At last week’s European Cell Symposium, Phil Potter spoke about the conference title, “A New Kind of Leader”. He drew together five images from recent books, articles and discussions about the need for changing approaches to leadership in a changeing world.

To wet your appetite, we were invited to move from…

1. lighthouses to rafts (attracting to attaching)

2. diving boards to surfboards (restructuring to reimagining)

3. orchestras to jazz bands (orchestrating to improvising)

4. generals to gardeners (controlling to cultivating)

5. spiders to starfish (retaining to releasing)

The full transcript is available todownload by clicking here. It raises lots of questions and issues, so please do add your comments.

(In his later session, Ben Wong, beautifully drew together all five points under the observation that the people of God have always craved a king, and the “senior pastor” tends to be happy to play that role - but God is into theocracy!)

Next week (Wed & Thurs) is the Cell UK Annual Leadership Symposium. That sounds pretty unappealing unless you point out that in Greek, “Symposium” means “drinking party” (or so I am reliably informed by a friend Jeremy, who writes Greek textbooks for fun!)

Actually last year’s event was excellent in terms of both networking and input. If Ben Wong is half as inspirational again this year, it will be well worth worth going.

Phil Potter is also doing some input - but don’t let that put you off coming! We’re going to post a transcript of his talk about new paradigms of leadership on this site straight after the event to allow feedback and discussion.

richard

I’m enjoying watching Paul Merton’s travels around China. In this week’s episode, it was fascinating to see him visit an underground Chinese “house church”.

The house was packed with scores of people jammed into every room with the service relayed by video from the main meeting room.

hmmm, don’t they realise that they’re doing “cell” all wrong? Too many people and you can’t build authentic community you know! You have to divide multiply as soon as you get to ten people in the group.

They might be risking prison to meet (the pastor had spent over twenty years in prison), but they’re obviously still “transitioning” to a full cell church model.

Maybe we can find a way to share our Western cell church strategies, systems and models so that they can become a vibrant, committed, growing, New Testament church like us.