You might have heard the notion of leader as servant. I imagine that it might be based in the model of Christ as servant of His people, I’m not sure. But I have some experience with the idea that I might like to share.
Here’s the core of the idea:
- The group is the ones who deliver the value of the organization, much more than the leader personally.
- The leader can have the most impact by helping his people to deliver that value, removing obstacles and facilitating action.
- Therefore, the leader can be most valuable by thinking of himself as servant of the group.
But this is just the starting point, there’s more to the story.
Continue reading The servant leader
I’m really enjoying God’s gift of yearly cycles. During the summer, especially, is my time to refresh, re-energize, and re-commit. This is possible because so many things slow down during this season as people focus on vacations and family.
Sometimes the summer “break” feels a little weird because our kids are grown up and I’m running my own business, but that’s a topic for another day.
For the last three years, I’ve gone to the Sacred Music Colloquium. Continue reading Revitalize!
Colorado's state flower
Summer is my time to reflect and renew my commitments for the coming year. I talked about this some last June, when I was struggling with whether our schola would achieve critical mass. Looking back on the progress, we now have grown to a dozen loyal and talented members, now including women as well as men.
We really are quite blessed. Despite challenges and frustrations, it’s wonderful to be bringing this traditional music back to our parish.
Continue reading Refresh and renew
One of my other roles at church is to help out with our parish’s RCIA program. Yesterday, despite a somewhat tenuous weather situation, we all traipsed down to the Cathedral in Denver for one of the Rite of Election services with the Archbishop. As always, he was a wonderful Shepherd for his flock, helping our RCIA Candidates and Catechumens to realize the magnitude of their life-altering decisions.
What does this have to do with Sacred Music?
Continue reading Remember why we do this!
My colleague Tony made this observation in a discussion last week:
“We can be powerful without being perfect.”
It really struck me as an important concept, one that I need to constantly remember on my journey of life.
Continue reading We can be powerful without being perfect
“Life is not about avoiding broken eggs. Life is about presence (broken eggs and all)” – Terry Hershey
There’s so many problems, so many things to be fixed. We live in fear of what is and what’s to come. And meanwhile, we spend our lives constantly focusing on the future.
Here’s the deal: Your presence is in the present. And if you can’t enjoy and appreciate what God has given you in the present, you will reside in constant misery.
Continue reading Living life as it is
A colleague today raised an interesting question which caused me to start thinking pretty deeply. Here’s the problem: How do we get someone to fix something that they’re satisfied with, but we’re not? If they have control of the situation, and they’re satisfied with it, it’ll take a lot of concerted effort to get them to change.
This can be especially true in a church context, because there are significant power relationships at work, and deep emotions. Both of these are even more exaggerated for church musicians.
Continue reading Honey or vinegar
I had the opportunity to sing Compline with the schola from another parish last night – a wonderful and prayerful experience. But earlier in the week, the director tangentially referred to me as “the professional.”
Say what? I mean, I’m a neophyte at this chant, and have only been working on it for a few years. No college training in music.
Continue reading “Pro” – really??
Here’s an interesting idea I get from Clay Shirky’s video above (if you can’t see it, try this link): Many useful things these days are being done purely by volunteers.
That’s a huge change from the way we usually think. We tend to focus on what organizations do through their employees, and by money changing hands. But [...]
Last time I talked about the upcoming big chant gathering we have next Sunday. Well, we had our practice yesterday, and finally got a chance to meet and find out what we’ve learned, and whether it was the same thing.
Continue reading Trusting the Holy Spirit, big time!
2010 Colloquium