{"id":4119,"date":"2010-12-28T20:06:43","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T01:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"\/news_blogs\/john\/?p=4119"},"modified":"2024-12-05T16:34:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T21:34:52","slug":"ministry-leadership-a-century-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cccc.org\/news_blogs\/john\/2010\/12\/28\/ministry-leadership-a-century-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministry Leadership a Century at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In October, I had the chance to review an entire\u00a0century of leadership<\/strong> in one ministry when\u00a0I attended the 100th anniversary service of the church I grew up in, Timothy Eaton Memorial Church<\/a><\/strong>. Reviewing its senior pastors decades at a time rather than years at a time gave me some\u00a0really\u00a0high-level insights into leadership that were sobering, inspiring, encouraging, and humbling all at the same time. I’ll share my thoughts with you, but first I’ll tell you what happened at this service so that perhaps you might have the same joy of discovery that I had!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living with a Legacy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Andrew Stirling, Senior Minister of TEMC and adjunct professor at Tyndale Seminary, gave a sermon entitled A Hand Across Time<\/em> that told how the senior ministers each received and passed along the same legacy of faith while applying it differently to meet the needs of their times. The children in the service were challenged to make a decision to follow Christ as their Lord so that the legacy would continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Andrew reviewed the key messages of the senior pastors who preceded him, he captured quite well the role of leader as steward <\/em><\/strong>and the balance that must be achieved as leaders preserve their ministry’s legacy while adjusting its programs to meet the needs of the current circumstances. In Built To Last<\/em><\/a>\"\", Collins and Porras called this dual focus Preserve the Core\/Stimulate Progress.<\/em> The idea is to preserve the core ideology (your purpose and values) and stimulate progress in everything else. The core ideology must then be faithfully applied to every changing circumstance by adapting its manifestations to suit the times. Here’s how this church managed to do this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church’s core ideology comes from Timothy Eaton, who came to Christ as a teenager and became a lifelong Methodist, believing that God was active in his life and was working providentially in and through him. This speaks of a God who is present and interested in us as individual persons. Eaton was a very active lay leader in the Methodist church, and after he died his widow and others built a Methodist church in a growing area of Toronto to perpetuate God’s work. Each church has its own core ideology that drives it, and the core ideology of this church is Eaton’s emphasis on God’s providential presence in our daily activities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the sermon, Andrew Stirling showed how the ministers at TEMC applied this core ideology into the various contexts the congregation faced as the century progressed. To the best of my memory, here are some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n