Teamwork
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Churches, Personnel Development
Most leaders agree that we have moved from a leadership model that prioritized the positional power of the leader to one that involves the input of others included on their team. However, there is still a lot of misunderstanding about the changing role of the leader and the appropriate role of the team members.
One of the best books I have read on this subject is The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan. The book not only deals with all of the philosophical issues involved in this major leadership transition but goes into great detail about practical execution.
The critical characteristics of all high performing teams are: clear and common purpose, crystal clear roles, accepted leadership, effective team processes, solid relationships and excellent communication.
As in all current accepted leadership theory, they place an extremely high priority on getting the right mix of people on the team. The key here is diversity of skill sets and experience so that the combined synergistic effect will reach its maximum potential.
The leader’s role is still very critical because they have to be able to draw everyone into the project at hand with passion and then be able in the end to reach a decision that works best for bottom line. This is not a personality contest or group therapy it is still about producing outstanding results that accomplish critical priorities.
The Five Practices Of Leadership
Filed under: Goal Setting, Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Leading Churches, Personnel Development, Servant Leader
I am constantly reading new materials on leadership and occasionally I review great books from the past. One of the all time classics is The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.
This very exhaustive book centers around these five simple but very powerful practices:
Model The Way-Find your voice by clarifying your personal values and set the example by aligning actions with shared values.
Inspire a Shard Vision-Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities and enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.
Challenge The Process-Search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to change, grow, and improve and experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from mistakes.
Enable Others to Act-Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust. Strengthen others by sharing power and discretion.
Encourage The Heart-Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence and celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.
Changing Role Of Pastor
In all of my years studying and leading churches the changing role of the pastor and the laity within the local church is probably one of the most misunderstood and potentially damaging issues facing the church. The biblical model is incredibly clear, the pastor is God’s gift to the church and his role is to lead the church by equipping the laity to do the work of the ministry.
Tragically in most small churches the laity hires a pastor to do the work of the ministry and they run the church. The pastor is to preach, visit, counsel, attend meetings, conduct funerals and weddings and the people once a month conduct the business of the church.
As the church starts to grow additional staff is hired and the old culture begins to be threatened. Now the pastor is expected to do everything he has always done and manage an ever growing staff and minister to an even larger number of people. New buildings are being built and the financial administration becomes complicated.
Many pastors hit the wall at this point because they are not gifted to make the transition from shepherd of the flock to leader of the people. The expectation level of the people has not changed and they are simply left with more work and all the issues that come with personnel problems.
The major reason though these changes do not occur is not because the pastor cannot change his leadership style but the people are not willing to delegate control to staff and lay leaders and assume their God given role of ministry responsibility.
When a church reaches over three hundred the pastor cannot continue to visit every member in the hospital and every member of the church does not need to be involved in picking the paint color for the kitchen renovation. These transitions of roles will continue to occur every time you reach an additional five hundred people or the church will simply stop growing.
There are a lot of legitimate and complicated reasons people are not being reached for Christ. This should not be one of them.
Cursing The Darkness
As a lifelong Southern Baptist I am deeply concerned that we still do not understand why we are declining as a denomination. I hear everything blamed from emerging churches, seeker services, contemporary worship, reformed theology, postmodernism and watered down preaching just to name a few.
We certainly will never be able to solve the problem if we can not accurately diagnose the cause. We must stop cursing the darkness and talking about everything that is wrong and start shinning the light about what is right.
We must start with the simple truth that the people who are not attending church are significantly culturally different from the people who are. This means that all pastors in America must become missional in their methodology in order to reach new people or our churches will die.
The days of build it and they will come through transfer growth are over forever and in the end that is a very good thing.
We must stop preaching that the culture is our enemy. It is simply the context in which we have been called to do ministry. As a necessary reminder the modern culture with all its logic and reason was no friend to the gospel because it produced humanism and evolution.
I am extremely excited about the next generation and their passion for community, integrity, spirituality and service. We need compassion for their lostness but respect for their uniqueness.
It is our responsibility to understand them if we want to reach them and not require them to become like us if they want to come to Christ.
Effective Evangelism
For years we have all been told that we are to be witnesses for Christ so that people can come to know Him. The major problem is that the prevailing strategy that has been used for years has never worked for the overwhelming majority of Christians.
The problem is not that this command is somehow out of date to the point that it should no longer be taken seriously. The critical failure is how we as leaders have modeled this ministry and trained our people to carry out this most important assignment for the church.
In the worst of situations we have trained our people to memorize a lot of facts and then after meeting a total stranger try to share all of the facts with them so they can make the most important decision of their lives all in thirty minutes.
I will acknowledge that in some cases there are divine appointments that God has prepared someone’s heart for just such a meeting. However, that does not mean that we should take this aggressive an approach with everyone we meet.
In the normal course of everyday we all tell stories about things that have happened in our lives. The subject matter can be anything from our last vacation, great new restaurants, job stress and personal family problems.
The reason why all of this works so easily is that it is in the normal course of our everyday lives within relationships that already exist to some degree. This is the biblical model of as you are going about your life share with other people the incredible and wonderful things that He has done in your life.
When evangelism moves from direct confrontation to casual conversations more people are going to respond to the good news of the gospel.
Glocal
During the last century there were very clear distinctions between the concept of evangelism and missions. In the simplest of terms evangelism was reaching people for the local church and missions was reaching people for the kingdom.
Within the context of missions there was a local, national and an international segmentation. This implied the potential for several different strategies to be effective in all of these areas. It was understood that to reach people in an international context that significant cultural barriers had to be addressed for the gospel to be effective.
Today the cultural distance between the people who are in the church in America and the people who are not is significant enough to require a cross cultural missiological approach to reach them. They hold an entirely different world view and they are simply not going to come to our buildings regardless of how cutting edge our marketing may be.
For churches to be effective today in reaching the unchurched in America we are going to have to become missionaries in our own local context. We will have to find ways to take the gospel to where the people live, work and play and do it in a culturally relevant way.
That is why we need to stop thinking in terms of the old models of segmentation. The world has literally moved to America and through the use of technology and the new global economy everything has changed.
The church must become glocal in its thinking, which means one missiological mindset that produces multiple strategies depending upon who we are trying to reach in our area.
Law Of Harvest
There are many biblical principles taught in scripture and this may be the most important one. It is foundational to understanding how the Christian life works on a very practical daily level.
The simplest way of stating this principle is that you will eventually reap what you sow . If you consistently fill your mind with the truth then you should reap all of the benefits of many good decisions.
On the other hand, if you fill your mind with other things then the result will be believing the wrong thing. Many times we act with even more passion when we believe a lie because the resulting behavior produces pain and rejection. At this point we really do not want to admit we were wrong.
Another important part of this principle is that we will also reap to the degree we sow. If we spend little time in God’s word then the result will be a double minded life that is constantly being tossed about with no clear direction.
The next major piece of this principle is that we have a responsibility for the maintenance of the soil where the seed will fall. If our minds are cluttered with many other things then the truth cannot be heard because all the other noise will drown it out.
Finally, I must go back and deal with that very important word eventually. Sometimes people are making bad decisions and yet see no immediate negative consequences. In sharp contrast many people are doing the right thing and have not seen the benefits of walking by faith in the truth.
God in His perfect timing will bring in the harvest. We all will reap what we have sown. No suffering for the present time is joyful but it will yield the peaceful fruit of a surrendered life.
Multi-Generational Churches
There is always the debate about what is the most effective strategy for reaching new people, change an existing church or simply start a new one with its own unique culture. In my opinion both have their strengths and weaknesses, so the decision should depend upon the context.
There are several things I have noticed when churches are started with one particular age group in mind as the target. All of your programming, especially your worship can be one style depending upon the age group in the room. The staff and the facilities can be designed with the needs of this age group in mind as well.
Although this may work for a short period of time there eventually will be serious challenges that must be addressed. One day all of these single adults will get married and then they are going to want programming for their children. Eventually, this same group will become empty nesters and that will bring on another whole set of needs.
My point is simply this, every church given enough time will become multi-generational unless you are going to tell people at some point you need to leave. Since that is a reality then why not start with a multi-generational model from day one that will avoid all of these potential crisis points that can kill momentum and destroy unity.
An even more significant reason is that it is biblical. Every person is important to God from the youngest newborn to the oldest senior adult. The gospel will always be more receptive with younger people but the ministry of the church must include the widow who is all alone.
Leading By Storytelling
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Churches, Vision Casting
Every leader is constantly trying to find new and creative ways to communicate the culture of their organization both internally and externally. I have found not better way than storytelling.
The simplest definition of storytelling is when you can link existing personnel, ongoing programming and outstanding performance then you have a story to tell. This will allow you to reinforce core values and celebrate success by acknowledging over and above situations that give credit to your people and remind everyone of what is really important.
In essence if you have no stories to tell then you are not performing in critical areas. The good news in most organizations there are character driven people that are doing an outstanding job. The bad news is their stories are not being told.
I have never seen this work informally by just asking people for outstanding results during a meeting or telling a few stories during annual meeting. This will probably require formalizing this entire process to create a system where stories can be routinely asked for and submitted to someone who can evaluate them and then find appropriate platform for communication.
This must not feel like a monthly performance review system where everyone is checked against their numbers. It needs to be like what happened great in your area this month that would encourage everyone in the organization to know.
The formula is simple existing personnel + ongoing programming + outstanding performance = Success. The only missing piece is telling the story.