To embark successfully on a career involving leadership demands courage. Once a person has decided the part he wishes to play in life, and is assured he is doing the work for which he is best endowed, and is satisfied that he is filling a vital need, then he needs the courage to tackle the problems he must solve.
The pastor of any church wears many hats. The smaller the church the more hats worn. Effectiveness is determined by how well they fit and whether the pastor is able to choose the appropriate hat for each responsibility.
For example, each pastor’s hat rack includes that of preacher, pastor, administrator, counselor, and fund raiser, to name just a few.
One of the most important hats, however, is that of leader. Leadership is necessary for any church to grow and penetrate the community. Why? Because leadership is what enables an organization to bridge the chasm between where it is and where it should be. Crossing the Red Sea, passing through the desert, or facing any immediate difficulty, any group small or large requires leadership to make progress.
Of course, if the group isn’t going anywhere, leadership isn’t important. But is status quo a station stop on the Christian way?
It’s like the story of the pastor in the black church who was preaching. “This church, like the crippled man, has got to get up and walk!”
And the people said, “That’s right! Let it walk.”
“This church,” he continued, “like Elijah on Mount Carmel, has got to run!”
“Let it run, preacher!”
“This church has got to mount up on wings like eagles and fly!”
And they said, “Let it fly!”
But when the preacher said, “If it flies, it takes money!” the people shouted, “Let it walk.”
Some churches, like this fictitious one, don’t want leadership. They just want to be comfortable. They don’t want to cross any chasms, to grow or penetrate. Leadership is what gets people moving.
Leadership Is a Function, Not a Title
Some individuals think they are leaders when they are not.
One of my friends in industry was asked by his son, “Dad, what does it take to be a leader?”
The man spent an hour struggling to reply and finally in desperation gave the best definition I ever heard. “Son, all it takes to be a leader is to have somebody follow you.”
That’s all it takes: followers. If people are not following you, you are not a leader. You may have the title, but that’s all.
A church can call you to be a pastor because pastor is a title. The call does not make you a leader. Leader is not a title but a role. You only become a leader by functioning as one.
I remember sitting once in a city park at “Soapbox Corner” where the eccentrics assembled to do their public speaking. One fellow had attracted a large crowd with his harangue, and I noticed another man walking around the back of the crowd, obviously mad, gesturing as he muttered to himself, “I came here to talk. I didn’t come here to listen.”
He was mad because people weren’t listening to him. They had left him to listen to the other fellow. He felt appointed a talker, not a listener. But the crowd thought differently.
We communicate only when people listen. And unless people follow us, we’re not leaders.
Often leaders don’t have the title. In a manufacturing plant, I’ve known many leaders of employees who were not in management, nor did they have a union job. But by the very dint of their personality and experience, they had authority. They were natural leaders.
The major characteristic of a leader in an organization is the ability to turn subordinates into followers. People can be subordinates by definition—by placement on an organization chart or membership roll. But they alone decide to be followers.
A friend of mine who owned a sizable company tried to motivate his employees by fear. In such situations, what generally happens is that people work only when the boss is around. During a visit to that company, I discovered that if my friend would be gone for a week, very little got done except the day right before he came back. The word went around, “The boss is coming back.” Everybody got busy and caught up, but it was a sloppy operation.
With good leadership, he could have been gone a month and the organization would have functioned well. He was not a leader; he was merely a boss.
Some people base their claim to leadership on “being called by God.” But until they have followers, they are not leaders. You can claim God called you to be a father, but until you have a child, you are not actually a dad.
Spurgeon, in his lessons for young preachers, said, “Gentlemen, if you cannot preach, God did not call you to preach.” We shouldn’t apply that too tightly, but there is a truth here: God does not call you to head any group you can’t lead. Plenty of other ministries don’t require the gifts of leadership. God may have called you to be an assistant pastor, or a hospital chaplain, or a soul winner, or minister of visitation. But until you have the gift of leadership, you should wait before trying to lead.
Leading is a function, not a calling.
Leadership Is Serving God, Not the Sheep
The right concept of leadership is vital. The theory is important. Some people distinguish between the theoretical and the practical, as if theory is not practical. But somebody cleared that up for me by saying, “Nothing is as practical as a correct theory.”
Behind every practicality is a theory. Behind our moon shots was Einstein’s relativity. Behind Edison was Faraday’s theory of electricity. The concept comes first. And without a solid concept of leadership, you have a faulty leadership.
Currently one of the most popular concepts is “servant leadership.” Properly understood, it’s a helpful concept, but it has been terribly abused.
The Christian leader is primarily a servant of God, not a servant of the sheep. Many shepherds act as if they’re servants of the sheep—a faulty concept. You are a servant of God, given to absolute obedience to what he says. To extend that to say you are the servant of each sheep is a fallacy.
Steve Brown, a pastor in Florida, said he nearly became neurotic when he used to think he worked for the church—because he had five hundred bosses. When your boss calls in the middle of the night to tell you something, you’re supposed to do it. But if everybody in the church is your boss and you’re their servant, you’ve got an absolutely intolerable position.
Yes, you lead by serving, but the major expression of your service is your leadership.
Take, for instance, Lee Iacocca, a great leader. He is the servant of the Chrysler Corporation, but he doesn’t ask the assembly line workers to decide where the company should go. He may solicit opinions, but Lee Iacocca doesn’t ask the man on the machine to do anything except run the machine and run it well—and have faith in the company. Iacocca’s servanthood is expressed by his leadership. If he were to quit leading, he would no longer be a trustworthy servant of Chrysler.
There are shepherds who constantly ask the sheep which way to go. If the pastor quits leading the sheep and starts following them, he is no longer a trustworthy shepherd.
In addition, a shepherd does not expect his compensation, blessing, or reward to come from the sheep. He expects it to come from the owner of the sheep. I don’t know of any sheep that ever gathered around to applaud the shepherd. All they do is cause him trouble.
Sheep are the work. They’re not the wage.
As leaders we have to say, “I’m going to get my ultimate strokes from God.”
If we don’t watch ourselves, we start manipulating things to get strokes from the sheep. If that happens, it’s like what Jesus said about giving alms in public. God will say, “You’ve got your reward.” You can lead with an eye on crowd approval, but if you lead primarily to be rewarded by the sheep, you’re not going to be rewarded by the owner of the sheep.
This position is difficult for some pastors to accept because of their personality make-up. Some pastors prefer serving people. There’s a certain ego satisfaction in doing menial things for other people. They justify it by saying, “I’m showing people I’m not above doing menial things,” which is a prideful statement, when you think about it.
Leaders who say, “Anything you need, let me know. I’ll cut your lawn. I’ll drive the kids to school” are not serving God, nor are they offering their best to their people. They are failing to understand the doctrine of gifts. There’s no point in a clumsy, all-thumbs person trying to be a carpenter. He might desire the servant role, but he isn’t serving. If my gift is leading (as evidenced by my having followers), then my serving is leading.
Those who are by nature social workers have difficulty accepting leadership because they would rather be liked, respected, and appreciated. They would rather serve people than take them across chasms. Social work is a necessary function in our society, but that function is not leadership.
Leadership Is Art, Not Science
There is no valid list of common denominators for leaders, no formula to follow. The ingredients vary in each situation. Sometimes, for instance, leaders must exhibit courage; other times, their decisions are so obvious no courage is required.
I could list several “Traits of a Leader,” but it would be like giving a list of recipe ingredients without giving the amounts or mixing instructions. Most lists of leadership characteristics are simply intellectual exercises. You can go down the list and check them, but it doesn’t mean you can put them together in a specific situation and be a leader.
For example, one of the greatest requirements of a leader is knowledge of human nature. But the application of that knowledge varies, depending on the activity. Napoleon was considered to be the greatest general because he was the master of human nature in war. This was the basis of his power. He knew how hard he could push, how far he could go, how much he could do with what he had. But that didn’t mean he understood human nature in politics.
Winston Churchill showed tremendous leadership in the emergency of World War II. He tried to exert it afterwards, without the same success. Leadership is not a constant science; it is a delicate art.
Some people ask if leadership is innate or learned. I think it can be coached but never implanted. The great violinist Heifetz could be coached but not taught. In the early days, he could be taught notes and music and the technique of fingering and bowing. But later, as one great conductor said, “I can only tell him whether he is doing what he tells me he wants to do.”
I don’t believe you can make a leader out of someone without an innate gift of leadership, and leadership shows up in early years. Looking at a child three or four years old, you can see an emerging pattern of leading or following. That usually continues throughout life.
If a person has innate ability, circumstances and training will certainly bring it out. No three- or four-year-old is as great a leader as Lee Iacocca. The circumstances, the ego pressures, Ford Motor Company kicking him out—all these contributed to his concentration on leadership. He might have concentrated on being a literary figure or something else, but he concentrated on leading. Though I may not admire some individuals as persons, they still demand tremendous respect for their leadership abilities. And those abilities can be developed—in the right people.
At this point, you may be asking, “What should I do if I realize I’m a follower and not, at this point, a leader?”
Pastors in that position have to face themselves very firmly and ask, Am I occupying a place of leadership without the talent? They must then seek God’s direction, and if it’s financially possible, change positions. This would relieve a great deal of the present stress among pastors.
This does not mean getting out of the ministry! There are many places to serve in ministry. Much of denominational work, for instance, requires little personal leadership. Church staff positions. A ministry of visitation. Significant ministry can be done apart from the primary leadership role.
Can a pastor give the leadership function to a lay person?
Not while at the same time maintaining the image of himself as leader. It’s a rare individual who can let someone else lead without occasionally trying to exert his own leadership by disrupting what the other person is doing.
This is what happens occasionally with pastors who don’t have leadership qualities but want to “develop lay leadership.” The lay leadership begins developing a following and scares the staff. Then, to prevent a coup, the staff begins to police, restrict, criticize, or organizationally obstruct. Pastors who are not leaders can get pushed into all kinds of dangerous manipulations, especially if their spouses want them to be assertive leaders.
Those who are not leaders will have to face that situation with integrity and follow the person who does have leadership. But then you have to admit you’re not leading, and that is a difficult position for a pastor, as the job is currently defined.
Leadership Is Both Material and Spiritual
Leaders are forced to relate to money. They need to understand its place and its power.
Money is not all there is to administration, though many times administration requires handling the budget and the accounting. Leaders get followers to support the cause, and that includes committing their money.
Leaders who refuse to admit their responsibility to raise money simply do not understand the full import of leadership. I’ve heard so many young people in ministry say, “I want to be involved in the ministry but not in the money.” I can sympathize with the feeling. One of the first questions I’m going to ask when I see God is “Why did you tie ministry and money together?”
I’ve studied money for years. It is not just a medium of exchange. Money has a psychological power. We will delay almost anything—dreams, plans, family relations—for an opportunity to make money. Money is not only necessary for survival, but it seems to touch the center of our ego.
My experience on the boards of Christian organizations has shown me that much more ministry fails from lack of money than from lack of people to minister. One significant ministry was going out of business until it revamped its financial approach. The problem was not the ministry, which was healthy; the problem was a casual “God will provide” attitude toward money.
On the other hand, we must also avoid the dangers of greed and using questionable means to raise funds. Ministry is forfeited when people begin to think it is simply a money-raising scheme.
But leaders know that money and ministry are joined. Leaders must accept responsibility to relate properly to money.
A Leader Is Not the Cause
A true leader is committed to the cause, and does not become the cause.
Staying personally dedicated to the cause can become extremely difficult, particularly if the cause succeeds. A subtle change in thinking can overtake the leader of a successful ministry. He or she begins “needing” certain things to carry on the ministry—things that were not needed earlier.
In business, a request for a corporate jet is a sign that personal ego needs are infiltrating an executive’s dedication to the company. In churches, perhaps the signs are less visible, but nevertheless leaders can begin thinking What am I getting out of this? Their focus on the cause has been diffused. They justify certain perks—denominational jobs, cruises, their picture in the paper—as “enhancing the ministry.” They have more trouble distinguishing between themselves and the cause.
I admire Mother Teresa, who decided after winning the Nobel Prize that she would not go to accept any more recognition because it interfered with her work. She knew she was not in the business of accepting prizes; she was in the business of serving the poor of Calcutta. She maintained her dedication to the cause by refusing unrelated honors.
Most of us leaders have an emotional block occasionally. We need to return to the vision, restate it to ourselves, and rekindle the spark. We must ask, What is my purpose? Am I satisfying my ego through this ministry or sacrificing my ego to it?
Genuine leaders can say with Paul, “Follow me, as I follow Christ.”
Copyright © 1986 by Christianity Today
