On Leadership

Your seminary training did not train you to be a leader.  It couldn’t.  Seminary training rightfully focuses on training students to be and think like theologians.  While you may have spent some time on leadership development, that is not the point of being at the seminary.

You’re not at the seminary anymore.  Get yourself leadership training, lots of it.

Pastor Not Chaplain

Do not confuse your call as pastor with the functions of a chaplain.

There are certain chaplain functions that must be done:  visit the sick, comfort the bereaved, counsel the distraught.  Make sure that weddings, baptisms, confirmations, communions and funerals are all conducted decently and in order.  Hold hands that need to be held.  Rebuke when necessary. 

These tasks do not all need to be done by you.  Involve elders, fellow staff and other volunteers where ever you can.  Share ministry. 

These tasks cannot be all you do!  You cannot let yourself get so consumed by chaplain functions that you fail to fulfill the crucial role of pastor as leader.  Do a word study sometime on the term shepherd as used in Scripture.  You will find that it tracks closer with the idea of “king” than it does “chaplain.”

It is an old leadership issue:  there is a difference between “urgent” and “important.”  When it comes to being a pastor, chaplain functions tend toward urgent; leadership functions tend toward important.

Sine Qua Non

If you cannot lead, you cannot be a pastor.  Pastors have flocks.  Flocks are to be led closer to Jesus and toward his Paradise.

Pastors must be theological leaders.  They must be servant-hearted leaders.  They must be non-dictatorial leaders.  (Technically, dictators are not leaders; they are pushers.)  But they must be leaders!

Again, if you cannot lead, you cannot be a pastor.  Without leadership skills you will become an impediment and an irritant.  I have seen more congregational conflict grow out of poor leadership skills than faulty theology.

Life Long Leadership Training

Plan to spend the rest of your life learning to be a better leader.

• Read books on leadership.  Always have a book going on leadership.  Always.  Read new stuff.  Read old stuff.  Read biographies.  Read about non-profit leadership.  Read about for-profit leadership.  (If leadership skills help to make companies money, shouldn’t we use those same skills to make, humanly speaking, disciples?) 

• Read books on organizations.  Organizational theory is the other half of leadership theory.  Organizations are what leaders lead.  Never, ever apologize for thinking about your congregation as a corporation!  (See I Corinthians 12:27)

• Attend leadership conferences and training events.  Make sure that these are at the top of your continuing education agenda, especially if you are at the beginning of your ministry.

• Seek feedback from your congregation and its other leaders.  Make sure that you have open dialogue with your congregation about how you are or are not functioning as a leader.  Since they are the led, they will know best how you are doing as leader.  Never fear feedback.  Lay people have tons to teach the pastor.  Listening is a big part of leadership!

Key Pinch Point

There are two key areas that pinch pastors.  If they are not addressed, they will pinch you right out of the ministry.

One area is moral failure.  That has been addressed in previous posts.

The other area is leadership.  If you desire a joyful pastorate of significance, learn leadership.

For Further Reading:

• Follow Me, Willow Creek Association
• A Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, Stephen Sample
• Built to Last, Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins
• W. Edwards Deming, read most anything by him.