Besides analyzing and handling defeats, it helps to think about how defeats can be prevented. Here are two keys I’ve found helpful.
Don’t expect most people to share your vision. One of my greatest frustrations has been getting leaders to share my vision for the church. I’d often find myself agitated that I was the one always promoting, pulling, dragging, and educating to bring them up to speed on church vision.
Then one day it hit me: Don spends fifty or sixty hours a week farming, David spends fifty hours a week at his college teaching and administering, Robert spends fifty hours a week running a small computer business. I spend my waking hours each week thinking about church. No wonder these men can’t match my enthusiasm, passion, and vision for ministry. I’m paid to think about these things full time.
I’ve since concluded that people won’t have as much vision in areas where they haven’t invested as much time. I’m visionless when it comes to my car or my money. Even lay leaders who get excited about their specific contributions to the church often can see only the narrow vision of their specific ministry. A person with a passion for evangelism might say, “The church ought to be about winning souls,” and fail to see the value of children’s programs, seniors’ ministry, or helping the homeless.
Though vision needs to be shared and owned by other leaders and communicated with the whole church, it’s the pastor’s initiative that keeps dreams alive. Of all the leaders in the church, only I will wake up in the middle of the night with another solution for a church problem. Even my wife can wait until breakfast to hear it.
Don’t take votes that won’t pass. At the time I thought he was a chicken, afraid of making the hard decision. Now I know he was wise.
He was the pastor I worked with in my first two years of ministry. “Let’s pray about this decision and vote on it next month,” he’d often say about decisions teetering precariously at a board meeting. His wise counsel, which I’ve since employed liberally, has become my common practice.
I put off decisions even when I’m pretty confident I could at the moment sway people sitting on the fence. I’d rather pray or talk with them one-to-one than pressure them on the spot. I don’t want to take a vote unless I’m sure it will pass.
Even city councils-or Congress-do not vote on bills at their first reading. Senators and representatives and trustees and deacons and staff hate surprises, resist change (at least until they feel comfortable), and need time to process new ideas.
Introduce it, let it leak, reintroduce it, get more input, let others alter and own the idea (especially the Baby Boomers), and generally seek to make it a team effort. Lone Rangers lose.
-Knute Larson
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
