A book I wrote that never really found a market is The Healthy Community: Moving Your Church Beyond Tunnel Vision. I've not understood why this book has never sold more copies than it has because it addresses a common problem found in many churches. They suffer from tunnel vision. They have forgotten their mission. Rather than being about the work God has called them to do their focus is inward. There are a number of contributing factors to this problem which are addressed in the book. One of those factors is that too many churches have pastors who refuse to provide much needed leadership. One chapter in the book addresses the question of why many pastors do not lead.
One reason is that many pastors were never taught leadership. It is possible to graduate from some seminaries and never have a course in leadership. In fact, most pastors are taught how to manage churches, not lead them. Without sound leadership, any organization will struggle to move forward and accomplish anything of value. Fortunately, there are numerous conferences and other opportunities where a pastor can learn leadership. Both the pastors and the church would benefit if pastors who struggle with leadership would avail themselves of these opportunities.
Another reason pastors may not provide leadership is that the church will not let them lead. I worked with many pastor search committees as a judicatory minister, and virtually all of them said they wanted a pastor who would lead the church. In many cases, that was not true. Often, there were controllers in the church who prevented the pastor from providing any leadership. Any proposal that did not meet their approval was rejected. I witnessed many churches that gave veto power to a few people within the congregation. As one pastor who had lost too many battles to a handful of people told me just before he resigned, "The problem in our church is that we have too many nice people who won't stand up to the few that are not so nice." Tom Bandy once said that churches need to decide if they love the controllers in their churches more than they do their own teenagers. Pastors cannot neutralize the controllers; the congregation has to do that.
A third reason some pastors don't provide leadership is because they don't want to lead. They do not see themselves as leaders. They may be afraid of failing. In many cases, they don't want to lead because they themselves don't know where they are going. John Maxwell tells us that leaders are going somewhere, and they are able to persuade others to go with them. If the pastor isn't going anywhere, he or she cannot encourage others to follow.
It is critical in these difficult times that churches have strong, spiritual leaders as pastors. This requires discerning a fresh vision from God for the church and the willingness to pursue that vision. It also requires that the church allows the pastor to lead. As a life-long Baptist let me make a statement that may sound almost like heresy: Not every decision has to be put to a vote. One former professor of church history at a Baptist seminary wrote, "One will scan the pages of the New Testament in vain for wide evidence of majority control in church matters. . .There are, on the other hand, numerous references to the apostles meeting to discuss doctrine, apostles giving orders, and apostles overseeing congregations and the Church at large."
As I wrote in this book, "I am convinced that in the twenty-first century church we must either decide we are going to trust our leaders and God to make the decisions that will lead our churches forward, or we will miss important ministry opportunities while we wait for committees to hold one meeting after another trying to decide what to do. The world is moving too fast for the church to continue to do business as usual. If we cannot trust our leadership to make the right decisions, we probably do not have the right people in those positions, and if we cannot trust God to guide our leaders, then we have even greater problems."
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