1. Personal Mastery (Senge’s Five Disciplines)
Living System Ministry
Personal Mastery (Senge’s Five Disciplines)
Understanding the First of Senge’s Five Disciplines
© 2012 Emmanuel Gospel Center

2. Personal Mastery Dedication to continuous focus, learning and growth
What is Personal Mastery?
Have you ever run or played a sport after not doing it in a while? Let’s stop to think about that now. It’s likely that you were easily winded. Your body struggled to respond and recover as quickly as you wanted it to. Perhaps it didn’t even feel like your own body because it had not been used for such a demanding purpose recently. This experience is similar to being overwhelmed by ministry. Or maybe you are just consumed by tasks and busyness but are unsure about the “bigger picture,” what it is all for. As ministers within living systems that are highly complex and ever changing, it is important that we constantly condition and maintain our mind, body and spirit to meet the challenges before us. This leads us to talk about Personal Mastery or a dedication to continuous focus, learning and growth.
According to Peter M. Senge and The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, “personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.”[1] In other words, it means we have the commitment, motivation and persistence to gain knowledge and skills in any given situation because we are aware of our ignorance and shortcomings. This means we try to have an honest self-awareness about our strengths and weaknesses. We also dedicate ourselves to building patience and endurance as individuals, because complex issues are not solved overnight. It is easy to become distracted by the unimportant things and get lost in the busyness of the day-to-day. Instead, we must stay focused on our calling and keep important goals in sight in order to understand and engage the world with clarity and wisdom. [1] Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Science of The Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 7
© 2012 Emmanuel Gospel Center 2

3. Personal Mastery
We can’t be experts at everything. Yet we have gifts that God gave and purposed us to sharpen, use and share. We also have weaknesses and areas of shortcoming that we may need to address or, at minimum, enlist the help of others who have those strengths or expertise we lack. This requires humility and submitting ourselves to learning and growing.
Let’s be clear: personal mastery is a life-long journey and pursuit, and is not something to possess or a destination to arrive at. Learning and growth need to take place on multiple levels including spiritual, mental, emotional, social, and physical. With personal mastery, we dedicate ourselves to looking for and welcoming opportunities to be refined and stretched, because they equip us to be better ministers in a complex world. Personal mastery is truly a discipline because the best approach is to start with a number of practices and principles that serve as a foundation we can build upon.
What is personal mastery and why is it important to ministry? (stop, think, and discuss)
© 2012 Emmanuel Gospel Center 3

4. Basic Characteristics
Purposeful
Secure, honest truth-seeker
Works with not against change
Curious and hungry for better understanding of reality
Connected to others but clearly an individual
Sees and accepts their
part in the “big picture,”
which is much bigger
than just him/her
What makes a person with personal mastery different ?
It may be helpful to think about personal mastery in the form of basic characteristics shared by those who practice it well. According to Senge, here are a few they share:
They are highly purposeful, especially in vision and goals: “for such a person, a vision is a calling rather than simply a good idea.”
They are open and welcoming to truth and change. They do not fight against or run away from either, and have learned to work in alignment with the natural forces around them such as change.
They have a healthy curiosity, and become stronger and stronger at seeing reality as it truly is vs. through subjective filters.
They are highly connected and relational, but simultaneously their own person.
They seek to contribute to a “larger creative process,” but know that it is much more than about “getting their own way” or “being the boss.”
“[Bill] O’Brien [of Hanover Insurance] has written of truly mature people [a/k/a people with personal mastery] as building and holding deep values, making commitments to goals larger than themselves, being open, exercising free will, and continually striving for an accurate picture of reality. They also, he asserts, have a capacity for delayed gratification, which makes it possible for them to aspire to objects which others would disregard.”
© 2012 Emmanuel Gospel Center 4

5. What is Personal Mastery?
The participants should now be able to answer this question.
KEY TEACHING POINTS:
Personal mastery is a dedication to continuous focus, learning and growth on a personal level.
We strive to have an honest self-awareness about our strengths and weaknesses, including ignorance and shortcomings.
We have the commitment, motivation and persistence to gain knowledge and skills in any given situation.
We maintain a focus on our calling and keep important goals in sight vs. get distracted and lost in busyness.
Personal mastery requires patience, perseverance and humility.
Complex problems do not get solved overnight.
Personal mastery is a life-long pursuit and journey to which we neither finish nor “arrive.”
Basic characteristics of someone who practices personal mastery are:
Purposeful
Secure, honest truth-seeker
Works with not against change
Curious and hungry for better understanding of reality
Connected to others but clearly an individual
Sees and accepts their part in the “big picture,” which is much bigger than just him/her
© 2012 Emmanuel Gospel Center 5