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THE POTENTIAL AROUND YOU (p. 22)
In an interview, John Maxwell tells how to develop leaders of character, commitment, and clout.
What makes developing leaders so hard?
It’s tough from the start, because people who are willing to be developed are pretty scarce. When you do find them, they’re usually overcommitted in other arenas of life. On top of that, it’s tough to build a team with leaders. You can’t herd cats, and you can’t herd leaders.
When did you realize the importance of developing leaders?
In my first church. Over several years, the church grew to over three hundred. I really thought I had done something, not realizing that my self-reliance would break me.
When I left that church, attendance dropped from three hundred to less than one hundred in just a few months. I realized I had failed. I had not prepared others to lead. I vowed, “This will never happen again.”
What do you do with the person who has great influence but little spiritual depth?
They can’t be put immediately into leadership in the church; you never compromise the spiritual integrity of the congregation. I’d pour my life into such a leader by praying with him, teaching him to pray Scripture, getting him involved in some accountability group. As these people begin to show spiritual leadership, I put them over some project and watch how they interact.
You’ve said that a leader needs to “add value” to people. How, specifically, do you add value to someone’s life?
Adding value comes from listening to people. If I know their hearts, then I know exactly where to add value. I develop the part of themselves they want to see developed, not what I happen to need at the time. This prevents me from using people.
What is the role of prayer in developing leaders?
Everywhere I’ve served, I’ve prayed for God to send me leaders to build his church. For fourteen years, at least once every month or so, I’d meet someone visiting Skyline for the first time. We’d introduce ourselves. Then God would speak to me and say, John, there’s one. That was the most humbling thing in life because I didn’t do one thing to bring in that person. If you pray for leaders; if you have a heart to develop, lead, and empower people; if you’ve got a God-given vision, God will give according to your heart’s desires.
SPOTTING A NEW LEADER (p. 30)
Business leader Fred Smith gives 10 traits to identify a promising person.
The natural leader will stand out. The trick is identifying those who are capable of learning leadership over time. Here are several traits to help identify whether someone is capable of learning to lead.
1. Leadership in the past.
The best predictor of the future is the past.
2. The capacity to create or catch vision.
When I talk to people about the future, I want their eyes to light up. I want them to ask the right questions.
3. A constructive spirit of discontent.
Some people would call this criticism, but there’s a big difference in being constructively discontent and being critical. The unscratchable itch is always in the leader.
4. Practical ideas.
Not everybody with practical ideas is a leader, of course, but leaders seem to be able to identify which are and which aren’t.
5. A willingness to take responsibility.
Leaders will bear work, for the feeling of contributing to other people is what leadership is all about.
6. A completion factor.
In the military, it is called “completed staff work.” The half-cooked meal isn’t what you want.
7. Mental toughness.
No one can lead without being criticized or without facing discouragement. I don’t want a mean leader; I want a tough-minded leader.
8. Peer respect.
Peer respect doesn’t reveal ability, but it can show character and personality.
9. Family respect.
The family’s feelings toward someone reveal much about his or her potential to lead.
10. A quality that makes people listen to them.
Potential leaders have a “holding court” quality about them. When they speak, people listen.
In addition, before I give someone significant leadership responsibilities, I find it helpful to ask myself several questions:
What will this person do to be liked?
It’s nice to be liked, but as a leader it cannot be the controlling factor. The cause must be.
Does this person have a destructive weakness?
A destructive weakness will not show up on a test; it’s a character flaw. A destructive weakness may, for example, be an obsession.
Can this person accept reasonable mistakes?
Perfection is too expensive; employees can’t live under that tyranny. A leader has to be able to accept reasonable mistakes-not repeat them but accept them.
Can I provide this person the environment to succeed?
It is so important, particularly in the early days of someone’s leadership, that he or she is put into a congenial environment.
KEEPING LEADERS AFLAME (p. 44)
Tennessee pastor Rob Morgan shares how he keeps volunteers enthused and effective.
My leadership tasks include keeping volunteers from stagnation, frustration, and burnout. To accomplish these, I’m learning from several pages in the Operations Manual.
Ezekiel: think empathetically.
Like Ezekiel, we must sit where our people sit (Ezek. 3:15). When we do, we gain respect for people’s schedules, and we guard workers against overinvolvement.
Nehemiah: create systems.
The projected wall was divided into manageable sections with clearly defined tasks. Some were stationed as watchmen, others as soldiers. Others provided food. Workers hauled off debris. Everyone understood his or her part, and the wall went up.
Syzygus: reduce friction.
Interpersonal conflict is a pri-mary cause of burnout, so we take on the role of the loyal yokefellow in Philippians 4: “I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them” (The Message). We strive to mediate or prevent conflict.
Paul: give recognition.
Ever heard of Urbanus, Apelles, Tryphena and Tryphosa? They weren’t the most famous New Testament servants, but they must have beamed when the apostle Paul mentioned their hard work in Romans 16. Paul’s example prompted us to create opportunities for recognition.
SHEPHERD OR LEADER? (p. 48)
Two respected voices make the case for which role-shepherd or leader-should be primary for pastors today.
I. Why Pastors Must Be Shepherds
H. B. London, Jr., vice president of ministry outreach/pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, explains why pastors must mainly be shepherds.
A growing number of pastors have modeled their style after the megachurch pastors. They think, If it is good enough for them to be a CEO, why can’t I? Given that most pastors will not pastor large congregations, the need for CEO’s is not so critical.
The most important aspect of being a pastor is fulfilling the role of servant-shepherd. Our congregation and community must know that the shepherd of the flock is approachable, responsive, gentle, and genuinely filled with compassion for those they serve. The most effective pastors minister from the marketplace up-not the pulpit down.
A lifelong pastor, my granddad, on his deathbed, said, “It’s one thing to tell people how much God loves them . . . but it is also very important for them to know that you love them as well.” Those were the last words I ever heard my granddad speak. They formed my ministry style for the years that would follow. It is a ministry modeled after the Good Shepherd himself: “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep, and my own sheep know me. . . . I put the sheep before myself” (John 10, The Message).
II. Why Pastors Must Be Leaders
James Emery White, pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, explains why leadership is the most important job of today’s pastor.
Leadership is at the heart of the pastoral role-both biblically and practically. Biblically, we are called to lead; practically, we must lead.
Shepherding is a clear dimension of the pastoral office, but it is far from its central role. In the pastoral epistles, specific requirements are listed for the pastoral office. One is a demonstrated track record in leadership evidenced by leadership within the home.
Three terms are used in the New Testament for the pastoral office: poime, or pastor, the role of caring and feeding; presbuteros, or elder, the role of one who is spiritually mature; and episkopos, or bishop, the task of oversight or management.
Nowhere in Scripture is shepherding divorced from leadership. A call for pastors to lead is not a call for the corporate model to invade the church. It is a call to recapture the fullness of the biblical role for pastors, and to meet the needs of the church in our modern world.
UP TO THE CHALLENGE(p. 56)
Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, reflects on five truths about leadership in the church.
1. I believe the church is the most leadership-intensive enterprise in society.
The redeeming and rebuilding of human lives is exceedingly more difficult than building widgets or delivering predictable services. Here’s why:
—Every life requires a custom mold. You don’t stop the line in a factory every time a product comes down it. —The church is utterly voluntary. In the final analysis, we have little or no leverage over anybody we lead. —The church is utterly altruistic. People must be motivated internally. Without that internal want to, leaders have no power.
2. I believe there is a spiritual gift of leadership.
God alone decides who gets this gift of leadership and in what measure. I’ve come up with a partial list of what spiritually gifted leaders do:
- They cast a God-honoring vision.
- They gather and align people for the achievement of the vision.
- They can motivate their co-workers.
- They sense the need for positive change and then constructively bring it about.
- They establish core values.
- They allocate resources effectively.
- They identify entropy.
- They create a leadership culture in their organization.
3. I believe that most churches unintentionally undermine the expression of the leadership gift.
First, when they fail to teach about it. Second, by implementing church governance systems that frustrate gifted leaders.
4. I believe that almost everybody wants to be led.
Leaderless people are a sad lot. It’s not much fun to wander and to wonder and to drift and eventually to self-destruct. May the church be the one place where leaderless people find the excitement of being valued, of being included, of being told that they are indispensable for the achievement of a common vision.
5. I believe that the church is the hope of the world, and its renewal rests in the hands of its leaders.
The church possesses the single ray of hope left in the darkening skies of human depravity. These things are the business of leaders. Which is why Paul cried out in Romans 12:8,
“Men and women, if you’ve been given the gift of leadership, for God’s sake, lead.”
For the world’s sake, lead. For the sake of lost people, lead.
NICHOLAS (p. 82)
In this moving story, Episcopal rector Alvin C. Johnson, Jr., recounts the death of his son and how he fought to hold onto his faith.
MINISTRY TO MISSING MEMBERS (p. 104)
In this Leadership Classic, church consultant John Savage tells how to respond when people begin to drop out of church.
As a pastor, I asked myself, How could people move from active involvement to total inactivity in just four years? I needed to figure out how to keep current members active and enable inactive ones to return.
Based on research, we found 95 percent of inactive members had experienced one or more apes, “anxiety-provoking events.” Their anxiety fell into four categories.
Reality anxiety
based on some real, historical event. Normally the event is a snub or an utter lack of church care when a member most needed it.
Moral anxiety
when people experience in themselves or others behaviors they believe aren’t right.
Neurotic anxiety
pain caused by the imagination. It’s only in the person’s head.
Existential anxiety
the feeling brought about by the thought that your life may be meaningless.
All anxiety arises from some problem. The most common is intra-family conflict. Husband and wife square off on some issue; parents and kids squabble.
Next is conflict with pastors. When pastors avoid dealing with people’s anxiety, people simply avoid the pastors and their churches.
Inter-family conflict is the third arena. It’s the Hatfields against the McCoys.
Overwork, or at least the feeling of it, is the fourth problem area.
If we learn to hear and respond to people’s cries for help, we can usually prevent people from dropping out. If we miss the verbal cries for help, we at least have a string of nonverbal cries to alert us:
- The leaving of worship.
- Leaving major committees and boards.
- Leaving Sunday school. These often are their closest friends.
- Letter of resignation.
- Financial pledges are dropped.
People respond to their pain in different ways. Some begin to blame something external—the church, the pastor. We’ve nicknamed them skunks. When you call on these people, you get sprayed on.
Another set of dropouts experiences a different emotion: hopelessness. As a result, these people withdraw and become inactive. We call them turtles. Turtles point the blame internally, toward themselves.
We need to teach ourselves and our lay people to hear the pain of inactive people. In one church we took fifteen minutes at the end of every board meeting for members to report who, in their estimation, was crying for help. We gave the names to a team of trained callers.
It helps, too, if we learn how to intervene in the stages leading to inactivity, before the people disappear.
PASTORING A HOUSE DIVIDED (p. 110)
An interview with James David Ford, chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, on how to minister faithfully amid conflict, power, and partisanship.
When you pray for the Congress, how do you pray?
I remember the three-day debate on the Gulf War. The Congress was trying to determine whether to give the President power to go. It was serious, the most intense debate in my eighteen years here. And I had a son over there, so it was terribly difficult for me. I offered prayer in the midst of that, and it was so simple: “May God’s blessings be upon us and give us wisdom.” In such a moment, that’s about all you can say. In fact, generally my prayers are not related directly to the Congress.
They’re not?
No. Sometimes guests get up and say, “O Lord, we pray for these men and women who are the great leaders of America.” It is true that we should pray for our leaders, as Romans 13 emphasizes, but if you focus on the representatives too much, they begin to think, I’m really something. But part of the judgment is to say, “In the eyes of God, you’re a sinner.” As chaplain I take the message seriously and take the people seriously, but sometimes it’s important to laugh at their culture and never stand in awe of it. The culture stands in awe of the gospel. The culture stands in awe of the cross.
Is it appropriate to be prophetic in a prayer?
Surely. I think you can do it without saying there’s only one Christian response to an issue. I think we ought to honor our lay people more and leave up to them how to solve problems. When I was a pastor in Ivanhoe, Minnesota-farm country-I stood one Sunday morning and said, “In today’s newspaper it says on one side that millions of people in the world are hungry. On the other side of the paper it says the bins in America’s food granaries are bursting because we have so much food.” I said to my farm congregation, “That’s a problem for Christians. But it’s not my problem; it’s your problem. I’m not going to tell you whether to work on it in the Farm Bureau, the Farmer’s Union, or the Grange. That’s your problem as lay people, and as a pastor I honor you by giving you that opportunity.”
What are some ways people misunderstand pastoral leadership?
We have only one responsibility: to be true and faithful to the Word. That’s the only thing. That’s a freeing concept. Sometimes I see pastors wanting power. They get interested in political power. We have no power other than the power of the gospel. The gospel’s the power, not us. Our strength comes in being powerless-and to admit that and to accept it. I remember as a young man sitting outside the country church in Rush Point, Minnesota, with a bunch of pastors. My father was a pastor, my grandfather was a pastor, and we kids sat and listened. The laughter of the pastors is what I remember. I think that true laughter is the opposite of sin, because sin is focusing on yourself, and laughter is turning out of yourself. What has helped me more than anything is growing up with generations of pastors and realizing, You’re not the message. But you tell the message.
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP, journal.
Last Updated: October 8, 1996
