Episode 6 - Stepping Into The Future.

Dave and David looking for their DeLorean
Looking into the future can be daunting - but is unavoidable for the leader.

References




Romans 8:19 talks about the creation waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. It provides an orientation towards the future of eager longing rather than that fearfulness that so often comes first to mind.

The foundation of confidence can be found in Malachi 3:6 which simply starts with “I the Lord do not change.” - God's faithful character underlying whatever it is that we encounter. Our God is like a great Greek unmoved mover – he has a great reliable constancy of character. He is not capricious.
He is not playing with us.

God has got purposes in mind and he is moving things to accomplish. And in that there is a constancy of loving faithfulness that we can count on and that's a really foundational resource that believers can respect when they're looking at questions of leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship: the resource of a faithful God leading us into the future.

Trumps Tweets distil the quintessence of volatility. One man's tweets. A hundred forty four characters at 2:00 a.m. in the morning can bring the world to perilous times around nuclear war.

I can lie in my own bed at some wee hours of the morning sleepless because I'm reading feed from a person on the other side of the world. You know it's all connected and it's fast and that is a key contributor to the complexity of what we face

Ambiguity: there are so many possible ways of interpreting the unfolding of the future, or the unfolding of the present into the future, or how many ways you can read the present and what it might possibly portend the future.

In this complex world, how do I lead in and feel any confidence that going down this route will be fruitful and life giving for the system that I'm working in, be that a church context or a business contex?

The future is the next assured piece of God's story of his unfolding purposes. Future is a lot like history because God has shown us who he is and how he works. Does that mean it's predictable. No. But it is nevertheless a place of safety and of confidence for those who travel along with God.

“Underneath are the everlasting arms. The eternal God is your refuge”. Not just hang onto it by your fingernails,  but let Him be the centre and font from which we work.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew he had to keep proceeding as God's man in a mad situation. And he took great comfort from the fact that he knew that he could never act without sin and without grace being a necessary part of the way that he was accepted in in God.


Future Shock - Alvin Toffler (1970)

VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. That's a shorthand that is used routinely now in business literature about the nature of the change context that we face.

The story of GrooveShark and Spotify (Start Up Podcast from Gimlet Media)







Listen here





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Episode 14 - Interview with Stephen McAlpine

Image
Stephen McAlpine is a church planter, blogger and writer from Perth, Western Australia. In this interview with Dave Cornford, Stephen talks particularly about the importance of  - understanding context  - the liturgy of life as well as the "thick" liturgy of worship  - leadership in church planting. This conversation with a seasoned practitioner is sure to inspire you! Links: Stephen's blog . Desiring the Kingdom - Jamie Smith Listen here: Find the podcast on  itunes  here .
Read more

Episode 16 - Survivors of Trauma

Image
In this episode, Dave Cornford talks with Barb Shearer-Jones on the issue of caring for survivors of trauma and abuse. Barb is the former Chair of Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA) , and brings a practical perspective to this challenging and sensitive issue. Resources Mandatory Reporting This page examines legal provisions requiring specified people to report suspected abuse and neglect to government child protection services in Australia. 1 Blue Knot Foundation  - 1300 657 380 Counselling and support for survivors Bravehearts Inc  - 1800 272 831 Counselling and support for survivors, child protection advocacy Care Leavers Australasia Network  - 1800 008 774 Support and advocacy for Forgotten Australians Child Migrants Trust  - 1800 040 509 Social work services for Former Child Migrants, including counselling and support for family reunions Child Wise  - 1800 991 099 Trauma informed telephone and online c...
Read more

What do we mean by Leadership?

Image
Hmmm.   Leadership. So much easier to talk about when we were all managers! Because then we knew that what we wanted to be was leaders, but we were just managers. Our way into this one actually comes through an understanding of conversation, and some of the ways we hold the word “conversation” – that is, that we give it more weight than just chat, or just what happens after the first few beers. Mark Strom, the author of Lead with Wisdom (Wiley, 2013), found a pithy way of making a key distinction about organisational talk. He writes: “Communication is sharing created meaning. Conversation is creating shared meaning… At a certain level communication and conversation are synonyms. Yet the distinction is not just playing with words. The bigger picture is our assumptions about knowing and meaning. Communication — sharing created meaning — suggests there already exists some knowledge that others need to know. We need to communicate: clearly, concisely, and relevantly.… Communi...
Read more