What do leaders do?

The answer to the question of what do leaders do is simple. They lead. They don't stand in the way of progress. They don't play to a particular constituency. They are not influenced by polls. They don't check to see which the way the wind is blowing. They lead.

There is a serious lack of leadership in our nation today. Any thinking American has to be appalled at our elected officials who long ago gave up even appearing to represent those who elected them to office. There are few incumbents who should be returned to office, but the majority of them keep getting re-elected despite their abysmal failure to lead. We keep hearing people tell President Trump to "drain the swamp." The fact is, we can drain the swamp by putting new people in office and holding them accountable. If they don't produce, if they don't lead, we vote them out until we find people who will lead.

Unfortunately, the situation is not much better in many of our churches. We have lay people in leadership roles who spend more time protecting their sacred cows and traditions than in leading their churches towards a better future. During the years I've spent in ministry, especially in denominational ministry, I saw many church controllers who did everything possible to keep the church stuck. People walked around them like they were walking on eggshells.

 A leadership team in one church called me in to discuss a problem they had with two families in the church. Although the church attracted new people it was not growing. The reason it wasn't growing is that the new people usually left within a few months because of things members of these two families would say or do to them. When I asked the "leadership" what they were going to do about it they responded there wasn't anything they could do. I then told them to learn to live with their problem.

I explained that as the leaders in that church they decided who would stay and who would go. If they decided to keep toxic people in the church and not hold them accountable for their actions, they they should expect to see good people leave. The choice was theirs to make, but until they developed a backbone and confronted these controllers about their bad behavior nothing would change. To their credit, they did confront these individuals who then left the church, and the church began to grow.

It's not easy to say, but there's a lot of weak pastoral leadership as well. Many pastors don't want to lead. They've not been trained to lead. Some churches won't allow them to lead. As I've said many times in this blog, everything rises and falls on leadership. If the pastoral leadership is weak, the church is going to be weak.

If your church looks the same at the end of this year as it did last year, it has weak leaders. If your church has not developed new ministries in the past 12 months, it has weak leaders. If your church has the same problems it did a year ago, or five years ago, it has weak leaders. The church has been given one mission: to reach people for Jesus Christ. If that isn't happening, there is a problem with the leadership.

If you are a leader, lead.