A couple of years ago, I was privileged to be on a team in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago that helped congregations to revive their vigor. We took them back to basics: What does it mean to be church? From time to time, we’d invite people to join us who have experience or expertise in various subjects pertinent to church vitality.
One of the best of them was a professor from the MBA program at Northwestern University, of all things. Her subject was leadership, and we had engaged her for a full day with our participants. For the first hour or so, she led a discussion on the principles and characteristics of good leadership, drawing from the experiences in the room. It was a lively conversation that resulted in a fairly detailed sketch of what good leadership does.
Then she spent the rest of her time with us teaching us how to dance.
