Core Leadership Team - January 2021
Prayer has been a key feature of the Baptist Together Core Leadership Team gatherings this month. We want to stand together with all those who are praying as we participate in renewed call to persevere in prayer as this pandemic and its far reaching effects continue to unfold. We meet each week on a Wednesday morning and we have been focusing our prayers on our churches, leaders and communities; what do they need right now and how we can we best support and encourage them?
Alongside this we have considered an Internship Survey Report that was commissioned by our Baptist Together Mission Forum. As a result we are creating an
Internships Project Group to connect and develop the valuable work that is already happening in this area.
When we met on the 13th January we carved out a longer time to
reflect and pray together further around 2 questions:
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What do our Churches / missional communities and ministers / leaders need most, now and through 2021?
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What are we hearing God say to us about what we could be /change / do differently as a team to better serve our churches / missional communities and ministers / leaders now and through 2021?
We recognized that people, churches and communities could be in different places and resonated with a recent article in the Financial Times which coined the categories: Bored, Burnout, Breakdown, Blessed. As a result some need rest and a held place in which to grieve, others need to tell their stories, some are beginning to look up and out and there are those who are sensing the creative opportunities and are beginning to recalibrate. We also know from our own experiences that how we are feeling in the midst of this pandemic can change from day to day!
We began to look at how we can be alongside people, churches and communities as they reflect on where they find themselves right now and how different teams within Baptist Together can offer love, encouragement, expertise and resources as we gradually (and hopefully!) move from crisis into recovery and towards a new normal.
I highlighted the book, “How to lead when you don’t know where you are going”, by Susan Beaumont and shared her insight that the role of leaders in these uncertain, in between times, is to continually take themselves and their people back to three key questions:
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Who am I?
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Who is God?
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What is God’s call now?
So that is a brief update from our Core Leadership Team for this month, but I want to you to be aware above all else that we are praying for you and with you as we stand together, as best we can, faithfully following Jesus and seeking His Kingdom.
In case you are wondering… The Core Leadership Team draws together leaders from across Baptists Together, not as representatives of a particular constituency but, to seek to enable leadership for our whole Movement. Baptist Union Council asks some of its members to form a team to serve the wider Council through…
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Devoting time to perceiving and refining what we understand God to be saying and doing, in order to enable the wider discernment of Council
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Encouraging each part of Baptists Together and its leaders to flourish in their callings through our deepening relationships and in doing so, enable the flourishing of our common life.
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Modelling what it means to be a Movement through our common purpose and collaborative relationships and working.
You can find out more by
following this link.
Lynn Green
January 2020
The Revd Lynn Green is General Secretary of our Baptist Union
The Core Leadership Team (CLT) is an expression of covenant and interdependence for us as Baptists. It draws together many of those offering leadership across our Movement (Regional Team Leaders, College Principals, Specialist Team Leaders, our President, Treasurer, General Secretary, the Moderators of Council and the Trustee Board, together with a leader from each of our current priority areas) and its purpose is to perceive what God is doing, to encourage flourishing across Baptists Together and to model together what it means to be a Kingdom Movement.
Please share these messages with your church