Mission Insite Reports for Heartland South Congregations Looking for your MissionInsite Report Select Churches and scroll to the name of your congregation.  Files are in PDF format and can be downloaded to your computer or read online. Looking for how to register for MissionInsite to generate your own reports.  Click Here. If you have problems you can contact Tammy Calcote in the Conference office at 877-736-1806 ====================================================== DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT COLLIER'S OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS ======================================================   June 28, 2009   Colleagues-- It’s time to meet with an old friend:   Dear Quiet,   It is time to catch up with you again. I remember when I first met you as a child climbing high into a backyard tree. We would spend hours together enjoying the peace above all the noise and expectations below. I liked the way you would sing to me in the wind and tickle my spirit to imagine the impossible. How you help me to see and think more clearly when I’m away from life’s distractions.   It was growing up with you that I was able to know the power of prayer and how to be present to others.  It has been through your whispered invitation that I have found you calming my fears and doubts through life’s challenges. I am amazed how you always seem to be wooing me over in unbelievable God moments.   I have failed to thank you for your presence and care while dealing with the ongoing tension of the being and doing of ministry:  the soothing way you lift my soul as I work on the burdensome joy of preparing a message, the unspeakable gift of silence while holding a hand of someone dying, the remarkable way you gave me strength when hearing the words “you have cancer,” and the healing that followed through slowing down rather than running from you.   It is also in those silent places that you have reminded me of all the wonderful people and blessings in my life. You are teaching me daily to do no harm, do good where I am, and stay close to you. What a way you have with me when I am not glued to my calendar or the next meeting. What a better and positive servant I am when I am not spending all my time at the computer or trying to fix every situation.   I am letting you know today, I have missed you. I am sorry for all the excuses I have made for not getting in touch with you. So, dear quiet friend, thank you for always making yourself available to me. I am on my way for a quiet visit. I just got your message:  Be still.   Colleagues,   While I visit this old friend and spend time with my family during July 1-16, 2009, the Rev. Brent Mustoe (Aldersgate UMC) will be available for any emergencies. I look forward to seeing you when I return for the visits with Bob Farr and at our District picnic, July 30, 2009.        Cody   ============================================= District Superintendent Collier on Leadership ============================================= The leader’s task is to create an environment that is conducive to self motivation.  If people are coming excited, if they are making mistakes freely and fearlessly, if they are having fun, if they are concentrating on doing things rather than preparing reports and going to meetings, then somewhere you have a leader.  To a leader the important thing is not what happens when you're there, but what happens when you are not there.  To be a leader means willingness to risk and a willingness to love.  Has the leader given you something from the heart?  Perhaps more than anything else leadership is about creation of a new way of life. The world of the 90s and beyond will not belong to managers or those who make the numbers dance or those who are conversant with all that business jargon, that stuff we use to sound so smart.  The world will belong to the passionate driven leaders, people who have not only an enormous amount of energy, but who can energize those they lead.