Rev. Dr. Romerlito C. Macalinao, M.A., Ed.D. 1/6

Adapted from Reggie McNeal (2000) (2000), “A Work of Heart,” Jossey-Bass Publishers

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Culture. This is the first major player in the leader’s heart development. It creates a backdrop for all the rest of the story lines. Culture is broadly defined to include all environmental influences that shape the leader’s life and ministry context. These include the historical period, political situation, societal mores, and traditions. All these create the cultural milieu in which the leader operates. Culture is not neutral; it contains both positive and negative forces. Nor does it serve merely as a background. Culture creates a story line in itself, for the leader’s heart cannot be explained apart from its cultural influences.

What cultural influences in your early years have shaped you most significantly?

How have these influences fashioned your uniqueness?

Are you a student of culture?

Do you know what is going on in the world?

Do you look for ways to connect with the culture or seek ways to escape it?

How comfortable or angry are you with those outside the faith?

What is your track record of influencing people toward Jesus?

Call. Every leader will admit to having some sense of destiny, whether great or small. In spiritual leaders, we can refer to this as the awareness of a call. The call is the leader’s personal conviction of having received some life assignment or mission that must be completed. The call orders the leader’s efforts, affecting decision in every area of life. How the leader comes to an understanding of the life mission and how to pursue it provides a significant subplot for the leader’s life drama.

What did you answer the call to do?

Have you seen the attendant gifts, talents, and passion come along?

What has God anointed?

When do you feel most alive in ministry?

How has your understanding of your call changed over time?

How is the call being expressed in why you are doing right now?

Who is your audience?

Community. Leaders do not develop in isolation. They emerge within a community that plays a vital role in shaping them. Actually we should speak of multiple communities in the leader’s development. The family of origin, or initial life community, provides a beginning place for understanding this subplot in the leader’s story. However, other key communities come into play. These may include the leader’s friendships and faith-ministry communities.

What gifts have you brought forward from your family of origin?

What have you claimed responsibility for?

What level of intimacy have you achieved with your family? Why or why not?

Who will attend your funeral?

What will they say about your relationship with them?

What kind of community are you building through your ministry, co-workers?

Who among your leadership constituency?

Who would be a good person or group to talk to about your answers to the above personals?

Communion. This aspect of heart-shaping reflects the leader’s conscious cultivation of a relationship with God. Spiritual leaders deal in spiritual currency. The value of this currency depends directly on the strength of the leader’s deposit into the relationship bank with the Almighty. The communion subplot opens the door to the intimate interactions between the leader and the Leader.

Do you have regular dates or coaching sessions with God?

What other images invite you to spend quality time with Him?

When God thinks about you, what expression comes over his face?

Does he smile or frown? Why?

What can you do to improve your communion?

What do others know about the conversations you have with God?

How do you keep God on your heart throughout the day?

How are you cultivating God’s friendship?

What is the last thing you have learned about God in your times together?

Conflict. One could naively suspect that because spiritual leaders focus on healing, grace, peacemaking, restoration, forgiveness, and reconciliation, they escape from a lot of conflict. Just the opposite is true. The nature of the work places the spiritual leader in a combative position against destructive powers, the dark side of spiritual forces. Spiritual leaders find themselves thrown into the thick of the fray. These conflicts, whether personal, interrelational, demonic, or organizational, are not tangential developments. Rather, they are central heart-shaping events and episodes.

What family-of-origin issues influence how you deal with conflict?

What are you memoirs of early leadership conflicts?

What happened during your most recent conflict experience?

What if anything, would you do differently now?

Commonplace. A lot of heart-shaping activity goes on in the everyday, run-of-the-mill, when-nobody’s-looking activity of the leader. The defining moments in leaders’ lives rarely offer a study in discontinuity. Usually leaders come to believe that all of life served to prepare them for that crystallizing event. The ordinary and routine serve to shape the leader’s character. How the leader responds to everyday challenges and opportunity reflects a basic predisposition toward God’s work in the leader’s life.

Where have you seen God lately?

What joys can you recite?

How have others blessed you today?

How have you been a blessing?

What beauty surrounds you?

What pain drives you to God?

What kindness have you received recently?

Who have you befriended in the last few days?

What small or large obediences to God can you celebrate?

Is your heart song one of gratitude?