One of our churches has recently undergone a substantial period of growth. Nothing changed in their strategy, tactics, vision, or missional emphasis. In fact, from the outside, almost nothing changed. And yet, the fruit in the ministry in terms of disciple-making, baptism, leadership development, and numerical growth is impossible to ignore.
I asked the leader of this church, my friend Jesse, what he attributed the growth to. He responded, “I realized I was the leader and decided to act accordingly.”
In church life, everything rises and falls on leadership.
Of course, strategy, tactics, team, and the move of the Holy Spirit are undeniably important. But sometimes I wonder if we undervalue the importance of catalytic leadership within a community.
For example, a lot of leadership writing, teaching, and thinking over the last few decades has focused on the fact that leaders are called to act as servants towards those they lead. However, the emphasis on servant-hearted leadership has led to confusion between acting as a leader and acting as a servant. Leaders are called to be servants, but a servant is not always a leader.
What, then, is leadership and what do leaders actually do?
What Is Leadership?
Over the last few years, when teaching our leadership development course, I’ve developed the following definition:
Leadership is about helping people accomplish something they couldn’t or wouldn’t accomplish on their own.
The job of the leader is to help people accomplish a goal, vision, or purpose that they have not naturally self-organized to accomplish.
The job of the leader is to help activate the community towards an objective they haven’t already achieved themselves.
The two words here, couldn’t and wouldn’t, point to something important.
Couldn’t: Competency and Coordination
A community might not be able to accomplish a goal without leadership for two reasons: competency and coordination.
Competence: a group may not contain the necessary skills to accomplish the task. The job of the leader is to identify the missing skills and inspire people to gain those skills, either by going through a learning process or by recruiting those who already have them.
Coordination: the group may contain all of the necessary skills, but they are not properly organized. This is most often the case in church communities. In this case, The job of the leader is to act as the organizing force that brings people together.
This is why so much of leadership involves meetings. Before the leader can help people accomplish something, they first need to convene the people so they can be coordinated.
Wouldn’t: Overcoming Inertia
“Wouldn’t” is the much more difficult part of leadership. Addressing skill deficiencies or even organizational coordination is not that difficult. However, “wouldn’t” addresses the internal motivational factors within a community.
In most cases, there is tremendous inertia to stay the same. People are often hesitant to change because most change involves some dimension of loss. It is not change itself that most people are afraid of, but losing something they find valuable. [1]
I once watched a church die a very slow death over a period of 20 years. They knew they needed to change, but they were not willing to let go of their old methods and preferences. I talked to the 80-year-old church administrator, who said, with tears in his eyes, that he remembered the glory days, but that they hadn’t updated their methodology in more than 50 years. Sadly, that community is now gone and the building has been sold to a condo developer.
Leaders are change agents. Our job isto motivate a community towards change so that we can fulfill a mission that is worthwhile. It is to energize the community, even in the face of painful losses to things we once held dear.
The Tools of Leadership
To help others accomplish what they couldn’t (external skill) or wouldn’t (internal motivation) on their own, a leader must communicate the vision clearly and instill instill motivation to fulfill that vision.
To accomplish that, we have a few primary tools, if they could be called that:
Vision: Routinely remind the community of why we are doing what we are doing.
Values: Clarity around the culture that we will cultivate while we fulfill that vision.
Trust: If everything rises and falls on leadership, then everything rises and falls on relationships. A leader’s efficacy is limited by the depth of trust they have in their most important relationships.
So, in short, a leader is taking responsibility for a community to ensure there is clarity about what we are trying to accomplish, why we are trying to accomplish it, how we are going to do it, and investing in the relationships that will make it a reality.
Next week, I will write about the three primary pitfalls I’ve observed in our leadership.
[1] I recently discovered this framing through Tod Bolsinger’s book, Canoeing the Mountains and have found it a tremendously helpful tool to understand the emotionally charged responses that people can have to change.