Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

Leaders are learners. Here are a five leadership lessons I’ve learned in the last five years. (Now you can learn them in less than five minutes.)

The “God thing” comes before the vision. Most leaders make the mistake of thinking that change starts with their vision. Instead, change starts with a “God thing.” The leader’s job is to identify where God is at work, communicate the vision of what God is doing, and articulate how we must get involved in His work.

Money always follows vision.
People give money to a compelling cause with a clear vision. When economic times are hard, leaders are tempted to reduce the budget and the vision. No! Increase the vision and money will follow. Never forget—God is always at work and vision is free!

Make it fit on a napkin.
If it can’t be explained on a napkin, it is too complicated. Make sure everything from your slogan, to your process for disciple making, to how you will create a movement can be explained on a napkin. If it is simple and reproducible, you can mobilize the masses.

Lead with a “yes” and ask “how” later.
If you want to bring about innovation, learn to lead with a “yes” and not a “how”. People are born with dreams from God and they want to make a difference. What they need most is a leader who will say “yes” when they ask for permission to give it a try.

Take risks on emerging leaders and artists.
Resist the urge of telling young leaders to wait a few years; they need and deserve opportunities to lead, so take a risk on them now! Likewise, good art always involves risk. If you want good art in your church you must take risks on your artists!

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Care for your soul. The only legitimate place a leader can be selfish is in the care of his or her soul. Biblical reflection and daily prayer should be a leader’s top priority, resulting in deeper intimacy with Christ, clearer self-awareness, selfless attentiveness to the needs of others, and release of attachments that hinder one’s walk of faith.

Build a healthy team. It’s impossible to lead others in isolation. A healthy team bases its relationships on trust in God and one another; knows that each member needs to be empowered to serve out of his or her passion and gift mix; assimilates with one another in order to multiply their shared effectiveness; manages the resources entrusted to their care; and serves with joy—always for the glory of God.

Be relationally focused. Recognize that everything you “do” in ministry grows out of who you “are” in ministry. Leaders are called into a ministry of reconciliation, leading others first toward God and then toward community. In order for the whole organization to thrive, lead others into authentic, honest, life-giving relationships. When conflict occurs, welcome it as your friend and work diligently to learn from and resolve it.

Discern—decide—act—assess. It’s important that leaders know how to make both big and small decisions, and then hold them all with open, outstretched hands. Discernment leads to decisions and action. Then, in order to stay fresh in all you do, hold every effort up to the light, and don’t be afraid to assess your effectiveness. Make this a repeated pattern of prayer, thought, action, and reflection.

Keep the main thing the main thing. Know your vision and mission and stick to it with unwavering zeal. There’s nothing worse than getting off course and entering areas that lead you away from your primary calling. The leader’s greatest discipline is maintaining focus and guiding the team toward accomplishing God’s primary objective for your shared ministry.

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On every apple tree, there are 1000 Mackintoshes to choose from. It’s sort of the same with the leadership tree. There is enough fruit to write a thousand books and schedule ten thousand conferences.

So here are a few pickings for church leaders from today’s tree:

First commandment first
Te first and greatest commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” The second is also great, but is definitely second: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Leaders who serve people risk getting so caught up in loving neighbors that the can easily put the second commandment first. Doing so will wear you out and take you down. Love God and then the others.

Diversify
Get a hobby. Find a second job. Teach a class. Write an article. Go back to school. Just don’t limit yourself to your primary leadership role. We should think of our lives as mutual funds that invest in different stocks. When some are down, others are up. None are up all the time. Leaders who don’t diversify can spiral out of control when the ministry isn’t going well. We all need something going well to keep us sane.

Be good at the basics
Some leaders are brilliant visionaries with spectacular ideas. But they crash like a cartoon bird that lost its feathers, because they don’t give themselves to the basics. Preach a good sermon every Sunday. Show up for board meetings fully prepared. Return phone calls and answer email. Be on time for funerals. Smile at weddings. Do the basic stuff and your visions will have a better chance of becoming reality.

Control your schedule
It’s easy to let everyone else control your schedule until you can’t get your work done, you feel manipulated, and life is out of control. Be respectful of others, but say, “Tuesday morning won’t work for me, but I could meet the following Thursday afternoon.” Book birthdays, vacations, study days, and prayer time a year in advance; you can always make a change. Control your schedule or everyone else will do it for you.

Don’t reward dysfunction
Churches and other religious organizations attract some highly dysfunctional people. Strangely, many reward the dysfunctional for being weird. Bad idea. If the guy is nothing but trouble, don’t nominate him for the church board so you can keep an eye on him. When people are sinful, they need loving confrontation, not encouragement of their behavior.

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For the past year, the Discipleship Team at Christianity Today International has been strenuously planning a re-design and re-launch of our small-group resources. One of the things I've been most surprised by is the amount of time and energy that must go into parsing out all of the minute details of phraseology.

Is it okay to talk about "difficult people"? Does the word “assimilation” sound too corporate (or bring up images of the Borg from Star Trek)? What should we call the study materials we produce—curriculum, Bible studies, Bible discussions, or courses?

But the phraseological debate that looms above all others is this: How should we refer to that singular experience of 4–10 people coming together to study God's Word, fellowship, worship, and eat Betty Crocker brownies? Is it a small-group meeting? A gathering? A small-group session? A Bible study?

I've always used the word meeting to describe such occasions. But that's an odd term to use for something that primarily happens in living rooms. Having worked in an office environment for several years now, I don't really think of meetings as having great potential for deep communication and life-change—two things I definitely want to see in my small group.

It was while ruminating on these subjects that I encountered the following audio clip from Harvey Carey, which originated at the Small Group and Evangelism Conference of the Christian Reformed Church. Harvey is the founder and senior pastor of the Citadel of Faith Covenant Church in Detroit, Michigan, and he has some very interesting things to say about meetings and community and making a real difference for the Kingdom of God.

Click here to hear an expanded version of this clip.

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