When a President leaves office one of the questions often asked is how will history view his presidency. Most Presidents are quite aware of this are are concerned with the legacy that they will leave behind. Nixon was widely viewed as a very intelligent individual with a sharp political mind, but his legacy is one of deceit and cover up, and his resignation as President is a legacy no President wants to duplicate. Carter legacy would have to be that he was one of the weakest Presidents in modern history. With hostages in Iraq, a 20+ mortgage interest rate, fuel shortages and gasoline lines across the country, and the inability to address them by any means other than sitting in front of a fireplace wearing a sweater and encouraging Americans to cut-back his Presidency was a disaster. Reagan came into office having to address the many failures of the Carter presidency but was able to get the hostages released within hours of assuming office, returned the nation's economy to health, brought down the Berlin Wall, strengthened the nation's military, and restored hope and confidence to the American public. His legacy was that of a strong leader, and politicians from both parties often refer back to his two terms as an example of what leadership looks like. Bush 41 only served one term in office, and he will likely be best known for driving Hussein out of Kuwait and the military restraint he exercised after doing so, a restraint his son may have wished to follow when he became President. While Clinton had his problems in office, often moral in nature, history is painting a pretty positive picture of his overall accomplishments as President, and his efforts since leaving office has only strengthened his legacy. It is too soon to know how history will treat Bush 43, but some analysts are now saying that historians are already beginning to focus more on his achievements than on those issues for which he was often criticized. His overall legacy is likely to be positive. Of course, there is no way of knowing how President Obama will be viewed by historians since he is still in office with much more time left to serve in his second term.
The point of all this is that as a church leader you will leave behind a legacy. Some of the challenges you will face will not be your fault as they are part of the previous leader's legacy. There is no question that President Obama inherited a financial mess when he first assumed office, but it is not true that all that mess was the former President's fault. Much of that financial mess was the direct result of banks providing mortgages to people who could not afford them, and that was the result of laws proposed primarily by Democrats in Congress and approved by both houses and signed into law by President Bush. A lot of people are responsible for the poor economy Obama inherited when he entered office. President Obama's legacy will be influenced by how he addressed that economy and whether or not his policies corrected the mess.
Some of the issues you will have to address as a church leader are the result of actions and teachings that have occurred long before you arrived. I know a pastor who grieves over a church in which he was raised that has been in a long decline primarily because of the leadership recent pastors have given the church. Whoever goes to that church next will have serious issues to address, none of which are his fault, but he or she will now have the responsibility to correct them if the church is to become healthy again.
When you begin a ministry in a new place one of the things you need to recognize is that one day you will leave there. You may be called elsewhere, be fired, retire, or die, but if the Lord tarries you will one day leave that church, and you will leave a legacy. People will remember certain things about your ministry in that church. The person who follows you will either build upon that legacy or have to tear it down in order to build something positive. The earlier in your ministry in that place you recognize this the more likely it will be that your legacy will be a positive one. You cannot control what you will encounter when you begin a new ministry, but you can control how you respond to that and the legacy you will leave behind when you leave. Don't leave a mess for others to clean up. Make sure your legacy is a positive one upon which the next leader can build.
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