Calm present leadership as the crisis becomes a marathon - with Robert Creech

How to exercise calm present leadership when there’s disappointment, constant change and pressure from every side?

Understanding what’s going on psychologically now with your church, team and you? How to best care for your team? And how to lead now when anxiety levels keep oscillating as the risk from the virus waxes and wanes (and are likely to for the next two years). 

Plus navigating how to lead when there are so many different views inside and outside the team about which direction you and your church should take.

Robert Creech is Director of Pastoral Ministries at the George W Truett Theological Seminary Waco in Texas and was senior pastor of University Baptist Church in Houston, Texas for 22 years.

Robert says we should 

‘… abandon both optimism and despair and serve with hope. Jurgen Moltmann says the two sins against hope are optimism and despair. Optimism is groundless. Despair is faithless. Jim Collins (Good to Great) gave us the “Stockdale Paradox.” When asked about what POWs did not make it out of their Viet Nam imprisonment, James Stockdale said, “the optimists.” Those who were constantly saying, “We’ll be out of this by Easter, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or New Year” were constantly disappointed by reality. They had no grounds for such false hopes. It was the realists, Stockdale said, who survived. This is an important perspective to hold during these days. Depending on who is prognosticating, we may be in this social distancing mode for some time. We should prepare ourselves to do our ministry in this situation for the long-haul. Hope is not optimism. It is, for the Christian, a part of a realistic outlook. The Easter reality is that in whatever future we find ourselves, God is present, God is with us. He is our hope.  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:13).

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