Alan joined the adjunct faculty in 2018. He teaches Developing Leadership at undergraduate level (BA) and Transformational Leadership on the MA programme.

Tell us a little bit about yourself?

I live in Magheralin, a small village near Lurgan, in the North. Previously I have lived in several places, not least Nyon, in Switzerland where I lived for 17 years while I was pastor of an international church. I am married to Pauline, who has her own counselling practice, and we have 2 daughters and 2 grandchildren.

Beyond my work at IBI I also teach at Belfast Bible College and the Irish Baptist College. I have an itinerant preaching ministry and also host a podcast - the Leadership Journey Podcast.

Most Saturday mornings you will find me running Parkrun - it’s not too fast and has got even slower recently, though in mitigation I have been recovering from a heart attack that had me in a blue light ambulance in October!

What course do you teach at IBI?

I teach on both the BA and MA programme and my area of teaching at both levels is leadership.

Why are you passionate about leadership?

I have been in and around Christian leadership for almost 30 years, as a leader, a student of leadership and a teacher and mentor. While it may be true that the importance of leadership feels as though it is sometimes overplayed (what about the followers?), most of us realise that leadership matters. 

For me it is a great privilege to have some input into the lives and thinking of a new generation of leaders. It is exciting to see leaders grow in their leadership and self-awareness.

Why does leadership matter

It’s easy for bad or incompetent leadership to stunt an organisation and frustrate people (and churches), but good leadership can help them to thrive. And of course in the context of IBI, we have a great opportunity to work out how our leadership and our faith intersect.

How does studying leadership shape people - head, hands, heart?

The best leadership is leadership that flows from who the leader is, and that means head, heart, and hands. There is plenty of thinking to be done as we try to understand leadership and as we attempt to sift through the mountain of material that is written and taught with the aim of properly integrating the best of it with Scripture, even as we allow some of the commonplaces to be challenged. Our hearts matter because character counts; and there are skills and practices that need to become part of our leadership.