Tearing Down Leadership Idols in the Church

Tag Archive - leadership

Tearing Down Leadership Idols in the Church

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

A quick Google search on “Church Leadership” will turn up literally over 170 million links. That’s a lot of content to dig into on church leadership. For all of the talk about church leadership out there today it sure seems that the church is pretty leadership poor. I know some folks down in Texas that would say that churches have a bad case of “big hat, no cattle.” Another way to say it would be that churches are all talk and no action when it comes to leadership.

With that said, there really are some leadership idols that many church leaders buy into that need to be torn down.

“Leadership is Influence”

If leadership was simply influence than my kids are the best leaders in my house. They’ve influenced the kind of car (or land yacht) I’ve purchased, the house we live in, our grocery budget and so on. While influence is a part of leadership, it’s not leadership. The Bible doesn’t define leadership as influence; it defines leadership as a spiritual gift. Not everybody has it.

“We need to Hire more Staff”

The church of America has been lulled into this idea that they have to hire more staff to do the ministry at their churches. Hiring another staff member may be the worst thing you can at your church this year. Your church most likely doesn’t need more staff to do ministry, rather your existing staff need to learn how to delegate, empower, and develop your church body to stop just coming to the church but be the church. Your church is full of competent and highly talented people who actually get paid to perform complicated jobs. Chances are they have a lot to offer at your church too.

“Preachers are Leaders”

Just because you’re a gifted communicator doesn’t mean you’re a gifted leader. It means you’re a gifted communicator. Young church leaders are taught (more by the prevailing church ministry model in the U.S. than by the Bible) that if you want to lead in a church then you have to do it from a stage, and if you’re not a gifted communicator then your not a gifted leader. That’s simply not true. Leadership is not just about inspiration and instruction (what happens from a stage). It’s also about being up close and over time with people and taking them from where they are to where they need to be. There’s more to that than stage. And frankly I’ve seen some fantastic preachers who can’t lead themselves or anyone else out of a wet paper bag.

“Leadership is Power”

Great leaders don’t simply amass and wield great amounts of power, rather they have the uncanny ability to share power and give it away to others. Barking out orders doesn’t endear people to you. You get more when you give, even in the economy of leadership.

What are other “leadership idols” you’ve seen in churches? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear your insights!

Photo Credit: Pondspider via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

Stop Blaming your Team for Under Performing

Sunday, September 4, 2016

If you’ve ever managed a team you know how easy it is to grow frustrated when individuals on the team don’t perform well and the team doesn’t get the results you’re looking for. Unfortunately when things go wrong, the first place most leaders and managers look to place blame is on the team. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Sometimes someone on the team doesn’t do their job and things fail. But the team should be the last place you look to place blame. The first place you should look to place blame is on yourself. When things go wrong on your team, keep the following principles in mind:

#1 Remember You Hired Them

If you don’t like your team, just keep in mind you’re the one who hired them. You knew what you were getting when you brought them on the team, so you shouldn’t be surprised. That is, unless you don’t have an effective process for recruiting and on-boarding new team members.

#2 Be Specific and Clear

Don’t speak in vague generalities. Coach your team on specific behaviors and attitudes. Give them real clarity on deliverables and deadlines. And then hold them accountable to results. One of the worst things at work is to not know what you need to do to be successful. Don’t let you team feel that way. Be clear with them.

#3 You get what you Tolerate

If you don’t like the attitude or performance of your team it’s probably because you’ve allowed (by intention or neglect) them to develop a particular culture. The only one who can change that is you. If you’re frustrated, the good news is you don’t have to stay that way. You have the power to change the team dynamics by changing yourself and how you interact with and lead your team.

#4 Play to their Strengths

One of the fundamental roles of the leader is to put the team players in a role and give them responsibilities in which they can find success. Everyone wants to win, and winning at work feels much better than losing. Help your team feel like their winning and you’ll not only get more done, you’ll have more fun doing it.

#5 Your Approach Matters More than you Think

If you come in guns blazing asking what went wrong and barking about how this can never happen again, people aren’t going to follow you very far. But if you help them improve, develop them, and serve your team by investing in them you may be surprised at the results you get.

#6 Timing is Everything

Coaching while your player is making a play comes off as micromanagement, that’s the wrong timing. It produces pressure and leads to a poor performance. However, you don’t wait a couple of weeks to watch the game tape. You watch it immediately after the game and coach up your players in order to make changes to schemes and performance quickly before the next game. You can’t wait weeks before you address a poor performance or attitude. If you do they’ll think they’re doing a good job because you haven’t addressed it, and when you do they’ll be surprised.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2016

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

If you missed the 2016 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, then you missed some great content, great speakers, and incredible ideas that have the potential to shift your thinking when it comes to leadership. But no worries! Now you’ve got all the notes to every session right here at your fingertips for free! Hope you enjoy!

Bill Hybels

Bill Hybels is the founder and Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL. He also the founded The Global Leadership Summit, now in over 200 U.S. sites and over 260 cities worldwide including 85 countries opened the Summit by talking about the 4 Lenses of leadership.

Bill Mulally

Alan Mulally served as the President and Chief Executive Officer at Ford Motor Company from 2006 – 2014 shared his principles and practices for teams that work well together. He did a fantastic job of sharing his real-world leadership journey of transitioning from Boeing to Ford.

Jossy Chacko

Jossy Chacko gave a fantastic (and witty) talk at the Global Leadership Summit about Expanding your Leadership. Jossy serves as the Founder and President of Empart Inc.

Dr. Travis Bradberry

Emotional Intelligence is often talked about but rarely understood. Yet it’s one of the most significant performance indicators that you can control that will determine the success or failure you find in your job. Bestselling Author and Co-Founder of TalentSmart, Dr. Travis Bradberry gave a great presentation that will help you raise your E.Q.

Patrick Lencioni

Leadership Summit favorite, Bestselling Author and Founder of the Table Group, Patrick Lencioni, gave a great talk presenting new content about what to look for and how to be an ideal team player.

Chris McChesney

Chris McChesney, Bestselling Author and Executive at Franklin Covey, gave one of my favorite presentations at the Summit this year. The ability to lead teams and organizations to execute sets great leaders apart from good leaders.

John Maxwell

Leadership expert, bestselling author and coach, John Maxwell, dropped a ton of wisdom everyone at Leadership Summit this year and he was as quotable as ever. Here are my notes and take-aways.

Bishop T.D. Jakes

During the Summit Bill Hybels had an incredible interview with Bishop T. D. Jakes who serves as the Founder and Pastor of The Potter’s House.

Dr. Henry Cloud & Shauna Niequist

There is a blind spot that every “Type A” driving leader has when it comes to self-reflection. The Illusions of Leaders: things you think are true about Leadership but aren’t really true

Danielle Strickland

Danielle Strickland who serves as an Officer in the Salvation Army, an Advocate and author provided Summit attenders an incredible challenge to provide spiritual leadership to followers not just leadership skills that you’ve picked up along the way.

Horst Schulze

CEO of the Capella Hotel Group and the Founding President of the Ritz Carlton, Horst Schulze was back at Leadership Summit talking about putting the customer first.

Wilfredo De Jesus

Wilfredo De Jesus, who serves as the Senior Pastor at New Life Covenant Church wrapped up Leadership Summit this year with a spiritual challenge.

Posted in Leadership

Hope is Not a Strategy

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Hoping things will get better at your church won’t help things actually get better at your church. In fact the opposite may actually be true. The Bible says this about hope in Proverbs 13:12

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

In other words when we place our hope in something that doesn’t come through it makes our hearts sick. Faith isn’t magic. It won’t automatically make your church everything you and Jesus want it to be.

But putting your faith and hope in a well executed plan that will help you your church take steps of obedience in becoming what Jesus wants His Church to be, that’s a different story. That brings fulfillment to peoples hearts and builds trust between church leaders and their congregations.

Plans Don’t Self-Execute

Nothing works until you do. It doesn’t matter how great your plan is, no plan self executes. Every great ministry started as a great idea, but not every great idea turns into a great ministry. Some of the key reasons why things fall apart when it comes time to actually execute the strategy is a lack of simple good old fashion work ethic, effort, follow through and accountability. Nothing works until you do.

You Get What You Tolerate

If you don’t like the way things are in your church today and you’ve been a part of the leadership team for more than 3 years (less than that and you can blame the prior administration) than most likely it’s because you’ve allowed it to be what it is. You’ve tolerated bad or sloppy behavior and it’s become institutionalized in the culture of the church.

The Best Predictor of Future Performance is Past Behavior

If you really want to know what the future holds for your church, if things are really going to get better or not, then start looking at the current and past behaviors and decisions of the leadership team. If you are hoping to get different results with the same tactics and decisions you’ve made before, then your hope is probably misplaced. The best way to predict a better future is to create it with different strategies and actions than you’ve taken before.

Things are Supposed to get Worse

Don’t forget that Jesus Himself described that things would get worse before He came back to make everything right. Things don’t drift towards unity, completion, discipline, success, health, growth, or whatever your picture of “better” is. Things naturally fall apart, grow old, and die. It’s the nature of things post-fall. Left alone, things drift towards failure.

Photo Credit: DieselDemon via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

My Top 10 Church Leadership Posts of All-Time

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

More than six years ago I reluctantly began blogging. I started this journey kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to start a blog. After all what would I have to say? Who would listen? Did the Christian community really need another voice in a conversation that already seemed pretty loud to me?

What started as a couple of friends strongly encouraging me (badgering me may be a better way to say it) to share some notes from some leadership training I had done with some groups of leaders has somehow turned into literally hundreds of church leadership articles over the years.

I’m about to drop a secret on you about my blog. What keeps me going week in and week out is my personal discipline to continue to grow as a leader. This site acts as an accountability tool to keep me consistently thinking about, writing about, and testing my leadership thoughts and ideas. I don’t keep doing this for a platform, I keep doing this because I want to keep growing, so in essence you, the reader, get to have a sneak peak each week into my online, public, leadership journal. Over the years some posts have been more useful than others to readers. So I thought I’d share some of the most helpful articles over the last 6+ years with you. Happy reading!

#1 10 Insider Focused Ministry Names

This has always been an important topic to me. I’m convinced that words build worlds (culture) and that nothing betrays (reveals) the true culture of our churches more than how accessible (or inaccessible) our language is to outsiders.

#2 8 Reasons Why People Don’t Volunteer at your Church

I’ve had a bit of a self-admittedly outlier view on volunteerism in the church. I don’t believe that volunteer roles are slots to be filled or jobs in the church to be completed but that volunteering is discipleship and that you can’t follow Jesus and not volunteer. It’s bothers me that most churches just don’t get this.

#3 How Many People Should Your Church Have on Staff?

When I encourage churches to staff at a 1:100 ratio most of them look at me like I’m crazy. But not only is it doable but it’s a better model (for all kinds of reasons).

#4 When is it Right to Leave a Church?

People leave churches for all kinds of reasons. I’ve had friends of mine leave churches that I’ve been on staff at…that’s tough by the way. There are a couple of good reasons to leave a church, but most reasons people give are pretty weak stuff that they end up sprinkling a little “Jesus dust” on to make themselves feel good about it.

#5 6 Indicators You’re Leading an Insider Focused Church

I mentioned that this is an important topic to me & that I’ve written on it a bunch. After all the whole reason I thought the Church existed, like the whole reason God put the Church on the planet was for people who don’t yet know Jesus. What I’ve found is that most churches wouldn’t agree with me.