Articles
Taking Leadership Seriously!
Leadership is not that complex.
The leadership literature will divide it up differently, into 5 practices, or 3
competencies and so on, but having read dozens of them, it seems to me that there
are more or less 4 recurrent elements to effective leadership.
First, a leader both confronts the brutal facts of the present situation, without fear or favour, no ducking, no weaving, no spin; and at the same time clarifies vision, which is a picture of a preferred future that inspires commitment. For those that have read Jim Collins' classic, Good to Great, you will recognise a slight reworking of what he calls the Stockdale Paradox. The art here is to see bi-focally - both the present and the future, both the current reality and the preferred reality. The present is so important because you can't start from somewhere else, unlike the Irishman who was asked directions to Dublin and said it was 50 miles, but he wouldn't want to get there from here! But the future is equally crucial since without a clear picture of the preferred future, without a vision, there can be no direction, and little inspiration. The truth is that most of us have a preference for one or the other - for the present or the future, that's where we mentally drift - and we each need to understand our preference and make sure we invest in the other.
Second, an effective leader rigorously clarifies the pathway from here to there. A pathway is an articulation of the steps that need to be taken in order to move from the brutally confronted present to the commitment inspiring future. A pathway sets out the tasks the need to be done, and the resources that need to be allocated, to achieve the vision. Note this very carefully - a vision without a pathway is a con at worst, or just plain foolish at best. A vision without a pathway is like a rope bridge across a river, but with great sections of planks missing. The inevitable result is that you fall and drown. '2020 members by the year 2020' is not a vision, because there is no conceivable pathway for any of our churches from their present to that future in that time. Who is growing that fast? What's more, the pathway needs to be expressed in measurable form all along the way, and those measurements are also known as goals.
The third element of effective leadership is drawing together people, and teams of
people, and empowering and releasing them to play their part in walking down
that pathway. A leader who is not a leader of leaders will never be capable of
leading into a future that is greater than her or his own personal span, perhaps
60-80 families. Vision and pathway without confederates, without colleagues and
partners and mates, paid staff and volunteers, will remain just words and numbers
on a page. In fact, the more compelling the vision, the worse it will be because
people will sign up for that vision, and then find themselves under trusted, under
utilised, under deployed and employed.
So the effective leader confronts the brutal facts and clarifies vision, articulates the
pathway and draws together the energy, gifts, commitment and passion of people; but there's one final thing - the effective leader nurtures a culture that is focussed
on execution with excellence, or at least reasonable quality, while at the same time
maintains morale and enthusiasm in an atmosphere of grace that knows that
execution with excellence is not the bottom line. This aspect is vaguer than the
others, but it may be the most important. Culture without specific directional
content can still be a healthy kind of muddling along; all the direction in the world
will just grind its gears without a positive culture to grease its wheels, a culture
that holds onto both a striving for excellence and an embracing of grace all the way
down the line.
I realise that what I've said thus far is about leadership in general, and not
leadership specifically of a church by a Christian pastor. I put it in this order
deliberately, because I want to emphasize that specifically church leadership is not
less than ordinary leadership, as though we can ignore some of these aspects;
rather, it is more than ordinary leadership, and it is more than ordinary leadership
in 2 ways.
On the one hand, it is more available to us because we believe in the Holy Spirit, who brings God's future into the present. The Spirit is the Spirit of the age to come, the Lord who gives life, the one who bridges the present and the future, the one who gives gifts to the members of the body, the one in whom we are unified as a gift of his grace, not an achievement of our doing. In this sense, when empowered by the Spirit, even the ordinary leadership elements such as we have mentioned here are more available to us, less beyond our reach.
On the other hand, specifically Christian leadership is even more challenging, even less likely to be something that any of us are naturally good at and can do well without very specific focus and intentional development.
That we lead churches intensifies the leadership challenge in at least 3 ways:
- first, our leadership will substantially take the form of teaching (1 Tim 4-11-16), and teaching includes a whole set of additional skills and practices - understanding Scripture and people and culture; communicating and listening, bridging the 1st century to the 21st century, and so on. You know these challenges on a weekly basis.
- Second, that we lead churches intensifies the leadership challenge in that we lead volunteers not employees, to whom we relate fundamentally as peers/ sisters and brothers alongside people without sanctions, rather than as an institutional boss over people with employment sanctions. And that means persuasion and inspiration and empathy are much more centrally our stock in trade (1 Thess 1).
- And finally, the thing towards which we are seeking to lead people is not a sales figure or a profit margin or a market share or even a numerical growth target, but a kind of life, the life of Christ, so that 'Christ is formed in us' (Gal 4.20). It is the tallest leadership height to scale - personal growth in convictions, character and conduct toward Christlike maturity in individuals. It means that so much of the results of our leadership is actually out of our hands, and in the hands of others, both the people and God (I'll say more about this later); it means that Christian leadership must be servant leadership, like the one toward whom we are leading people; it means that so much of our leadership is a function of our own personal spiritual growth towards Christlike maturity, in other words leadership by example (1 Tim 4.15-16).
So that's leadership - present reality and future vision; a workable pathway; getting people on board; and a healthy excellence with grace culture; and leading primarily by teaching and inspiring and example. Like I say, not that complex, but incredibly difficult to actually pull off.
Leadership is difficult in and of its own nature. But there are additional, contextual factors that make leadership even more difficult. Most obviously, sin makes leadership difficult - the sin of leaders, who lead not out of love and faithfulness, but insecurity, neediness and the desire for approval. Furthermore, the sheer complexity of the world we live in and its competing demands for people's most valuable resource - their headspace - let alone their time, their money and their passion. I suspect that Australian culture makes leadership more difficult still, namely our much loved tall poppy syndrome.
In case someone asks, 'Is leadership worth taking seriously?',
perhaps the best response it to say, 'Actually, I'm not quite sure whether that
question is worth taking seriously!' It's not only that Scripture speaks plainly
about the gift of leadership - 1 Cor 12.28, Rom 12.8, and the book of Acts as a
whole. The simple fact is that, whether you like it or not, every group and every
community generates leadership. The only issue is whether the leadership is good,
bad or indifferent leadership. And we desperately need more and more good
leadership in our local churches.
I want to suggest that to take leadership seriously will mean to embrace it in its
fullness. And that means being leadership generalists, not specialists. It's no good
being a terrific preacher, and failing to attend to the fact that hardly anyone in the
church you serve is very involved. It's no good pastoring people brilliantly, but
failing to attend to the fact that the church is running at a $50,000 deficit. It's no
good being an outstanding planner of programs and failing to attend to the fact
that most of the people who serve in the programs burn out after 2 years and walk
away bitter. Taking leadership seriously means taking all of leadership seriously.
Of course, you don't do all this by yourself - that would be on its own terms a failure of leadership. But it does mean that you will need to attend to these things. It may be what some call American exegesis, but it's interesting to me that in Acts 6, whilst it's true that the Apostles focus on the ministry of the word and prayer, it's also true that they are the ones who put in place the structures - namely, deacons - to handle the administrative load of ensuring that the Hellenist widows are not overlooked in the daily distribution of food. They don't do it themselves, and keep the main thing the main thing - good leadership; but they do make sure it gets done - even better leadership.
So, temperamentally, where are your leadership strengths? Do you know them? Would others agree with your assessment, because one thing's for sure - if the followers don't go where the leader's going, they are not really following and he's not really leading. And where are your leadership gaps? And most importantly, what are you doing about them?
Let me get a little more pointy here:
- If leadership involves knowing the brutal facts, how confidently would you say you know the facts of your ministry - how many newcomers do you get to each congregation each month and year? Is there a deliberate process by which they are integrated into the life of the church, and how effective is it, in other words, what percentage of newcomers actually do it and stick? Etc.
- And if leadership involves vision, how clear is the vision of the church - not only as a institution, the standard vision statement for the church to be a certain size or so many congregations, but perhaps even more importantly the vision of Christian living and maturity for individuals in the church? In other words, after all the doing has been done in your church - all the sermons preached, all the Bible studies run, all the conversations had - what kind of person is grown and matured? How clear is your vision for people?
- And if leadership involves the pathway, how explicitly have you articulated the pathway between here and there? What are the goals, the milestones? How closely to the pathway have you been able to stick the last year, 2 years and so on? And again, this is a pathway both for the church as a whole, as well as for individuals in their life in Christ.
- And if leadership involves drawing people to put their shoulder to the plough, what percentage of the members have gotten into the game? And what are the ways that you make sure that people are recruited and empowered and released and nurtured in ministry?
- And if leadership involves ... well you get my drift.
The fact is that leadership is difficult, and church leadership is extremely difficult.
Bill Hybels has famously called it the most challenging job in the world. That’s
why there are very few natural leaders, people who pick up this mode of serving
without particular coaching; some suggest perhaps 10% of senior leaders of
churches are naturally gifted. And of them, maybe only half can explain to
someone else what they are doing, the rest are so intuitive and naturally gifted that
it seems obvious to them and they can’t understand why others don't get it.
Leadership is not a common natural ability.
But, and this is absolutely crucial, and one of the most significant conclusions to
come from more recent leadership studies, leadership can be taught and it can be
learnt. It's true that there are some people who do leadership recreationally, it's just
in them, a kind of native genius. But it's equally true that leadership is a skill pretty
much like any other skill, a skill that can be studied, understood, learnt and
practiced, and when you fall on your face, you just pick yourself up and dust
yourself off and do it again. Put sharply, the fact that you might not be a naturally
genius leader is not a reason to think you can't be a very good and highly effective
leader, in all that we understand leadership to mean, including preaching, but not
limited to preaching. Wherever you are at in your leadership, you can be an even
better leader, you can learn and develop and move to a new level of leadership
ability, and so move to a new level of leadership effectiveness, a new level of
church growth. Fundamentally, what it means to take leadership seriously is to
devote yourself to the time consuming, energy draining, sin confronting, mind
stretching, soul bearing challenge of finding a teacher, or better many teachers -
some of them not in books - and learning everything you can about leadership.
Can I leave you with a very specific challenge?
Over the next month, undertake a
self assessment, a self-study of your leadership. And carefully, deliberately develop
a plan for your own leadership development. It will include personal reading, or
perhaps even better, reading leadership literature with a couple of mates and
getting together to talk about it. But it will take more than that. You will need to
find programs and courses to be involved in. The Arrow leadership program is
excellent; you might think about a graduate Diploma in not for profit management;
I know one rector who did an MBA at UNSW because he was sufficiently
committed to developing his leadership - he figured that's what he needed to take
the church he served to the next few levels. I don't mean an MTh - whilst very
helpful, it's not at the heart of leadership, or at least it's not at the heart of our
leadership weaknesses. And I don't mean conferences - conferences can be
excellent jolts in the arms, or kicks in the butt, but they can't function to develop
skills. What's needed is a sustained program.
Lyle Schaller, the original church researcher in the United States, suggests that for
70% of their time, ministers 'pay the rent'-- they do the things that just have to get
done - sermons prepared, programs organised, services crafted, people visited. And
paying the rent contributes to growing a church - of course it does. But it's what
the minister does with the other 30% that really makes the difference between a
church that plods along, and the minster with it, and the church that fires. You
could hardly do anything better with a portion of the 30% than take your
leadership sufficiently seriously as to invest deliberately in it.
About Andrew Katay
Andrew Katay is an international speaker on Church planting and leadership and senior minister of Christ Church Inner West Anglican Community (CCIW), studying a Doctor of Ministry program through Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
