Triperspectival Leadership
You know I'm a sucker for polysyllabic words... so when I heard about triperspectivalism, my first thought was, "Now, there is an ecclesiological principle I can get behind!" But it's more than just a wonderfully pretentious name. It's also a pretty helpful way of thinking about church leadership.
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To over-simplify, the insight is that church leaders tend to be prophets, priests, or kings. Prophets love to proclaim the word of God and dream about where God is leading the church. Kings love to put systems in place to make it happen. Priests make sure that everyone is cared for and feels God's love along the way.
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Understanding your church leadership in light of those strengths (and attending weaknesses) can help you identify blind-spots and make good decisions about staffing and new leaders. I have found this really helpful as our church incorporates new elders and thinks through how we can do things better.
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If you're interested in more information:
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Here is a longish primer on triperspectivalism by John Frame. It speaks to church leadership on pages 8 and 9.
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Also, two helpful talks from a 2008 Acts 29 boot camp: Triperspectival Leadership and Prophet, Priest, and King by David Fairchild.
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For those with limited attention spans: here's a chart summarizing the some of the key ideas.
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I haven't read it, but I've been told that chapter 14 of Leading With a Limp by Dan Allender addresses this issue.
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Also, Mark Driscoll gave a very practical message on this topic at the 2008 CCEF National Conference, particularly applying triperspectival leadership to ministering to addicts in your church. You can listen to it here.
MIke, thanks for all the helpful links - this is good information and a good reminder that faithful, well-rounded pastoral leadership is multi-faceted. I can't believe you were willing to potentially jeopardize any Cooperative Program funding twice over in one quick blog entry, though! :)
Posted by: Scott Davis | Jul 4, 2009 2:37:56 PM
Scott,
I think I forfeited my future CP dollars when I posted the deer head a couple of weeks back! :)
m
Posted by: Mike McKinley | Jul 6, 2009 4:38:09 AM
Michael,
So, you are a prophet right? I'm a prophet/priest I would say.
I heard Driscoll speak on this at the CCEF conference and found it to be helpful... though I'd like to read more on it b/c the biblical basis for the distinctions seems pretty sparse.
Common sense-wise: sure -- you need all three of these types of people.
Hope things are well at Guilford... something you may not have considered on your space issue is you could do something called multiple services. It's where you ... ;)
Posted by: Garrett Wishall | Jul 6, 2009 9:41:07 AM