What do you think?
Rate this book
Seeds for the Future: Growing Organic Leaders for Living Churches
After more than twenty years of leading and lecturing on leadership models based on a CEO approach to leadership, Robert Dale has taken a 180 degree turn. Rather than the "pry and push" mechanical models of industry, Dale has moved to an organic "sow and grow" approach. The issue, says Dale, is whether or not congregational leaders really believe the church of Jesus Christ is alive. If congregations are living communities, they deserve to be lead in ways that plant seeds of faith in good seedbeds and then cultivate the seeds that germinate until harvest. This very old (biblical) and very new (postmodern) way of conceptualizing leadership begins with growing leaders then moves to community health and growth. In Seeds for the Future, Robert Dale continually challenges church leaders to practice pastoral leadership in a new way. He uses examples and coaching conversations to weave three growth processes into a practice model for living churches: connecting, centering, and challenging. This new model becomes interlocking, ongoing processes for focusing living communities on growth and health.
Paperback
First published November 1, 2005
7 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 19, 2017
Seeds for the Future: Growing Organic Leaders for Living Churches is a unique look at leadership in today’s church. Its author, Robert Dale, a director on the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and of a congregational leadership network, has set out to encourage a new way of looking at leadership in the church. Dale reframes the concepts and issues of church polity and growth in organic terms through comparisons to natural processes.
The fundamental aim of this book is to convince the reader to view the church of Christ as a “living organism” (p. xii) rather than as a mechanical organization. Thus, Dale describes his work as a primer on organic leadership. This book review will therefore examine Seeds for the Future in those terms.
Overview
Dale divides his work into three successive parts. The first section, “Cultivating Sowers, Seeds, and Seasons,” introduces the concept of “triads” – Dale’s observation that life “moves” in threes (p. 1). Examples given include Scriptural patterns like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, faith, hope, and love, and the Trinity. Leadership itself, he argues, is triadic; composed of leaders, followers, and settings, it involves interaction in three directions: between leader and follower, leader and setting, and between follower and setting.
The first section is then divided in three chapters. The first, “Growing Self and Growing Soul,” introduces the idea of “soul gardening” – tending for one’s own spiritual health – and traces the influences that form and affect a leader, including family background, experience and crisis, and support networks. The second chapter, “Your Church is alive,” introduces the different paradigms that have governed how we look at “church” – the Industrial, Information, and Experience Ages (p. 24) – and then frames a leader as a “gardener” who cultivates immunity in the church community. Here Dale introduces the three “Organic Congregational Leadership Processes” referred to throughout the book: connecting, challenging, and centering. The third chapter, “Already in Progress,” describes the context of church ministry as being change, defines our response to change as “transition,” and describes three kinds of transition: endings, turnings, and beginnings (p. 47).
The second section of the book, “Growing Communities, Calling, and Courage,” takes the previously introduced framework of “connecting, centering, and challenging” and relates it to the issue of growing a community in depth, breadth, and height. Chapter four, “Connecting 101: Growing Community Breadth,” examines the growth of connection and trust in community by looking at how and why connections form between people. The next chapter, “Centering 101: Growing Community Depth,” uses the analogy of an iceberg to probe the development of identity and discernment. Chapter six, “Challenging 101: Growing Community Height,” looks at the elements of courage, vision, and nerve that are required to challenge a community to set and achieve goals for growth.
The final section, “Harvesting Structures, Strategies, and Processes,” looks at the interconnected and interwoven nature of relationships in community. Chapter seven, “Cultivating leadership structures,” stresses the importance of both flexibility and stability and then examines different kinds of structures needed by communities. The eighth chapter, “Harvesting Leadership Strategy,” looks at the problem of developing strategy while “on the run,” and stresses the importance of focus on the future with flexibility (p. 136). The final chapter, “Planting Leadership Processes,” describes the church as a living network whose natural energies must be assessed, coached, triggered, and sensed in order to be led.
Evaluation
Dare’s stated purpose in writing Seeds for the Future is to provide “a seed catalog, a planting and growing guide for leader-gardeners in living churches” (p. xiii). To that end, he aims first to force readers to see their own presuppositions and look at church and congregational leadership from an organic perspective (p. xiii). In this respect, he succeeds admirably. Dale’s deep familiarity with organic processes, ecology, and agriculture comes through in the rich and varied imagery provided as metaphors and analogies throughout the book. For example, he compares a person’s “grounding,” or source of self and soul, to underground aquifers (p. 4), and the sense of discernment and identity that leadership fosters to natural immunity (p. 34). He describes leadership processes as circulatory systems (p. 151) and churches that follow their source of light and energy as “heliotropic,” like sunflowers turning towards the sun (p. 98). In this way, Dale manages to take conceptual and ethereal ideas and make them concrete and easy to grasp.
A minor weakness of his approach is that sometimes the natural process being used as a metaphor is explained in detail, but the analogous leadership lesson is not – or the connection between metaphor and reality could use more explaining, but the “exposition” of the example is largely ignored. An example is Dale’s discussion of how aquifers have porosity, can recharge, and give off overflow in springs and geysers (pp. 20-21). Dale spends one or two paragraphs on each natural quality, but its connection to our selves and souls is limited to one or two sentences each. Some of these – particularly the reference to “working out of overflow” (p. 21) need more exposition. Dale’s comment, “Explosions are spectacular to watch but impossible to contain” could be interpreted positively or negatively, but no further guidance is offered.
Dale makes several incisive observations throughout the book. On page 1, he notes the triadic nature of leadership (shades of John Frame?), and makes the important point that while a leader has control over his relationship with followers and with his setting, he cannot force followers and setting to interact. This is the “off-side” of leadership. This is a very true point – the only effect a leader can have on that relationship will be indirect. A leader can coach or teach followers to view their setting in a particular way, immunize them against threats, help them see opportunities they may otherwise miss, and motivate or encourage followers to engage their settings. In the end, though, it is the follower’s initiative to interact with setting, and so a leader’s role is to ensure the follower is equipped to do so.
In chapter 2, Dale observes the differences between Industrial, Information, and Experience Age thinking, noting that many Industrial assumptions such as competition, specialization, and need for proof have been accepted a priori by the church. He notes that mindsets are changing, and changing fast. An especially interesting insight is that the youngest leaders today are likely to face four or five massive paradigm shifts in their lifetime (p. 25). It is tempting to think of the present as being the way things always will be, and Dale’s caution should be observed by church leaders today. Young pastors and leaders must be prepared to be flexible in order to respond to the culture around them.
Dale does not, however, place adequate emphasis on the good lessons to be learned from the Industrial Age, as his treatment of it is largely negative. Dale fails to observe that in the Experience Age, immunity will require certain assumptions he places under the Industrial umbrella – especially the “need for proof.” When a person has an experience, they interpret this subjectively, and if their interpretation is wrong the only way to guard Christian truth is to appeal to an objective standard – a “proof.” Dropping such Industrial Age ideas entirely might leave the church to be tossed to and fro “on every wind of doctrine” in a sea of subjective experientialism. Dale’s comments on a leader building immunity for the community are very instructive in this regard, but in making the Industrial – Experiential contrast he diminishes an essential immunity tool.
The book makes the important observation that “living things change. Period.” (p. 40) It might have been more helpful in this regard if Dale had emphasized that certain things never change and that the church’s mission is to present unchanging truth. Nature provides many examples of constant change, but He who created nature, and His Word, do not change. Particularly important for churches, neither does the human problem – sinfulness and rebellion against God – for this problem is the same now as it ever was. While the church’s approach to culture must be as flexible and organic as culture itself, its message is a firm foundation, a Rock. What is an organic approach to communicating inorganic and unchanging truth? None is given. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that church life in this accelerating culture will be in a context of constant change. Dale stresses this fact throughout the book, and it is a lesson that must be heeded. To “stick one’s head in the sand” and pretend that things are not changing will lead quickly to irrelevance and ineffectiveness.
Conclusion
Dale’s aim of presenting an alternative way of looking at church leadership is successfully met in this book. By the end of the book, the reader has been conditioned to look at leadership and church life in organic terms. Dale’s use of metaphor and description of the organic nature of human organizations is sound and is easy to remember. It is vital for leaders to be able to “think outside the box,” and Dale’s approach makes this easy. Despite some shortcomings, this overall purpose is met, and for this reason I would recommend Seeds for the Future to pastors and seminarians alike. Even Christians not serving in pastoral leadership would benefit greatly from an organic view of church life.
The fundamental aim of this book is to convince the reader to view the church of Christ as a “living organism” (p. xii) rather than as a mechanical organization. Thus, Dale describes his work as a primer on organic leadership. This book review will therefore examine Seeds for the Future in those terms.
Overview
Dale divides his work into three successive parts. The first section, “Cultivating Sowers, Seeds, and Seasons,” introduces the concept of “triads” – Dale’s observation that life “moves” in threes (p. 1). Examples given include Scriptural patterns like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, faith, hope, and love, and the Trinity. Leadership itself, he argues, is triadic; composed of leaders, followers, and settings, it involves interaction in three directions: between leader and follower, leader and setting, and between follower and setting.
The first section is then divided in three chapters. The first, “Growing Self and Growing Soul,” introduces the idea of “soul gardening” – tending for one’s own spiritual health – and traces the influences that form and affect a leader, including family background, experience and crisis, and support networks. The second chapter, “Your Church is alive,” introduces the different paradigms that have governed how we look at “church” – the Industrial, Information, and Experience Ages (p. 24) – and then frames a leader as a “gardener” who cultivates immunity in the church community. Here Dale introduces the three “Organic Congregational Leadership Processes” referred to throughout the book: connecting, challenging, and centering. The third chapter, “Already in Progress,” describes the context of church ministry as being change, defines our response to change as “transition,” and describes three kinds of transition: endings, turnings, and beginnings (p. 47).
The second section of the book, “Growing Communities, Calling, and Courage,” takes the previously introduced framework of “connecting, centering, and challenging” and relates it to the issue of growing a community in depth, breadth, and height. Chapter four, “Connecting 101: Growing Community Breadth,” examines the growth of connection and trust in community by looking at how and why connections form between people. The next chapter, “Centering 101: Growing Community Depth,” uses the analogy of an iceberg to probe the development of identity and discernment. Chapter six, “Challenging 101: Growing Community Height,” looks at the elements of courage, vision, and nerve that are required to challenge a community to set and achieve goals for growth.
The final section, “Harvesting Structures, Strategies, and Processes,” looks at the interconnected and interwoven nature of relationships in community. Chapter seven, “Cultivating leadership structures,” stresses the importance of both flexibility and stability and then examines different kinds of structures needed by communities. The eighth chapter, “Harvesting Leadership Strategy,” looks at the problem of developing strategy while “on the run,” and stresses the importance of focus on the future with flexibility (p. 136). The final chapter, “Planting Leadership Processes,” describes the church as a living network whose natural energies must be assessed, coached, triggered, and sensed in order to be led.
Evaluation
Dare’s stated purpose in writing Seeds for the Future is to provide “a seed catalog, a planting and growing guide for leader-gardeners in living churches” (p. xiii). To that end, he aims first to force readers to see their own presuppositions and look at church and congregational leadership from an organic perspective (p. xiii). In this respect, he succeeds admirably. Dale’s deep familiarity with organic processes, ecology, and agriculture comes through in the rich and varied imagery provided as metaphors and analogies throughout the book. For example, he compares a person’s “grounding,” or source of self and soul, to underground aquifers (p. 4), and the sense of discernment and identity that leadership fosters to natural immunity (p. 34). He describes leadership processes as circulatory systems (p. 151) and churches that follow their source of light and energy as “heliotropic,” like sunflowers turning towards the sun (p. 98). In this way, Dale manages to take conceptual and ethereal ideas and make them concrete and easy to grasp.
A minor weakness of his approach is that sometimes the natural process being used as a metaphor is explained in detail, but the analogous leadership lesson is not – or the connection between metaphor and reality could use more explaining, but the “exposition” of the example is largely ignored. An example is Dale’s discussion of how aquifers have porosity, can recharge, and give off overflow in springs and geysers (pp. 20-21). Dale spends one or two paragraphs on each natural quality, but its connection to our selves and souls is limited to one or two sentences each. Some of these – particularly the reference to “working out of overflow” (p. 21) need more exposition. Dale’s comment, “Explosions are spectacular to watch but impossible to contain” could be interpreted positively or negatively, but no further guidance is offered.
Dale makes several incisive observations throughout the book. On page 1, he notes the triadic nature of leadership (shades of John Frame?), and makes the important point that while a leader has control over his relationship with followers and with his setting, he cannot force followers and setting to interact. This is the “off-side” of leadership. This is a very true point – the only effect a leader can have on that relationship will be indirect. A leader can coach or teach followers to view their setting in a particular way, immunize them against threats, help them see opportunities they may otherwise miss, and motivate or encourage followers to engage their settings. In the end, though, it is the follower’s initiative to interact with setting, and so a leader’s role is to ensure the follower is equipped to do so.
In chapter 2, Dale observes the differences between Industrial, Information, and Experience Age thinking, noting that many Industrial assumptions such as competition, specialization, and need for proof have been accepted a priori by the church. He notes that mindsets are changing, and changing fast. An especially interesting insight is that the youngest leaders today are likely to face four or five massive paradigm shifts in their lifetime (p. 25). It is tempting to think of the present as being the way things always will be, and Dale’s caution should be observed by church leaders today. Young pastors and leaders must be prepared to be flexible in order to respond to the culture around them.
Dale does not, however, place adequate emphasis on the good lessons to be learned from the Industrial Age, as his treatment of it is largely negative. Dale fails to observe that in the Experience Age, immunity will require certain assumptions he places under the Industrial umbrella – especially the “need for proof.” When a person has an experience, they interpret this subjectively, and if their interpretation is wrong the only way to guard Christian truth is to appeal to an objective standard – a “proof.” Dropping such Industrial Age ideas entirely might leave the church to be tossed to and fro “on every wind of doctrine” in a sea of subjective experientialism. Dale’s comments on a leader building immunity for the community are very instructive in this regard, but in making the Industrial – Experiential contrast he diminishes an essential immunity tool.
The book makes the important observation that “living things change. Period.” (p. 40) It might have been more helpful in this regard if Dale had emphasized that certain things never change and that the church’s mission is to present unchanging truth. Nature provides many examples of constant change, but He who created nature, and His Word, do not change. Particularly important for churches, neither does the human problem – sinfulness and rebellion against God – for this problem is the same now as it ever was. While the church’s approach to culture must be as flexible and organic as culture itself, its message is a firm foundation, a Rock. What is an organic approach to communicating inorganic and unchanging truth? None is given. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that church life in this accelerating culture will be in a context of constant change. Dale stresses this fact throughout the book, and it is a lesson that must be heeded. To “stick one’s head in the sand” and pretend that things are not changing will lead quickly to irrelevance and ineffectiveness.
Conclusion
Dale’s aim of presenting an alternative way of looking at church leadership is successfully met in this book. By the end of the book, the reader has been conditioned to look at leadership and church life in organic terms. Dale’s use of metaphor and description of the organic nature of human organizations is sound and is easy to remember. It is vital for leaders to be able to “think outside the box,” and Dale’s approach makes this easy. Despite some shortcomings, this overall purpose is met, and for this reason I would recommend Seeds for the Future to pastors and seminarians alike. Even Christians not serving in pastoral leadership would benefit greatly from an organic view of church life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review