The redeeming and rebuilding of human lives is exceedingly more difficult than building widgets or delivering predictable services.
—Bill Hybels
After twenty-four years of leadership, I have come to believe five truths about leadership in the church:
1. I believe the church is the most leadership-intensive enterprise in society.
My friend runs a company with about 3,000 employees. He says he wants to relax after retirement and lead a church: “It doesn’t have to be a Willow Creek-sized church. Maybe just 7,000 or 8,000 with some growth potential.” I told him that leading a church will ruin his retirement because the church demands a higher and more complex form of leadership than business does.
I’ve been on both sides. Running a business is challenging, but the leader of a company has a clearly defined playing field and enormous leverage with his or her employees. The business leader delivers a product or service through paid staff who either get it done or get replaced.
Church leadership is far more complex than that. The redeeming and rebuilding of human lives is exceedingly more difficult than building widgets or delivering predictable services. Here’s why:
Every life requires a custom mold. You don’t stop the line in a factory every time a product comes down it. In church work, we’re developing individual, custom-made lives. We stop the line for every life.
I’ve read books about Napoleon, de Gaulle, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton—all the great military leaders. I don’t want to minimize their capabilities or the courage it took to charge a hill in time of battle, but I’ve wondered, What would it have been like for some of those leaders to have had to work it out with their deacons before they charged up the hill? How well would they have done if they had had to subject their plans to a vote involving the very people they were going to lead up the hill? How would the whole military system work if you took away the leadership leverage of the court-martial?
Anyone could build a church with that kind of leverage! “Teach a Sunday school class or go to the brig.” “You call that an offering? Give me fifty push-ups right now.” That’s leverage!
The church is utterly voluntary. In the final analysis, we have little or no leverage, no real power over anybody we lead. At Willow Creek we’ve had people attend our services week after week and then create trouble throughout the church and tap every resource we have. Then when they cross one too many lines and the elders bring correction or discipline, they bail out of the church or even sue.
To mobilize an utterly voluntary organization requires the highest kind of leadership.
The church is utterly altruistic. When leading a business, you can hire a bright, energetic young employee and say, “Here’s our vision. Here’s your part in it. Here’s your salary, your perks, your car, your phone, your fax, your computer, your secretary, your office, your vacation plan. If you work hard, in five or eight years we’ll make you a partner or invite you into the profit-sharing plan. Down the road, you’ll probably make big money. There will be more perks, more time off. And when we sell this place in fifteen or twenty years, we’ll all walk away transcendently wealthy. Are you interested?”
Who wouldn’t be?
As church leaders, we tell prospective church members: “You’re a depraved, degenerate sinner who’s in trouble for all eternity unless you get squared away with Christ.” (And that’s the good news.)
Then we say, “We’re going to ask you to commit five or six hours a week to service and two or three additional hours for training and discipleship. We’re going to ask you to get into a small group where your character flaws will get exposed and chiseled at. We’re going to ask you to come under the authority of the elders of the church and give a minimum of 10 percent of your income.
“Oh yeah, and you get no parking place, no reserved seats, no special privileges, no voting rights, no vacation, and no retirement program. You serve till you die. But trust us: God’s going to make it worth your while in eternity.”
In church work, people must be motivated internally. As the Scriptures tell us, unless the Lord builds the house, unless people have an internal “want to,” leaders have no power, no leverage, no buttons to push.
When businesspeople in our churches give free advice—how we should be doing it—we need to say without malice, “It’s not that easy, and it’s not the same. It’s apples and oranges.”
2. I believe there is a spiritual gift of leadership.
Some people have it, some people don’t.
In one of the spiritual gift lists, Romans 12:8, the apostle Paul essentially says, “If you have the spiritual gift of leadership, lead with it, and lead with all diligence.” God alone decides who gets this gift and in what measure.
I’ve come up with a partial list of what spiritually gifted leaders do if they develop and use their leadership gifts.
They cast a God-honoring vision. Spiritually gifted leaders live in such a way that God invariably ignites within their hearts a compelling idea, a heartfelt yearning for some part of God’s kingdom to advance. They start thinking about it, dreaming about it, and praying about it. Pretty soon, they start talking about it. They have lunch with someone and say, “Can you imagine what this part of the kingdom would be like if…?”
Not long ago, I took the board of directors at Willow Creek to some inner-city ministries that we’re funding and for which we are providing volunteer help. We were in an empty warehouse; it must have been ninety-five degrees. The humidity was incredible. But the person leading this ministry stood and said, “Imagine that corner of this warehouse filled with electrical supplies. A skilled worker from a church could stop here, pick up all the supplies he or she can use, and go to the home of someone in need and fix the wiring.
“Imagine pallets stacked high with drywall compound. When there are walls to be patched in the home of someone who can’t afford to fix them, a volunteer could stop here and pick up the drywall and fix the holes.
“Imagine another pallet piled with blankets. In the winter, when the heat isn’t working in someone’s apartment, we could provide extra blankets.”
I was reaching for my wallet! That is vision casting.
If you have the gift of leadership, God ignites in your heart a vision. You cannot not talk about it.
There is a tremendous amount of power released when a leader starts casting a godly vision. It draws people out of the woodwork. It gets bored spectators out onto the playing field.
They gather and align people for the achievement of the vision. Spiritually gifted leaders have the God-given capacity to attract, challenge, and persuade people. Then they assist them in finding their niche in the achievement of the vision.
Spiritually gifted leaders are almost shameless in the boldness with which they approach people. They can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t already be on board with them. People catch their enthusiasm.
Next, the leader says, “I’m going to find a role that fits who you are. You’re going to grow and develop as an individual while all of us grow together in the achievement of the vision. This is a win/win deal.”
Leaders do not use people. Leaders cast a vision until they find those who want to join with that vision. Then the leader commits to developing that person while together they achieve their dream. That kind of synergy and unity and teamwork is powerful.
They can motivate their co-workers. Motivation makes work fun. It can make thankless tasks exciting. It can make beatendown people feel renewed and rejuvenated. People with the spiritual gift of leadership have a God-given ability to know what to say and how to inspire a variety of people.
I had an eighth-grade basketball coach who knew how to inspire me. I went to North Christian Grade School; on the other side of town was South Christian Grade School. We wanted to beat the stuffing out of those Christians on the other side of town.
I was just a little guy; my trunks came up to my armpits. In an important game, we were behind by a few points. As we players were walking back onto the court after a time-out, the coach encouraged us, “Okay, let’s go get ’em.”
But then he added, “Hybels, get back here.” I came dutifully back.
“I think you’re the only one with the guts to go out there and take that ball to the basket.”
I thought my heart was going to explode. I knocked people over to get the ball to the rim.
That night they called me “His Airness.” (Michael Jordan cashed in on the term, but it was first said about me that night!)
Gifted leaders have the ability to motivate and inspire.
They sense the need for positive change and then constructively bring it about. I do a lot of my summer study in a Burger King restaurant in South Haven, Michigan. Right behind where I sit is a side entrance door. It is a heavy steel door with a broken hamper mechanism. Every time a customer comes in, the door bangs shut loudly. It’s metal on metal. The staff working the counter look at each other every time as if to say, “Gee, that’s an aggravating sound. Why do people keep doing that?”
Then there’s the problem of the temperature in the restaurant—it’s always around sixty-two degrees. Way too cold for the average human being. Customers walk up to the counter and say, “Do you know it’s freezing in here?” After they leave, the people behind the counter say, “If they knew how hot it was back here working over the stove, they wouldn’t complain so much.”
I was reminded every day there was no leader in sight. A good manager would say, “Fix that door! Set the air-conditioner for the customer’s comfort. If we need to add fans in the back for employees, or if we need to rearrange some duct work or something, let’s do it. You don’t freeze the customers out. They pay our salaries.”
Leaders have a nose for how to constructively bring about change.
They establish core values. Leaders not only remind colaborers of their mission but also hold up certain standards and values and lay out certain ground rules. A great leader says to her team, “Okay, this is the hill we’re trying to take. Here’s the role each of you is going to play. Along the way, this is how we’re going to communicate with one another; this is how we’re going to treat one another. And these are the values we’re going to hold up so that the process of taking the hill is a wonderful experience for everyone.”
They allocate resources effectively. A good leader is always resource-conscious. A good leader asks, “What do we have in the quiver? What tools, what funds, what talents, what techniques? How can we strategically invest these toward the fulfillment of the vision?”
Historically, the whole resource function of kingdom work has been viewed with suspicion. Layworkers say, “Aw, let’s not talk money.” Leaders say, “Money is a big part of the whole and we can’t ignore it.”
They identify entropy. Leaders usually identify entropy in its earliest stages. A leader is vigilant twenty-four hours a day. He or she walks around and asks, “Where are the wheels starting to wobble? Where is this organization weakening? If we can identify it and find a solution before the wheels fall off, we can maintain momentum.”
They create a leadership culture in their organization. This quality is absolutely counterintuitive. One would think that strong, gifted leaders would be concerned about emerging leaders maturing to the point of threatening their own leadership. Actually, the exact opposite is true of a spiritually gifted leader. The greatest thrill he or she can experience is the gradual achievement of the God-given vision through the combined efforts of developing young leaders who will someday carry the baton.
At Willow Creek, we host an annual leadership summit conference. I get choked up when I go from classroom to classroom watching Willow Creek leaders stand in front of groups of people and cast vision, inspire, and motivate about everything from programming to children’s ministries. I go home on these nights thinking, It doesn’t get any better than this.
This climate is at the heart of leading an organization. A leader creates a culture in which more and more people are at liberty to come forward and lead.
3. I believe most churches unintentionally undermine the expression of the leadership gift.
This doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything sinister going on, but churches generally do this in at least two ways.
First, they undermine the expression of the leadership gift when they fail to teach about it. As a result, potential leaders among young men and women in the church think, If my gift were valued in the church, it would be talked about as a valid gift. They reason, then, that they might as well use it in the marketplace.
Why isn’t the gift of leadership taught in the church? Most of the instruction that flows from our pulpits tends to come from people with teaching gifts, but few teachers understand what the leadership gift is and how it works.
Leaders don’t usually “talk” about leadership because they aren’t sitting around reflecting about it or analyzing it. And as a general rule, most leaders don’t have a teaching gift, so they are not inclined to teach about it.
Second, churches undermine the leadership gift by implementing church governance systems that frustrate gifted leaders into oblivion. Leaders need a certain amount of room to operate, a degree of trust from the church or the organization in order to express their skill or gift. If you take away these opportunities, leaders will bail out, and no one can blame them.
I’m not suggesting we do away with boards and elders and deacons and by-laws. But within certain parameters, pastors and staff and layleaders with leadership gifts must be given real challenges to face, genuine hills to take, and problems to solve. Emerging leaders must be given enough room and enough trust from the church to be able to go out, spread their wings, and develop their gifts.
And yes, some mistakes will be made now and then. But overall the kingdom will make huge gains.
4. I believe almost everybody wants to be led.
In Matthew 9:36, Jesus weeps for the people in Jerusalem because they are wandering “like sheep without a shepherd.” They are aimless. Without purpose. Jesus is speaking primarily of people’s need for a savior and sovereign leader. But the imagery can also apply to a wider range of situations.
People without a leader are a people to be pitied. I feel sad when I see impoverished, exploited citizens in leaderless countries. I even feel for listless students in leaderless classrooms. It’s not much fun to sit in a classroom where no goals are taught for the class and no one is going anywhere.
It’s not much fun to be undervalued, underchallenged, underdeveloped, and undernurtured. If you’ve ever worked in a leaderless company, you have an idea what I’m talking about. How about a sports team without a leader? There is no hope of winning because there is no motivation.
On the contrary, have you ever played on a great team for a great coach? Have you ever worked for a growing company with a confident, challenging manager? What a difference.
I used to play on a park district touch football team led by Don Cousins, my associate pastor for seventeen years. We played against construction workers who gathered after work, semi-inebriated, with the sole purpose of hurting people. In one game, my job was to try to sack the quarterback; I was lined up across from a guy who was supposed to prevent me from doing that. I thought, I’m going to run right over the top of him. I was breathing hard, getting all pumped, when I looked up. The guy’s eyes were bloodshot and he was drooling. I thought, Maybe I’ll just drop back in case the quarterback passes this time.
We were smaller than most of our opponents, but we won almost every game we played. Don Cousins led that team. At the end of the season, if we had asked, “Anybody want to play next season under the leadership of Don Cousins?” every person in the league would have signed on.
One great writer about leadership says, “Most people are simply waiting for someone to call them out so they can rise above their petty preoccupations.”
We can no longer afford to leave people without leaders in the arena of the church. May the church be the one place where people who come out of leaderless homes and schools and jobs and sports teams discover, maybe for the first time in their life, the excitement of being valued, being included, being told that they are indispensable for the achievement of a common vision.
5. I believe the church is the hope of the world, and its renewal rests in the hands of its leaders.
William Bennett, former secretary of education, said some time ago, “I submit to you that the real crisis of our time is spiritual. What afflicts us is a corruption of the heart and a turning away of the soul. Nothing has been more consequential in this societal demise than large segments of American society privately turning away from God. And to turn things around, there must come a widespread personal spiritual renewal.”
I have to believe that’s true. Who traffics in the spiritual transformation business? The church. I have come to see with crystal clarity that the church possesses the single ray of hope left in the darkening skies of human depravity.
The church has the life-transforming message of the love of Christ. The church has the instruction manual, the Bible, the guidebook for relationships and ethics and morality. The church has the gift of community to offer wayward and wandering and lonely people. The church can give people purpose by inviting them to become part of the transcendently powerful mission of world redemption.
But for the church to reach its redemptive, life-giving potential, it must be led and it must be led well. It must be powerfully envisioned, strategically focused, and internally aligned. Members must be motivated; the message preached. Problems need to be addressed; values established and enforced. Resources must be leveraged.
These things are the business of leaders. Which is why Paul said in Romans 12:8, “If [a man’s gift] is leadership, let him govern diligently.” Men and women, if you’ve been given the gift of leadership, for God’s sake, lead. For the world’s sake, lead. For the sake of lost people, lead.
Copyright © 1997
