What we Pastor Types are always looking for is something to make our churches grow, be healthy, grow disciples, and impact our communities. To that end we will try the newest and greatest programs, attend several, searching for the best, Seminars. Read the newest and greatest books on doing church and, if we are lucky, get our leaders to study it with us. With all of this wishing and working we often to fail to grasp one of the most important factor in growing, healthy churches. What breakout churches, flourishing churches, missional churches have in common are pastors who LEAD. I personally wish that were not true. I don't want my leadership to be a factor, much less an important factor, in the growth and health of the church.
Leaders – What they Do and Who they Are
Simply stated – Leaders lead. Leaders get out in front and lead. Few people want to do this. The lead position is not a safe and comfortable place to be. To lead we must stop acting like politicians who have as their basic task to keep their jobs. We do not lead by always testing the prevailing winds by taking polls, surveys and seeking to build a consensus before taking a stand or seeking to lead in a direction. I have never been a believer in the brilliance of our pooled ignorance. Trying to lead standing in the middle of the pack or trying to lead from the rear is problematic because one can't see clearly where one is going while standing in the back
Leaders are Humble. Leading is not about being in charge or being the person who is up in front getting all of the attention. We would do well to learn from the servant leadership style of Jesus. Jesus led by who he was and what he did. True leaders have the earned right to lead because they love those they lead. To be a transformational leader we must love and serve people before we earn their trust.
Leaders are Visionaries. A visionary leader has spent time with God, has heard from God and has received some direction from God. Having a vision means that we know where we are going. The interesting part of this is that, while we know where we are to be going, we may not know exactly how to get there. Thus we must be willing to try and fail and try again. Since we look a little clumsy to those who are following us we must practice the skill of listening to God instead of people
Leaders are Passionate. We must be on fire – fired up – fiery. Not to be confused with some other attributes, let me say that transformational leaders are not necessarily charismatic. They are not necessarily flamboyant or even terribly attractive. But they do care – a lot. We must be passionate about God. We must be passionate about people. We must be passionate about the Gospel.
Leaders are Courageous. The position of leadership is a dangerous place to be. The leader functions as a lightning rod for any and all dissatisfaction rumbling around in the church.
Being in leadership puts you in a place of great visibility where you are an easy target for criticism and the wrath of any and all unhappy parishioners. Nobody (Including you.) likes the change your leadership will bring. A segment of the church population just will not like you. We are always surprised when it happens in the church but people will be unkind about you and to you. Are you willing to be fired? Some will give it a try. You will have to do new things you are uncomfortable doing and you will have to learn some new skills and that is difficult.
Leaders are never satisfied with where they are as leaders. Truly transformational leaders are consistently moving forward in their personal and spiritual lives. If you are a leader you are always studying and working at becoming a better leader.
Leaders relentlessly push the edge. Seeking to maintain the status quo is the natural and normal inclination but it is deadly to church transformation. For a leader, good is never good enough. To lead the church we must always be asking the question, "How can we do church better?" We are relentlessly seeking to discover what we can do to be more productive in producing disciples.
Leaders develop and grow leaders themselves. For a church to grow and transform one of the basic elements is developing new leaders. It is necessary to develop lay ministry and lay leaders for a church to transform and grow. Thus, a leader must invest time and energy in lay leader development. For several decades those in the church growth business have been telling us that a church will only grow to a certain size with just a pastor ministering in the church and providing leadership. For the church to grow, more people need to be included in ministry and leadership. Developing lay ministers and lay leaders is easy to desire but very difficult to produce. The difficulty lies in the truth that we pastors are already completely swamped just trying to maintain the status quo – we are busy working to keep the ship afloat. This dilemma exposes one of the great challenges of doing church transformation. To do what needs to be done to grow a healthy church means we must make some difficult choices… choices about what we will do and what we won't do. Before we can chose to invest time and energy in lay leader development we must choose to no longer do some things we are already doing. These are difficult choices because we may enjoy doing what we are presently doing and may be very good at it. There is an excellent chance that if we stop doing some of the things we are presently doing, several of our church members may become very unhappy with us and will feel free to share their concerns with us and anyone else who will listen. (I am being nice here.)
If you are interested in seeing your church transform and grow, you are going to have to lead them there.
Copyright © 2010, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment