When I talk about making the move from what I describe as “performative leadership” to “formative leadership” (as I did obliquely in last week’s Dear Partner letter), I regularly encounter a reaction as understandable as it is predictable. First, let me say a little more about what I mean by these terms. Performative leadership is essentially leadership that focuses on certain skills or practices that the leader has acquired through training and practice and now uses on behalf of the organization he or she is leading. In congregational ministry, these are often of the skills of preaching, teaching, pastoral...

Having served for more than a decade as Dean of Duke Divinity School, L. Gregory Jones is now a senior strategist and professor of theology there. His work is reliably insightful, challenging, and innovative. More than that – and those who know theologians will understand why I want to underscore this next point 🙂 – his work is also regularly and eminently practical. He’s written another important article posted at Duke’s Faith and Leadership website called “Performance as Leadership Preparation.” I couldn’t find a place to comment on the site, so I’ll both commend his article to you as well as respond to it here. In his...

Over the last two years I’ve been directing a research project at Luther Seminary that seeks to understand a little better what makes congregations thrive. Toward this end, we’ve partnered with about 40 congregations across the country and worked with them to discover what seems to work the best as they invite people more deeply into the faith. We’re at a point in the research where teams of two faculty members from Luther are traveling to visit each of the congregations. Our job, really, is just to listen to what these congregations are discovering and learn a) what we can share with other congregations and b) what we can do better at...