It's called Church Leadership, so why not lead!

Why do people go into ministry?

Some people think that I am anti all church leadership and that I am always casting church leadership in a bad light. There is nothing further from the truth. I am in fact very ‘pro’ good church leadership. However I have on my travels come across some very poor church leadership. If these very same people were the managing directors of companies their company would have either gone into liquidation or the board of directors would have fired the senior person in charge a long time ago.

When I have the privilege of meeting one on one with a church leader who wants help or advice. One of the first things I ask them is; why did you go into the church leadership? What makes you think that you can do a better job than anyone else? Here is a list of some of their responses that I have found rather interesting:

                “God called me into ministry.”

                “I have always felt that this is what I should do.”

                “I come from a family of preachers.”

                “I have a yearning to see souls won for Christ.”

“I am God’s answer to the problems in this town.”

“I went to Bible College, what else should I do?”

I would like to point out that every Christian is called into the ministry, He or She is called to spread the gospel, evangelise and make disciples of mankind. Every church leader I come across has a ministry whether it is preaching or teaching. Or they are pastoral or have an evangelistic gifting. Here is the rub of the issue. My question was “why did you go into church leadership?” not “why did you go into church ministry?”

A church growth and leadership guru once said: “Ministry builds people but Leadership builds churches”

The reason some church leaders fail at what they do is because they do not understand the difference between their ministry and their leadership. For example I believe I am called to lead a church, I am not called to pastor a church. Unfortunately this sort of statement would not get me any invites to lead churches because church recruiting boards do not understand the difference and often muddle the two, thinking that ministry and leadership- in a candidate- are one of the same. They are not.

Ephesians 4:11 tells us that one of the gifts set in the church by the Holy Spirit is that of Pastor, but Romans 12:8 shows us that one of the gifts given by the Holy Spirit is that of Leadership. These scriptures are not contrary to one another but complimentary to one another and show the diversity of the work of the Holy Spirit within the church.

It is possible for someone to be the leader of a church but not necessarily be a gifted pastor or teacher or evangelist. John Maxwell says that leadership is influence but I think that Ian Jagelman of the Jagelman Institute in Australia puts it better when he says that “Leadership is an activity which directs influences and facilitates ministry in others.” I believe that great leadership does all of these things as well as building relationship at the same time. We should never forget that church leadership is all about people. How we direct them, influence them, activate their gifting and facilitate their ministries and build relationship with them.

A few months ago I sat down with a young couple who had been pastors of their church for about 7 or 8 years, they were depressed, rundown and stressed out. This was all due to church life. I opened my conversation with the two questions, why are you in church leadership and what makes you think you can do a better job? He responded by saying to me that it was something he had always wanted to do and that his father, uncle and brother were all in the ministry. I looked at his wife and asked her if she wanted to be in ministry, she promptly burst into tears, said through the sobs, that while she wanted to support her husband she did not wish to be in ministry. It was too painful, and was taking its toll on her children, her marriage and her attitude to those in the congregation. I looked at him and asked what he felt his gifting was he replied that it was pastoral. There is your answer I said, go find a church where you can be the number two not the number one, be the pastor not the senior leader. He was a little taken aback by my abruptness and the finality of my answer.

 I had before our meeting gathered from him information about his church. It had a congregation of about 15 older people when he took over, it had grown to about 50 over the last 7 years, but he admitted that about 20 of these had been people who had joined him from his old church where he had been an associate. 10 people had moved into the area or had come back to church when they had heard that there was a new pastor at the church and 5 people were new converts. The average age of his congregation was 52 only about seven being older teenagers. Within his parish as he saw it was two high schools, two primary schools and the population was about 25 thousand. While his vision was to reach the lost for Christ he had no real programmes on how to accomplish that. His wife ran a small Sunday school and they met on Sunday afternoons at the local community hall. He had no youth agenda, and was not sure how to use his youth to establish one. The music group was made up of various talented congregation members who resembled a 60’s rock band. The music being sung was from the 1980’s and 90’s to accommodate the older congregation members. When I talked to the congregation members they all felt that the young pastor did a great job meeting their needs, in visitation, prayer and good preaching.

Here, in short are the suggestions that I made: Start again, look for a more permanent venue that they could rent and make their own.  Change the name of the church, change the meeting time to a Sunday morning. Appoint one of the older youth to lead the youth and to help that person develop a strategy for youth outreach into the schools. Learn new songs that will be more youth appropriate and encourage the teens to learn musical instruments. Create a pastoral care team that will take on the everyday pastoral care needs. Get a vision and dream on where he wanted the church to be in 10 years time and start to plan the move forward. Change his preaching from exposition to more topical and relevant issues, always referring back to the vision and plans, in other words enthuse those around you to get involved. Take a holiday.

I was trying to get the young pastor to focus on the development of leadership and leadership strategy not his pastoral ministry. I said to him that if he tried to do these things there was hope for what he wanted, but if he didn’t it was better for him to seek a position in another church where his pastoral gifting was better utilised. He needed to learn to influence others rather than to try and do everything himself, he also had to learn to trust others to do the job.

You can put a square peg in a round hole you just need a large mallet and brute force. Church pastors need to set aside their ministry at the appropriate time and lead the church, give direction, facilitate ministries learn how to activate others. Put the right people in the right place. By doing this church senior leaders  will have time for them to seek the face of God for direction and vision and scope to expand.

Going into the church is a vocation and a calling but it is also an awesome responsibility to grow a church. If you feel you are God’s answer to the town, I suggest you find another job. If you are just out of Bible College looking for a church, then don’t, get a real job first. If you are going into ministry because your family are all involved this is all well and good but examine your motives first. Church is a hard task master and many young men and women have  been destroyed by it. I went into the church because I was sure of God’s call on my life, I have made huge mistakes and almost been destroyed by it, but I learnt that leadership not just ministry was the key. I do not believe in a God of Small things. Those who say to me that they would rather have quality than quantity are just trying to hide their own inadequacies in leadership. I want both in order for the church to be an influence in the community, Town, County and nation.