Serving Bread

A few years ago I attended a weekend conference on preaching. There were a few of us who were new to the ministry and the weekend served to teach us how to draft sermons. The teacher for the weekend was a professor at a local seminary.

One of the things that  stuck with me was the professor’s learning posture to better his craft. He visits several churches every Sunday morning and he pays particular attention to the sermon that the pastor preaches. He keeps a running tally of what he is learning from the pastor. When he likes the sermon, he jots what he likes about the sermon. If he doesn’t like the sermon, he takes notes on what he doesn’t like about the sermon.

This professor teaches preaching to young students. We might consider him an expert on the subject. And rather than criticize pastors who give disappointing sermons, this professor tries to learn from them. The good and the bad teach him to be better at his craft.

Sometimes we can think of those who know more than we do to be our teachers. We look to the things they have that we don’t have, and aspire to incorporate those things into our lives. Good leaders will learn from the experts. Better leaders will learn from everyone.

This is an important value that allows us to practice humility for the sake of our growth. A few months ago I was at a meeting of various ministry leaders learning to do evangelism. I didn’t want to be at that meeting nor did I think that the training was that effective. During the meeting, I asked myself several questions, “Is there anything here that is useful? What is effective in this method? What is ineffective? What is my philosophy of evangelism and why?”

Rather than feel like my afternoon was wasted, I looked for ways to redeem that time by learning from the situation. On the one hand, I did not think that anyone at that meeting had anything to offer me. On the other hand, this meeting was the perfect laboratory to learn. What could have been wasted was redeemed to be a growing experience.

Like the professor, leadership needs to be shaped both by experts and those who may fail at their particular craft.