How to lead effectively in the church.
| posted 7/26/2006
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One shift in the last 30 years is a heightened expectation that a pastor is to be a leader, perhaps the leader of the congregation. "Chaplain," to some, implies a spiritual caretaker who is not a leader.
Yet many pastors recognize they minister in places where they do not command the highest position. Who better to speak to issues of pastoring the powerful than Lloyd Ogilvie who served as chaplain of the United States Senate. Prior to that he pastored First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, California for 23 years.
Can you lead spiritually even when you are not the leader of the organization?
Leadership is involved in enabling leaders to function as creatively and as effectively as they can. My role is to help those in the Senate accomplish their work. Several things are important here.
First, the objective Word, the Scripture, is crucial. One of the first things I did here was to establish Bible studies. Presently, I'm teaching five of them: one for senate spouses, one for the chiefs of staff of the senators, one for the senators themselves, and two for senate staff. Each meets for an hour, most over the lunch hour. The Friday group is particularly interesting—a broad spectrum from the police force and custodial staff and research people and office workers. I've been encouraged by the response to straight-forward Bible study.
You teach the Bible for an hour?
Yes. And at the end, time for discussion and application. We've just finished a series on stress based on the Book of James. Bill Frist, an eminent cardiologist, also a senator, gave an opening lecture on the physiology of stress. I followed with spiritual principles coming out of James.
How else do you initiate ministry?
We take the lead in helping people relate their needs and problems to the power of God. Our intercessors program is made up of volunteers from each of the 100 senate offices and 25 support offices. Those volunteers are trained, and then we keep in close touch. Every Monday we e-mail all of them for prayer requests from their offices. When emergencies occur or needs surface, the intercessors call me, and I can be available immediately.
When a senator's chief of staff died in the middle of the night, the office was in terrible grief the next morning. The liaison called me at eight o'clock, and I was able to come right over. I talked and prayed with the entire staff as they crowded the office.
Today one of the senators is having a back operation. This morning at the Wednesday prayer breakfast I was able to say, "The senator is right now going into surgery. Let's pray for him." That brought the senators there together around a particular need.
That's leadership—developing opportunities to minister.
What's the underlying theme of your ministry?
The motto I have for the chaplaincy is eight words with a semi-colon right in the center. Without God we can't; without us he won't. It's based on the biblical principle "Apart from me you can do nothing," as Jesus put it so clearly in John 15. Yet, on the other hand, when God gets ready to do something, he almost always calls people and works through them.
