Episode 6: Zach Bechtold-- Bozeman UMC

The change in tone and direction of today from earlier podcasts is intentional.  I hope to be moving more to church leadership in a mindful manner on these excursions and use colleagues both in the Mountain Sky Conference and other conferences to talk an idea (or two or three or six) of leadership. 

Our guest is Zach Bechtold.  Zach has completed his first year as Pastor at Bozeman UMC in Bozeman, Montana and is part of a wave of younger clergy leading a number of our pillar churches.  Zach's LinkedIn page is HERE and is part of where I got my introduction.

Our theme was making new from old.  

Zach sees the church year, i.e., Ash Wednesday, All Saints, Easter, as important elements to help him discern how to make new from the old.  He also sees connecting with where he has been planted while retaining the connection with remote colleagues as important.  

Zach and (new) fellow Mountain Sky pastor Matthew Franks (Castle Rock UMC, Castle Rock, Colorado) have their own Podcast.  It is Bearded Theologians and their podcasts are HERE. Both of them are baseball fans, which means by definition, they understand failure, success, sacrifice, perseverance and getting home, safe.  

During our discussion, we talk a little about David Foster Wallace and "This is Water."  HERE is a good place for both sound (in two bursts on Soundcloud) and the actual text.  It is probably NSFW but quite good.  I listen to it regularly and I don't agree with all of it, I do find it quite compelling.  

Captain Midnight Secret Squadron Decoder Ring Information:  

• UMCOR is United Methodist Committee on Relief. 
• A CRM is a Congregational Resource Minister -- a Mountain Sky "thing."
• A DS is a District Superintendent -- the Bishop's representative over a subset of the Conference.  

I try to keep these to about 40 minutes but it is a podcast.  Stop and restart if you have finished your walk, exercise, dishes, household chores, whatever and we are still talking.  This one is 46 scintillating minutes.  

My blog is HERE.  I will try on occasion to write a piece or three about the topic at hand.  

Send me a note (dennis at mantuan dot org -- and written that way to confound the bots) if you need help getting your podcast app to find Mindful Leader.  Might I ask for you to share if you think worthy?  

I apologize for the four + weeks since last podcast.  People are simply out of town.  Plan I think will be every two weeks.  That schedule should start on/about 23/24 July.  I hope.