Church Leadership 100

I didn’t make it to church leadership 101, this is only from the remedial 100 class. You see in college I was a Civil Engineer and in seminary I was a Greek major, so my thoughts on leadership are not the result of formal training. They are most likely from the mistakes I have made in attempting to lead in my church. Now with that disclaimer... on to some thoughts on church leadership.

I recently received an e-mail from one of the leaders of a ministry in our church. He has successfully led this ministry for a number of years but due to some recent life changes he doesn’t have the bandwidth to continue to lead this ministry any more. I think he is making a wise choice is moving on… it would stretch him way thin to keep it going.

His point in the e-mail was that I, as a full-time pastor and church leader, should take sole leadership of this ministry (in addition to my current responsibilities) until a replacement is found. While I appreciated his voice of confidence in my ability to lead something within me cried “NOOOO… that is not the way this is supposed to work. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the desire. And I’m not sure this particular ministry is helping our church stay on mission.”

So what did I do? I thought about it for a weekend. Then on Monday morning I “replied to all” with what I thought was a sarcastic yet funny response about how “I would pray about it” to see “if I felt called” and “had a peace” about taking on this role (now you see why this is remedial leadership).

I think this leader-less hministry might die and that is not particularly a bad thing. Here is why:

The church is an organism made of relationships not an organization made of programs: If all the church does is keep programs running, I think we are missing the point. Sometimes the programs work, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we as a pastoral staff spend so much of our time supporting programs that we lose a grip on pastoring. Pastor’s should not always be hands on leaders in ministries, we should function in our area of giftedness and support and encourage hands-on leaders.

Every ministry has a birth, a life and a death: Each ministry within a church should help to fulfill the overall mission of the church. A church’s mission will be related to inviting people into relationship with Jesus and then encouraging them to grow in relationship with Him. Sometimes a ministry that does that in a church of 100 people will not work in a church of 1000. Sometimes a ministry in a church of 1 service will not do that in a church of 3 services. So we should be okay with allowing some ministries to die and then allowing new ones to be born.

Every healthy ministry grows leaders: If a ministry is not growing leaders it is probably not attracting leaders. If it is not attracting leaders it is probably not related to the mission of the church. This is one way to see that a ministry is not healthy. So when I received this e-mail from this ministry leader asking for me to take over leadership, I saw a problem. I figured that if this ministry were a part of our mission and were healthy a new leader would be clearly visible.

So the jury is still out. I have not accepted leadership of this ministry. It might die. A new leader might rise up. And I have approached this leader in person to clarify that my response was an attempt at humor in the situation.