.png)
Thank you to the 1,400 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 questions!
I hope reading
7 Questions with The Reverend Dr Max Wood
helps you in your leadership.
Cheers,
Jonno White
7 Questions with The Reverend Dr Max Wood
Name: The Reverend Dr Max Wood
Current title: Rector
Current organisation:St Luke's Anglican Church Mosman
The Reverend Dr Max Wood was inducted as St Luke’s seventh Rector on 29 September 2014. Fr Max grew up in Sydney and was educated at Trinity Grammar School. He practiced as a solicitor in Sydney before being ordained in 2004 in the Bathurst Diocese. His theological studies were undertaken in Morpeth, Canberra and Durham.
Prior to coming to St Luke’s, Fr Max was the Rector of St John’s Mudgee and also had oversight of St Luke’s Gulgong as well as serving in a variety of Diocesan positions in Bathurst. He also ministered at Holy Trinity Orange, St Augustine’s Merewether in Newcastle Diocese, and St Margaret’s in Durham UK. Before leaving Australia to pursue his doctoral thesis in the UK he was an Honorary Associate Priest at St James King Street in Sydney. In Durham he was also a member of the ministry team and Fellow at St Chad’s College while at the university studying for his doctorate in systemic theology and was licensed to officiate in the Province of York.
Fr Max currently serves on the General Synod Mission and Ministry Commission and the Northern Regional Council of the Diocese of Sydney. He is also a Fellow and Deputy Chairperson of St Paul’s College Council, Sydney University. Fr Max is married to Dr Danielle Firholz and they have two children.
.
1. What have you found most challenging as a church leader?
Managing and responding to the demands and expectations of Parishioners
2. How did you become a church leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?
I felt a strong vocational calling in my late teens. I was counselled to study something other than theology first, which I did. The calling stayed with me and I eventually submitted to Diocesan discernment processes.
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
Our Parish Office is open 9.30am to 5.30pm. I generally keep those hours but are obviously on call 24/7 and regularly work evenings for meetings etc.
4. What's one book apart from the Bible that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can
you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
None readily come to mind.
5. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
You can't please everyone all the time.
6. How do you develop a healthy leadership pipeline in a church?
Example and mentoring.
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a church leader so far?
The moments when you sense that this is where God wants you to be and doing. These can be casual, looking out over the Altar at the community you have gathered around the Lord's Table, the nervous eyes of a couple at a wedding when you reassure them its going to be ok, the look of a child's eyes as you Baptise them. These moments.