Feeling out of breath? Then you are in good company. The very language of out of breath speaks to our awareness of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

The theology of the Holy Spirit is called pneumatology. In the Nicene Creed, we refer to the Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the Giver of Life.” The Hebrew phrase ruach ha-kodesh (Hebrew: רוח הקודש, “holy spirit” also transliterated ruaḥha-qodesh) is used in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and Jewish writings to refer to the spirit of YHWH (רוח יהוה). It literally means “the spirit of holiness” or “the spirit of the holy place.” Isn’t our deepest hope that our own faith community be experienced as a holy place? A place where people feel the Holy Spirit moving?

This month’s 10-Minute Toolbox* is a conversation with Pastor Kerry Nelson, Faith Lutheran Church, Bellaire, Texas. It focuses on the congregation’s location on the Leadership Landscape. This landscape is a changing place, impacted by many variables including shifts in the culture, economics, and technology. In the interview, Pastor Kerry talks about his own congregation’s journey, moving from out of breath to become a vital presence in the neighborhood.

To identify where your congregation is right now in this changing landscape, you can take the LEAD Assessment, a 20-question online survey. The value of your results, both for identifying where your congregation is now and for developing a plan to shift your congregation’s culture, increases with the number and diversity of the people who complete the survey.

We can’t control these shifts in the landscape – they are much bigger than we are. We can notice what God is doing in the midst of a changing world and move one step at a time towards the future. This is not easy work; it takes leaders who are willing to make the effort, one day at a time, to develop new behaviors. But it is holy work, following where the Holy Spirit is leading, becoming that holy place.

Enjoy this video gift for you!

*Access to this video, and the entire library of 10-Minute Toolbox videos, is free to LEAD Partners. If you are not already a LEAD Partner, you can sign up here for free.