Robert D. Dale, Seeds for the Future: Growing Organic Leaders for Living Churches. Chalice Press, 2005.
Referenced in: Strategies for Church Renewal – Organic
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Most books on church renewal discuss leadership, but few are as targeted in discussing the kind of leadership necessary for effective church transformation as this one by Robert Dale. Anyone who has read extensively in church leadership will be familiar with Robert Dale. In my opinion, this is his best work.
Dale suggests a more “organic” understanding of how the various disciplines and planning procedures should be appropriated. He deliberately pulls away from what he calls the “mechanical” models that “were drawn from the levers and hydraulics of the Industrial Age.” He says these result in “pressurized” leadership that constantly struggles with the church to get it to do something it does not want or is not designed to do. By contrast, the “organic” model he presents assumes that churches, as living organisms, have natural ways of thriving, and will grow if we simply learn to be attuned to what God wishes to do with each living congregation. Operating from this organic understanding, and supported by Dale’s own practice of gardening, he presents a “sow and grow” approach to congregational leadership that “sows seeds of ministry and grows believers into leaders.”
Part One discusses how leaders grow and develop, as living organisms themselves. This starts with identifying the “aquifers,” or the resource streams that flow together in the growth and formation of healthy leaders. These are family systems, models and mentors, relationship gifts, core beliefs, key supporters, defining moments, early opportunities to practice leadership, opportunities to start over, and a theory of congregational leadership. He weaves these together beautifully to help leaders know where they have come from, why they are where they are, and where they are going.
Next he discusses congregations as living systems, insisting from the outset that “living organisms are led differently than machines.” He suggests that “organic leaders learn from creation’s examples” to be “leader-gardeners.” This occurs in seven patterns that he outlines in detail. This is followed by a chapter entitled “Already in Progress,” which describes congregations as constantly in transition. Leaders overreach when they say they “manage change,” because “from a theological point of view, congregational change is by God’s will and is the Creator’s proprietary work.” (41) Change occurs at God’s time and pace, sometimes like a glacier, at other times like an avalanche, and still at other times like the movement of a tectonic plate. There are, however, “creation’s turn signals” that point us toward understandings of transitions in ecosystems and solar systems, work and family systems, as well as multicultural and family systems. He highlights eight of these signals that are especially helpful to leaders of churches.
These early chapters set for the basic philosophy of organic leadership. The remaining chapters apply the organic philosophy to growing community breadth (connecting), depth (centering), and height (challenging). Part Three interprets congregational structures, strategies, and processes through the organic lens.
From the Publisher
After more than twenty years of leading and lecturing on leadership models based on a CEO approach to leadership, Robert Dale has taken a 180 degrees turn. Rather than the “pry and push” mechanical models of industry, Dale has moved to an organic “sow and grow” approach. The issue, says Dale, is whether or not congregational leaders really believe the church of Jesus Christ is alive. If congregations are living communities, they deserve to be lead in ways that plant seeds of faith in good seedbeds and then cultivate the seeds that germinate until harvest. This very old (biblical) and very new (postmodern) way of conceptualizing leadership begins with growing leaders then moves to community health and growth.
In Seeds for the Future, Robert Dale continually challenges church leaders to practice pastoral leadership in a new way. He uses examples and coaching conversations to weave three growth processes into a practice model for living churches: connecting, centering, and challenging. This new model becomes interlocking, ongoing processes for focusing living communities on growth and health.
This title is part of The Columbia Partnership Leadership Series. The TCP Leadership Series is an inspiration- and wisdom-sharing vehicle of The Columbia Partnership, a community of Christian leaders seeking to transform the capacity of the North American Protestant church to pursue and sustain vital Christ-centered ministry.
Editorial Reviews
“Robert Dale is a twenty-first-century Johnny Appleseed, spreading seeds of hope and transformation wherever he goes. For those willing to leave the fort of fear to acquire the forte of change, this book is indispensable.” – Leonard Sweet, Drew University, George Fox Evangelical Seminary
“In this time of historical transformation, Christian leaders have an opportunity to help seed new ways of thinking and acting while maintaining appropriate roots to scripture and church heritage. Bob Dale’s important new book brings to life how new forms of leadership, based on the principles of living systems, will be required to insure a vital and sustainable church in a different kind of twenty-first century world that is merging.” – Rick Smyre, president, Center for Communities of the Future
“With characteristic insight and extraordinary skill Bob Dale continues to raise our vision for leadership of the church. Unafraid to move beyond the insights he has brought to the discipline in past work, he calls us to `connect, center, and challenge’ God’s people as a living, thriving body. The leadership Bob calls us to is both more human and more divine. It allows us to live among and love people and pursue God’s Kingdom with God’s own power—that of relationships and faith.” – Bruce Grubbs, senior pastor, Gladeville Baptist Church, Gladeville, Tennessee
About the Author
Robert D. Dale is assistant executive director of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and director of the Ray and Ann Spence Network for Congregational Leadership. He has created many leadership development resources in his twenty years of training leaders within congregations and other church and parachurch organizations and is the author of twenty ministry books.
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