June 1, 2023

Dear Hyde Park Family,

Among my leadership roles beyond the local church is that I serve as the chairperson of the Florida Conference Board of Ordained Ministry for the United Methodist Church. We evaluate and recommend persons to serve as clergy in our Conference. Our work culminates every year with our Annual Conference gathering in Lakeland, set for next Thursday through Saturday. I certainly appreciate your prayers for our work.

Last year, our Board invited consultants from the Forum for Theological Exploration to help us improve the way we do our work, including identifying implicit biases in our perceptions and processes, improving communication, and navigating through change. Those two consultants, Stephen Lewis and Dori Baker, presented insights based on their book “Another Way: Living and Leading Change on Purpose.”

Their wisdom was not only helpful to the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Conference; I think they are applicable to all of us, in whatever vocation, life stage, or walk of life we find ourselves in that requires courageous, adaptive leadership.

Here are seven of their most powerful insights. I hope you find them meaningful:

· Dialogue is an essential leadership practice and a core process for change.

· Leadership is a communal practice that builds the capacity of a team, community, or organization to envision and enact a future informed by the past and the diverse people around us.

· Strengthen your capacity to embrace mystery by thinking about, playing with, and adapting to uncertainty, because it, like death, is inevitable.

· Leadership is more about public listening than public speaking.

· The wisdom of our ancestors and descendants is always present and available to us, so remember to welcome them as we face the most difficult tasks of our lives.

· Learn from multiplicity. Most of us are more than any one thing simultaneously. Appreciate the complexity of other stories and perspectives.

· There is a future that mourns if you and I do not step into our purpose.

As people of Pentecost, let us open ourselves to the ongoing, innovative work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May we each step into our purpose, and claim the leadership voice that God summons of us.

Happy Pentecost!