Developing your skills
Does leaving Bible College and taking your first church mean
that you give up on developing your skill set? I was in my first pastorate for
less than a week when I came to the earth shattering conclusion that Bible
College had taught me nothing whatsoever about pastoring a church! I did not
understand people, I was single and found it difficult to relate to young
married couples, I was clumsy around children and babies frightened the life
out of me. But I learnt to adapt, take on board the advice my mentors gave me
and put into practice what I saw them do. This helped me grow my small church
from 4 to 40 in only a few months and later my youth group from 4 to 70 in less
than a year.
When I went into the business world I learnt quickly, very
quickly. I realised that if I didn’t learn, my business would fail and I would
be left in a great deal of debt, hungry and unable to look after my young
family. I adapted, looked for new avenues to promote my company and gain
business from my competitors. But I didn’t stop there, I looked for better ways
to run and manage my company. I hired staff, I also fired staff. I trained
myself and took courses that gave me skills to lead my company and it’s more
than 100 staff forward.
While I know that churches are not businesses and cannot be
compared to a giant corporation, I am surprised at how many senior leaders fail
in taking their churches forward. In growing them, multiplying and making
disciples. I believe the problem is threefold. One, they believe that they can
grow their churches on their ministry alone. Two, they fail to understand the
difference between leadership and ministry. Three, leaders stop learning and
training themselves.
The first two things I have dealt with in some part or other
in my other blogs. It is the third that I want to deal with in this blog by
asking a number of questions:
1)— Is
Leadership a result of birth, education or nurture?
2)Can
we discover what and where one is in terms of leadership skills and capacities?
3)What
makes one leader succeed and another equally trained, experienced and educated
leader fail?
Birth or Nurture.
I am not one of those people who believe that leadership or
the ability to lead is an accident of birth. Nor am I a person who believes
that that education and nurture alone will make you a good or even great leader.
I believe it is a combination of all three or at least the latter two, with
something else added into the mix, intellect and life experience (EQ). Remember
it is ministry that builds people but leadership that builds churches. A person
straight out of Bible College may be able to grow a church to 120 on his
personality and ministry alone but it will be their capacity for leadership
that will help them build a church of 1200.
Leadership skills and capacities.
I like what John Maxwell calls the law of the lid. One man’s
ceiling is another man’s floor. Church leaders need to learn to continually
know where they are in relation to their skills. If they are weak in one area
they need to gain knowledge in that area in order to grow. For example: I am
not an accountant or book keeper I hired people to do that for me. However, I
needed to know how my money was spent and on what. I learnt through financial
management courses to read a balance sheet and profit and loss sheet,
understand the tax laws and where to put my profits to maximise my portfolio. I
could also tell whether my accountant was trying to cook the books. In other
words I saw where my weaknesses were and did something about it. I didn’t need
to become an expert I just needed to increase my capacity to lead. Church
leaders can do the same. They can attend leadership seminars - I am not talking
about worship conferences I am talking about the type of thing that really gets
down to the brass tacks of leadership. Ask to have coffee with other successful
leaders, to glean their secrets and build relationship. I heard recently of a
pastor who listened to the ‘pod casts’ of successful church leaders and found
out what God was saying to them and their congregations. It was interesting to
note that often they had much in common. He then began to preach and teach the
same stuff in his own church and taught his developing leaders the same stuff
and began to see some great results. He didn’t try and clone himself but
adapted to make things relevant to his own area and community. He was
increasing his leadership capacity and skills. Eventually others will look at
his success and get ideas from him.
Success or failure.
Failure is not a word that people like to use these days.
They prefer more politically correct terms like, did not accomplish all the
tasks or unable to achieve at this time. It is unfortunate then that some of
our churches have been in a state of not accomplishing or achieving anything
for decades. Yet their leaders are well educated and trained, speak well and
are experienced. They may have had some initial success in ministry but have ‘marked
time’ and stagnated or some time. There again others of their colleagues have
had great success. Why is this?
When looking at a
successful leader one sees that they have the ability to take any number of
situations no matter how difficult and through a process of intellectual
agility bring meaning to what others see as random or chaotic events. This is what
I would refer to as The Law of Complexity.
The larger an organisation or church grows the more complex
it becomes. The senior leader finds that they are dealing more with issues of
function and governance than ministry. However because of their experience,
their ability to learn the increase of their skills and their intellectual
capacity, they are more able to deal with the issues that arise in large
complex organisations and churches. The prime example here would be the difference
between what a young lieutenant in the army has to handle to that of his
General. The senior pastor’s ministry also benefits because they get excited at
what God is doing and are open to new things, ideas and dreams. They don’t look
at the problem; they look at the way to build bridges over them.
Churches stagnate at different levels because their leaders
do not understand the Law of Complexity.
Summary
To summarise then, leaders may be born to lead but without
education, a strong nurturing, intellect and life experience they will soon
fade and become ineffective. Good leaders recognise their capacities and increase
their skills. This is an ongoing process during the life time of ministry it
should never stop. Some leaders succeed where others fail because they
understand and are able to handle different levels of complexity. This leads to
churches stagnating whether it is at 150, 250 or even 350.
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