Is helping others overrated? Is ministry a recipe for burnout? How can pastors last the course? Author and pastor Margaret Marcuson introduces the notion of sustainable ministry, which trains and empowers pastors to focus on their inner resources for proactive leadership, instead of trying harder to help, fix or change others. Leaders Who Last draws upon the authors own pastoral experience and leadership, plus a significant analysis of leadership in both families and churches over generations. Interviews with current church leaders punctuate chapters on stress, spiritual practice, church triangles, relationships, self awareness, money, and creating a climate where true change can take place.
Rev. Margaret J. Marcuson is a leader of leaders, ordained minister, and teacher and student of human systems. She speaks and writes on leadership and works with faith leaders nationally as a consultant/coach through her company Marcuson Leadership Circle, based in Portland, Oregon. Her website is http://margaretmarcuson.com/.
Margaret became deeply interested in leadership during her thirteen years as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Gardner, Massachusetts. "Over time I shifted from attempting the impossible--changing others--to the merely difficult--changing myself," she says. Her work focuses on how leaders manage themselves in relation to those they lead. They can challenge those they lead, and nurture their relationship with those they lead, but they cannot will others to change. "For me as a leader this was profoundly freeing," she says.
Margaret is on the faculty of the Leadership in Ministry workshops. She is a frequent guest preacher in churches. Her seminar and conference speaking and consulting crosses denominations, She is often called on to guide clergy through personal and congregational crisis.
