Kennon Callahan, Effective Church Leadership: Building on the Twelve Keys. Harper and Row, 1990.
Referenced in:
- Empowering Leadership
- Empowering Ministry Belief Systems and Structures
- Plural-Elder Congregational Leadership
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is a companion volume to Callahan’s widely used Twelve Keys to an Effective Church. Although now over 20 years old, it is still a very motivational and insightful text on how leaders may be effective in today’s mission environment. The publisher’s summary below represents the content well. Some of the content and wording is a bit outdated, but there are enough gems to merit a read among the missional minded. This quote represents Callahan’s overall spirit:
“Be at peace. The current decline and demise of the mainline denominations is God’s way of helping.
I am not proposing that we blame God for the loss of members… God is not at fault. But it is also clear that God has not intervened to stop the loss and decline.
We should be wiser and more thoughtful than we have been. The loss and the decline should be teaching us something. The ways in which we have been doing leadership are no longer working on this mission field on which we now find ourselves. In a clear sense, I think this is God’s way of teaching us that what we have been doing no longer works. Utlimately, we will continue to lose members until we finally figure that out.
…I am convinced that the church is at its best on the mission field. Do not long for the return of a churched culture. The peace and tranquility, the pleasant programs and endless committee meetings of a churched-culture church is not where the church is at its best.
The church is always at its best on a mission field….
On the mission field the church is lean and strong and has courage and vision. In a churched culture the church becomes lazy and weak, timid and cautious, bloated and bureaucratic. The understanding of the nature of leadership is reduced to the principle of coordination. And coordination becomes the front, the code word, for caution.
On the mission field the church is at its blazing best. God has blessed us greatly by planting us on the mission field.” (26-27)
From the Publisher
“The day of the professional minister is over,” proclaims Kennon Callahan. “The day of the missionary pastor has come.” These are not words of prophesy but Callahan’s insightful assessment of effective leadership in today’s church. In this inspiring yet pragmatic book, the author of Twelve Keys to an Effective Church shares a new vision of leadership for the missionary pastor of the twenty-first century.
This practical “how-to” manual helps pastors and key leaders develop their leadership competencies by cultivating new understandings and practices. It focuses on the foundational principles for developing leadership on a mission field. “If you are a local church pastor—anywhere—you are on a mission field,” according to Callahan. Rather than prescribing one specific blueprint for leadership, he explores the basic principles that underpin effective leadership—leadership that is proactive, relational, intentional, and focused on the mission of God in the world. And he helps pastors and key leaders build on their creativity and imagination in order to revitalize their local churches and advance their missions.
Each generation must carve out an understanding of ministry that matches its time. The churched culture that existed in the late 1940s and 1950s is gone. The institutional understanding of top-down leadership no longer works. Leadership in today’s church must begin in the mission fields—the local community—at the grass roots. It must address more than those persons who are already participating in current local churches. Rather, it must begin with the unchurched. Leadership on the local mission field must bring in persons new to the Christian life, forming a renewed congregation founded on community, not committees. The way forward depends on this new model of leadership. “The day of the missionary pastor has come.”
About the Author
Kennon L. Callahan, researcher, professor, and pastor is one of today’s most sought-after church consultants. He has worked with thousands of congregations around the world and has helped tens of thousands of church leaders and pastors through his dynamic workshops and seminars. Author of many books, he is best known for his groundbreaking study Twelve Keys to an Effective Church, which has formed the basis for the Mission Growth Movement, a widely acclaimed program for church renewal. Callahan has earned the B.A., M.Div., S.T.M., and Ph.D. degrees. His doctorate is in Systematic Theology. He has served both rural and urban congregations in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia and taught for many years at Emory University. Ken and his wife of over forty years, Julie, have two children, Ken and Mike, and three grandchildren, Blake, Mason, and Brice. They enjoy the outdoors, hiking, horseback riding, and camping.
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