I’m always asking, “How can I add value to the person I lead?”
—John Maxwell
Investing in people is like investing in stocks. High risk can bring a huge return or a huge loss. The greatest leaders will help you the most—but they can also hurt you the most.
The best leader on my staff once took a hundred of our people and started a new church a few blocks away. The way he did it crushed me. Another staff member was accused of a moral failure. He told me he was innocent, and I defended him. I found out three months later that he had, in fact, committed sexual sin.
These weren’t leaders left from some previous administration. I had identified their potential and poured my life into them. For months I told myself, I’m never going to let staff get close to me again. They’ll never hurt me or lie to me again.
Then one day I realized, John, this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. When we embrace people and pour our lives into them, they’ll sometimes hurt us. But the future of our ministry and our churches depends on developing others to lead.
My eyes were opened to this truth in my first church. When I went to Hilliham, Indiana, I could count the people on one hand. Over several years, I worked night and day, and 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 only a few months. I realized I had failed. I had not prepared others to lead. I vowed, This will never happen again. Since then, one of the primary focuses of my ministry has been leadership development.
One thing this emphasis has taught me is that developing leaders is hard. People willing to be developed are pretty scarce. When you do find them, they’re usually already over-committed 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. They are strong-willed and usually have their own agendas.
Then, as if all this weren’t enough, strong leaders are hard to keep. They will be continually enticed with other opportunities that appear to be more exciting and meaningful.
So how do we invest our lives in others in a way that brings great dividends for the kingdom of God?
Value Added
My development of leaders begins with a clear purpose. I’m always asking, “How can I add value to the person I lead?” I advise pastors not to go to a new church and ask, “Who’s going to help me?” Instead, look around, find out who the leaders are, and ask, “How can I add value to them?”
We can do this in several ways.
One is to ask people to be part of a great vision. Having a cause worth dying for is the greatest reason to live. This is enhanced when you treat people as your greatest asset. We all believe this is true when we first meet people, but after we’ve worked with them awhile and seen their weaknesses, it’s a little tougher to believe.
Adding value also comes from listening to people. If I know their heart, I know exactly where to add value. I develop the part of them they want to see developed, not what I happen to need at the time. This prevents me from using people.
Or I ask, “What is their unique contribution?” Then I equip people according to their gifts and desires.
For example, our new marketing manager for INJOY is a young man named Kevin. Kevin brings some excellent skills from the business world. For the next several months, he’ll be traveling with me and getting to know my heart while I get to know his. I’m putting all the leadership material I can find in front of him, and he’s digesting it as quickly as I can provide it. I’m feeding a hunger that is already there.
And then, of course, I simply coach people. When Dan Reiland was a member at Skyline, he felt called to ministry and went to seminary. During this time he came back for a year of internship on our staff. Dan is smart and highly task-oriented, but also melancholic and nonrelational.
His first week on the job he walked right past me and seven or eight other people in the lobby. He never said hello or acknowledged our presence. With his briefcase in hand, face forward, he headed for his office, work on his mind. I thought, He didn’t even see us.
So I followed him into his office and said, “Dan, you just passed by your work.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were standing in the lobby, and you walked right by without speaking.”
“Man, I’d like to talk, but I’ve got work to do.”
“These people are our work, Dan,” I said. “We’re in the people business.”
What I love about Dan is that when he saw his need for change, he did something about it. I began to teach people skills to him. After five years, he became my executive pastor and did nothing but people development and oversight. He came with me to INJOY, and he told me the other day that 140 people are coming to his house for Memorial Day. He has become the Pied Piper.
The Art of Unique Development
Of course, part of the art of leadership development is being sensitive to the need to work with individuals in unique ways.
Some people have a heart for God but no leadership skills. With them we need to provide on-the-job training. If people have the character qualifications, they merely need to learn how to maximize their efforts.
As we seek to develop such people, either we or they can worry too much about position and titles. I teach them, “Wherever you’re working, whatever organization you serve, start adding value to people and begin to gain their respect. They will champion you.” When they understand that leadership is influence instead of position, everything changes. They don’t have to strive to be leaders; if they strive to add value to others, others will allow them to be leaders.
Other people have great influence but little spiritual depth.
Sometimes that’s our fault. As a gifted business leader once told me: “Monday through Saturday I’m challenged to the limit. I’m taking risks; I’m making deep commitments in my business. But when I go to church, I’m never challenged or asked to make deep commitments. I’m never asked to take a risk.”
This grieves me. Most churches have some wonderful leaders who are only nominally spiritual because they’ve never been challenged, when, in fact, it’s easier to bring people around spiritually than it is to raise them up to a place of leadership.
But leaders who lack spirituality must be developed on the side. They can’t be put immediately into leadership in the church without compromising the spiritual integrity of the congregation. Rather, I would pour my life into such a leader by praying with him, teaching him to pray Scripture, getting him involved in some accountability group.
Great leaders make good advisers. I’ve approached businesspeople and said, “You’re good at finances. Would you advise me?” As we relate, they get a heart for the things I have a heart for. Then, as they begin to show spiritual leadership, I put them over some project with a specific deadline—maybe looking for land for the church or planning a men’s retreat. Then I watch how they interact.
Some leaders blossom through involvement on boards and committees, while others can’t operate within the confines of that kind of structure. It’s simply not their world.
Recognizing Potential
I compare leadership development to an elevator ride, with the destination being the tenth floor. Sometimes, when we get to the third floor, the leaders we’re developing say, “This is my floor, I’m getting off.”
My tendency in the earlier years was to get off with them. “Let’s take some stairs. We don’t need to get on the elevator. Let’s go just a little bit higher.”
My wife, Margaret, finally said, “John, you have to let others determine what level they want to live on.” That wasn’t easy for me because I think growth is life.
Over the years my philosophy of leadership development has been forced to change. I used to think I could lead anybody, but I found out there are some people I can’t lead. In addition, I used to think anybody could be a leader if he was really committed. That is naïve. There are a lot of people who don’t want to be leaders, nor are they cut out for the job.
Knowing these realities, how do we choose the right people to develop for leadership?
First, I think we should give our present leaders our best shot. There are many people I was ready to write off after the first month who later became tremendous assets to the work.
I urge pastors to give themselves six months to assess their current leadership’s potential for personal growth. You play the hand you’ve been dealt. You’ll find some people have a lot of potential, while others have little. You pour yourself into the first group, then you figure out where the others might fit in to other areas of ministry.
In my first church, one man was highly critical of me. I went to him and said, “I’m sorry if I’ve done something wrong.” I thought we’d embrace and everything would be fine. I hugged him, but he didn’t hug me back. I didn’t confront him or initiate any kind of change, and the next week he was after me again. He was not the kind of person I needed on my leadership team.
When I approach a potential leader, I ask him to become my prayer partner for at least a year. That gives us time to get to know each other’s heart.
On the front end of these relationships, I ask, “Are you willing to reproduce other leaders if I invest in you?” This perpetuates the culture of leadership development and weeds out people who probably wouldn’t have developed anyway.
Sometimes intimidation keeps pastors and high-octane lay-leaders from connecting with each other. The pastor looks at the leader and thinks, He’s got a company and a big budget. I have this little church and a part-time secretary. But the business person looks at the pastor’s world and thinks, He’s been to seminary. He knows Greek and Hebrew. I could never achieve that level of spirituality, that godly focus. So intimidation goes both ways.
Personal Leadership
Often the obstacles to developing leaders are not within others but within ourselves.
A key personal issue we must settle before we can develop others is whether we are ready to give up power. The only people who can empower others are people who can easily relinquish power.
I can do that when I realize there is an unlimited supply available to me. If this is the only paper clip I think I’m ever going to have, I’m not going to give it to you; I need it. But if I know we’ve got 10,000 paper clips in the supply closet, I’m going to say, “Want a paper clip? Have a whole box.”
So I’d suggest pulling together the gifted leaders in your church and letting them recruit and develop potential leaders. That requires tremendous security within the pastor, but we’ll have that security when we understand what fosters loyalty from the congregation’s leaders. Loyalty is the result of respect. You won’t be loyal to a person you don’t respect. In my dad’s day, the pastor got loyalty because he was the pastor. These days, people will not be loyal to anyone unless they respect the person and know the leader respects them. People give loyalty when they can say, “I’m a better person because of that leader.”
Even the pastor who doesn’t feel like a strong leader can develop others to be leaders if he is secure not only in turning over leadership to others but also in showing a willingness to develop himself. Any pastor who recognizes the importance of leadership will develop his or her own skills.
A second personal issue that enables us to be more effective in developing leaders is learning to be passionate about ministry rather than driven. There was a time when I was driven. I was too impatient, too goal-oriented. Today, though, I would say I’m a passionate leader. I think there’s a world of difference between being driven and being passionate when it comes to leadership. One who is driven tries to prove something to someone, to seek approval for something. He focuses on the goal alone. One who is passionate in leadership savors the journey as much as the destination. The one who is driven usually depends on the attention of others; the passionate one works from a spiritual center within. Driven people burn out. Passionate people do not.
A third personal issue is whether or not I am willing to admit my limitations. Knowing my limitations brings me greater spiritual health and enables me to foster the same openness in the leaders I am training.
For example, I am only now getting a better perspective on the inevitable fatigue of ministry. I used to think fatigue was the price you paid for working for God. But I no longer believe that the most spiritual people build the biggest churches or work the hardest. Fatigue is no indication of spiritual maturity. My motivation for admitting and dealing with fatigue comes from knowing how vulnerable it makes me to sin and error.
What’s Your Passion?
Not long after I came to Skyline, I was leading a conference in Jackson, Mississippi, when a guy said, “We wish you’d give us ongoing leadership training.”
I responded, “Well, if I did a tape each month on leadership, how many of you would join the club?”
Thirty-seven people raised their hands. I wrote down their names and said, “Okay, I’ll go home and teach my staff. We’ll put it on tape. I’ll send it to you.”
That’s how the INJOY Life Club started. Dick Peterson, an IBM executive and member of our church, said, “I’ve got a heart for pastors. I’ll help.” He put a tape duplicator in his garage and a computer in his bedroom, and this thing just exploded.
About five years ago, one of my trustees sat down and said, “John, you’re going to have to make a choice.”
I said, “No I won’t. I love both the church and INJOY. I’ve got to do both.”
He said, “We support you, but we believe there’s going to be a time when you will have to choose.”
Four years later, I finished a conference in Cincinnati, where over a thousand kids came forward to answer the call to full-time ministry. I sat down at the end of that service and thought, This is life. This is what I was born to do.
Going back to my hotel that night, I finally admitted to myself, I can no longer do both.
When I got home, I walked into the house and said to Margaret, “I can’t do both.”
She responded, “Do you realize that in the twenty-five years we’ve been married I’ve never heard you say, ‘I can’t do this’?”
I began to cry. “But, Margaret, I can’t do this. I have too much on me. I’m not good enough, fast enough, big enough, or smart enough.” For the rest of my life, I’ll be focused on multiplying 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, here’s one. It was the most humbling thing to me because I didn’t do one thing to bring these people in.
After I resigned, I was together with about seventy-five church leaders at a farewell dinner. I got up and said, “All my life I’ve prayed for leaders. Let me tell you how God answered those prayers.”
Then I went around the room telling each one about the time I met them and how God had said, Here’s one. By the time I was finished, we were all bawling.
Someone asked, “How could you remember meeting everyone in a church this size?”
I replied, “I don’t remember meeting every person. But I remember meeting those people I prayed God would lead into my life and whom he indicated to me as potential leaders.”
If you pray for leaders, if you have a heart to develop, lead, and empower people, and if you’ve got a God-given vision, God will give you your heart’s desires.
Copyright © 1997
