Growing leaders grow growing churches

A lay leader I had known for a few years called me several years ago wanting to talk.  A small church that had been struggling had asked him to consider being their pastor.  He had served as a leader in his church and in their association, but to my knowledge he had never considered becoming a pastor until receiving that call.  Knowing this individual's gifts and abilities I had no doubt that he could do a good job as the pastor of that church so I encouraged him to pray about it, and if he felt led to accept it, I felt certain he would do a good job there.  He did become the pastor of that church and has done a fantastic job as their bivocational pastor.  The church has grown both numerically and spiritually.  Guests talk about how warm and inviting the church is, and many of them come back.  The church recently did some much needed remodeling and added to their fellowship area which they had outgrown.  New leaders are being identified, and leadership is taking on added ministry responsibilities as the church grows and the pastor remains bivocational.  It is exciting to be there on a Sunday, and it's even more exciting to hear the pastor and others talk about what God is doing in their church.

What is responsible for the growth occurring in this church?  The pastor will quickly name God as the One who has made all this happen, and no doubt God is at work in this place.  However, it must be said that the pastor has had a major impact on what has happened in this church.  He accepted this call without any experience as a pastor or any ministerial education.  He went into it humbly and a little frightened about what he was getting into, and he has remained humble to this day.  What he did bring to this ministry was a servant's heart, a warm personality that genuinely loves people, and a willingness to grow.  A few years after becoming the pastor he enrolled in a lay ministry training program that demanded a lot of his time and energy, but he understood that he needed to grow if he wanted to see his church grow.

I see so many pastors who do not share his desire to grow themselves, and they wonder why their church is not growing.  As church leaders we cannot take others further than we have travelled, and if we are not growing we will soon be unable to grow others.  This weekend I read a blog by a business consultant who had been very successful and had the bank account to prove it.  One day he recognized that he had been so busy that he had stopped growing himself.  As he thought about that he realized that his former customers had already received everything from him that he had to give them.  There was nothing more he could do for them.  Any future business he might have would have to come from people who needed what he already had learned, and in a changing world fewer people would need what he had learned a decade or more earlier.  He recommitted himself to personal growth so he would be better able to help others.  We in the ministry need to realize the same is true for what we do, and if we want our ministries to remain fresh and relevant we must seek ways to experience growth in our own lives.

A book I haven't read but have wanted to for some time now is What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith.  I anticipate the book will address this issue in much more detail than I can in a blog post.  The title is certainly true.  Regardless of how successful you have been in whatever field you work in, the future will require much more from you.  Many of the skills that have been successful for you in the past will be of little value in as little as five to ten years from now.  While we ministers proclaim a Gospel that will forever be true, there are constantly new ways of applying that truth to new challenges that people face that we must learn.  Trying to do church in the 21st century with 20th century tools will fail.  Ministers will face new challenges in the next five years that are yet unknown, but we had better stay on top of those challenges as they become known or we may find ourselves swept away by a sea of change that we never saw coming.

My friend has grown, and as a result the church he leads has grown.  What intentional steps are you taking to grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ and as a leader in the place where He has called you?