Thursday, January 20, 2011

Leaders or followers

There are many ways we try to measure how well our churches are doing.  We measure the number of members in our churches, average attendance, the numbers of people attending Sunday school or small groups, the amount of the offering, the number of baptisms, the number of new people who join our churches, and the number of people who leave our churches.  All of these figures can be important when we are trying to decide how well we are doing, but I think there is an even more important measurement we can take.  How many of the people in your church are developing as leaders?

When we count the number of people attending any event we are merely counting warm bodies.  The perception is that the higher the number the more successful our church is.  That may not necessarily be the case.  There are any number of ways you can entice people to attend an event in your church.  The real question is how many of those people are involved in ministries?  How many of them currently serve in some leadership capacity in your church, and how many are developing as future leaders?  Warm bodies are followers, and the goal of a church leader should not be to see how many followers he or she can attract.  The goal should be to see how many leaders he or she can develop, and how many of them are personally involved in some type of ministry.  It will be the leaders that will have the greatest impact on the church and surrounding community, not the number of followers.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.  Most of us have heard that numerous times.  To increase our ministry presence in the community we need more leaders in our churches.  It will be the leaders who will enable our churches to grow both numerically and spiritually.  This is why it is important that we are intentionally developing our current and future leadership.

Earlier today I met with a new pastor of a good size church.  This pastor has been in the ministry for a number of years and has enjoyed a very successful ministry, but he has never pastored a church as large as this one.  We talked for over an hour, and much of that conversation centered around the leadership in his new church.  Not once did we mention the numbers of people who attend this church.  Our focus was on the leadership in this church and the various ways they went about their ministries.  He is excited about the future ministry he will enjoy in this church, and that excitement comes from the persons he is working with and the skills and commitment they possess.  If you want to be excited about the future ministry of your church it is necessary to be developing leaders in your church.

This may be a good goal for 2011.  You may want to spend the first month or two taking a good look at the leadership potential of people in your congregation.  Once you've identified some prospective leaders try to understand what training they will need to develop into leaders, and then offer to provide that training to them.  This needs to be very intentional on the part of the pastor, and it may mean that you have to back off a little on some of the maintenance work you spend much of your time doing to be able to devote additional time to leadership development.  While you're working with your future leaders don't forget your current leaders.  What training do they need to become even better leaders?  As you focus on leadership development you are laying the foundation for future ministry which will lead to a healthier church and a growing church.

Some bivocational ministers will read this and worry that they may only have one or two people in their congregations that really demonstrate any leadership potential.  Instead of seeing that as a negative, rejoice that you could identify one or two people and begin with them.  We often make the mistake that we have to have great numbers to make a difference, and that's simply not true.  Take what you have, develop them, and see what happens.  My guess is that as they begin to provide leadership in your church you will find additional people who can be trained, and you can work with them.  As this cycle continues you will have a number of potential leaders in the pipeline being developed to provide ministry leadership.  I would much rather have one or two potential leaders to work with than to have 50 followers who are waiting to see what I'll do next.  I think you would, too.

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