switched computers. That didn’t work either. I was ready to scream. The service was to start in 3 minutes and I couldn’t get anything to work. I told the band they might not have video, and then went back to the computer. As I frantically continued to check other possibilities, someone from the first service saw what was going on and told me they closed out the service a little differently by using the video mute button on the remote. Arghhhhhh! Nothing was wrong all along!

I was really stressed. Things were already busy that morning anyway, and this only added to the stress. What made matters worse was that I needed to slow down, relax, and get my thoughts together enough to preach.

This situation reminded me of a lesson I had learned, but had yet to absorb, from a trip we had taken a few months before. My wife and I decided to celebrate our second anniversary in Jamaica. We didn’t do the traditional Jamaican vacation by staying in one of those secluded resorts behind a tall fence. Instead, we stayed in the country outside of Negril at a guest house in Little London with a Rastafarian gentleman named Chubby.

We had no Internet and I chose to leave my cell phone off. We had to depend on Chubby for everything; cook our meals, take us into town, pick us up, and deal with all of our vacation details. We were not in control of anything about that week, and we were on someone else’s time schedule. Every time I asked Chubby about schedule issues or time to be somewhere or time to be picked up, he would always respond with this gigantic smile “No Worry, Mon…. No Worry.”

At first, I hated hearing this phrase. It felt like a taunt, teasing me with my loss of control. Then it finally sunk in; there was no reason to worry about things that were out of my control. I thought to myself, “Just take it in stride and things will work out.” Once I got that simple lesson into my head, I truly began to enjoy my vacation. I began to appreciate the wisdom of this great guy. And it dawned on me that this is what God had been trying to tutor me about for a long time. Ironically, it took a guy on an island far away from civilization to teach me a lesson that I just was not understanding back home.

We all need to take Chubby’s advice. Whether we are in youth ministry or some other form of ministry, we need to learn not to worry about stuff we cannot control. Just think what God can teach us once we learn this simple lesson of “No Worry, Mon!”

R. Scott Miller is the Director of Christian Education and Youth at Milford First United Methodist Church in the suburbs of Cincinnati, OH. In his 16 years of youth ministry, Scott has written and developed much of the youth programming used in his churches. Scott has a B.A. in Radio/TV and Journalism from Morehead State University and an M.A. from Asbury Theological Seminary. Scott is the author of7 Things Christians Don't Do and What To Do Insteadby Abingdon Press.

Book Review – A Dad-Shaped Hole in My Heart: How God Wants to Heal the Wounds Left by Your Earthly Father

H. Norman Wright, is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist, a certified trauma specialist, as well as an author of over 70 books. His work brings him in close contact with wide-spread devastation caused by strained and broken relationships. A Dad-Shaped Hole in My Heart came from his desire to bring restoration and healing to women with deep scars caused by broken father/daughter relationships.

The way we view our lives is largely attributed to family interactions and experiences. Wright shows us hope for those with “heart” problems. Some daughters have bruised hearts, which occur because they never received support, approval, or validation. Others have performance hearts which drive them to perfection because the affection they received was based on their accomplishments. Some have hardened hearts, developed to protect them from further hurt. Others suffer from addicted hearts which substitute activities or substances for disappointment in life.

Wright’s book is sensitive to both sides showing why dads may disconnect and why many fear the responsibilities of fatherhood. He looks at different scenarios—divorce, death, grief, denial— to reveal how different people respond. His book is filled with personal accounts of women who struggle with their relationships with their dads and it explains the roots of these struggles while giving hope for healing.

Throughout the book Wright gives readers the opportunity to write down memories and recollections to bring them to the forefront. This can help individuals recognize how these memories affect perceptions and behavior. Counselors, recovery groups, and individuals will surely benefit from this book, which will no doubt bring healing to many hurting individuals.

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DBMIM Ezine- August 7, 2007