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Well Done Evangelism

Sean Cronin — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

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Well Done Evangelism

By Josh Laxton

I think we’ve all seen bad evangelism. In fact, I’ve been a culprit of bad evangelism.

Back when I was a freshman in high school, I remember telling my cousin that he was going to die and go to hell. No, that didn’t come in the middle of a conversation, that was my conversation starter. Yep…I know, that wasn’t the most effective sentence to begin a conversation with.

We all have in our minds what we would deem bad evangelism or evangelistic tactics. So, what about good evangelism? What does good evangelism look like?

If we want to see what good evangelism looks like in practice, we should read about and watch the greatest evangelist who ever walked planet earth. Who is that you ask? Jesus!

One of my favorite passages that highlights good evangelism is John 4, where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. In that narrative, we learn at least five lessons from Jesus about what I will refer to as “well”-done evangelism.

CROSSOVER into the person’s territory

We learn in the narrative that Jesus crosses a couple of cultural boundaries.

Most know about the racial tension between the Jews and Samaritans during that time, and how many Jews avoided going through Samaria or engaging with Samaritans altogether. In addition, most know the cultural dynamics between men and women where men didn’t engage women in public. Moreover, most know that Jewish teachers or rabbis avoided “sinners.”

Jesus, however, crossed all the boundaries mentioned above as he went through Samaria and once there engaged an immoral Samaritan woman at the public well.

Why did he do this? We learn in verse 4, he “had” to go.

In other words, Jesus didn’t have a choice. Jesus knew the Father had sent him on a mission to seek and save that which was lost (Luke 19:10), which meant that he had to cross barriers, boundaries, and obstacles to reach people far from God.

Evangelism is about crossing barriers to engage a person’s or a people’s heart. That might mean we cross seats, cross tables, cross cubicles, cross streets, cross zip-codes, cross state lines, or cross countries.

And in crossing such boundaries, we may be very well crossing barriers and obstacles such as race, ethnicity, socio economic differences, religions, or cultural norms.

Failure to crossover boundaries, obstacles, or barriers will result in missing a divine appoint.

Engage in a CONVERSATION

The first step to “well”-done evangelism begins with crossing over into one’s territory. That’s a big move. But like in basketball, you need skills other than a mad crossover in order to score. So, Jesus engages in a relational conversation.

The evangelistic method (or style) used for the woman at the well is primarily relational—conversational. We see this style used in other places like Luke 19, with Zacchaeus. However, there are other methods and types of evangelism—like social (biblical) justice and apolgetics—that build platforms to share the good news.

Nevertheless, Jesus begins this conversation by asking her for a drink—completely taking her off guard—and then moves to the topic of “gift” and “living water.”

The reason why this conversation was so important for this woman is because she was an outcast. Thus, she wouldn’t have engaged in many relational conversations like the one initiated by Jesus. She’s intrigued by the whole idea of the gift of God and living water.

The more they converse, the more we learn about this woman.

Conversations are a gateway into people’s hearts.

Identify their CRAVING

King David penned, “O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1). With this imagery, David describes his longing after God. Just as one dying of thirst in a desert longs for water, so does David’s soul long for God.

The reality is that in a fallen world every soul longs and pants for something to fill them and bring them complete satisfaction. Pascal argues,

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. (PenséesVII 425)

Jesus, through this conversation, brings the woman to unearth the dissatisfaction and unfulfillment in her life. She wants this living water so that she doesn’t have to keep coming to this well. She would rather stay home than risk running into people in public.

With full knowledge of the woman, and how thirsty she is, Jesus takes the conversation to the place of her emptiness—the place of her sin and shame. He breaches the subject of her relationships.

Doing good evangelism requires us to uncover the hurts, habits, and hang-ups—the sin and shame—of people that prevent them from feeling whole.

Hit their CURVE ball

There may come a point in an evangelistic encounter where you think the conversation goes south. In your mind, everything was going well. There was nice back-and-forth dialogue. You feel like you were really close to getting to the final point where you ask for a decision, and then BAM! the person throws you a curve ball.

In other words, the person deflects the conversation and take it in a whole new direction.

This woman did that to Jesus. After hitting a sore spot with her—talking about the man she was living with—she switches the conversation to a controversial topic. She no longer wants to talk about her and her lifestyle and choices; instead, she wants to talk about the theological differences between Samaritan and Jewish worship.

People love to throw curve balls.

Nothing has changed. Here are a few curve balls we may encounter:

The church is full of hypocrites.
The belief that Jesus is the only way is so narrow and close-minded.
If God was really good, why all the evil?
The Bible is so antiquated and full of errors. You really believe it?
The church is homophobic.
The notion of trying to “convert” someone is ethically immoral.

Guess what Jesus did? He hit the curve ball she threw.

I remember years ago I was in a local coffee shop where I crossed the table to engage a regular customer I had seen for weeks. We struck up a conversation. When it moved to religion, he immediately threw a curve ball by bringing up Karl Marx and the famous quote, “Religion is the opium of the people.”

We chatted about that topic for a few minutes after which he threw another curve ball by saying how most Christians he knew were fans of a capitalistic democracy, but how he didn’t agree with them. He believed socialism was a better form of government.

I followed the curve ball and hit it. I pulled a little Lesslie Newbigin on him by talking about the flaw of all governmental systems. I went on to explain that God, since the very beginning, has been about establishing his rule and reign on planet earth.

And one day, Jesus will come back a second time to establish a theocracy where all of life will revolve around his kingship. In short, I told him that I agree with him and then took him on the governmental journey of explaining the kingdom of God and the kingship of Christ.

Evangelistic strikeouts occur when we fail to pick up and hit the curve ball.

Offer them CHRIST

The last step in “well”-done evangelism, is pointing the person to Jesus as the soul-satisfying, thirst-quenching, hole-filling answer to life. Towards the end of the conversation with Jesus, the woman at the well states, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

It seems, at least by her own words, that she was waiting on the Messiah to help make sense of life.

Does this not explain most people’s positions? They are looking for some type of christ to bring meaning, purpose, significance, satisfaction, and thus salvation to life.

In responding to the woman, Jesus simply states, “I who speak to you am he.”

This is the end goal of good evangelism—to offer searching, thirsty, and broken people the answer of new creation and living water that is only found in Jesus Christ.

As believers, may we take our lessons from Jesus and engage in “well”-done evangelism.

Source: Well Done Evangelism

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Episode 446: What is the Best Leader to Team Member Ratio?

Sean Cronin — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 10:00:04 +0000

by NewChurches.com: In Episode 446 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss leader to team member ratios.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

Why the ratio of 1:4-6 is appropriate for the entire leadership pipeline
What to do if you are currently leading more than 6 people

Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“There are teams of six for a reason. That’s the most effective team because of lines of communication.” – @toddadkins
“There’s additional research that says you can only have 6 to 7 meaningful relationships outside of your family.” – @toddadkins
“Am I dumping on people, am I delegating to people, or am I developing people?” – @toddadkins
“The reality is, if you have 20 leaders you can’t care for all of them. People will fall off the radar.” – @danielsangi
“You need to go from leading yourself, to leading others, to leading leaders.” – @danielsangi
“You need to figure out who the leaders are that you can lead, who can then lead the others.” – @danielsangi
“The leadership pipeline framework is so important whether you are a church of 50 or 50,000.” – @danielsangi

Additional Resources:

Watch 90 Second Leadership – The Complexity of Leading Large Teams
Read Team of Teams by Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Read No Silver Bullets by Daniel Im
Check out Leadership Pipeline
Listen to 5 Leadership Questions Podcast

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

This Episode’s Sponsor: Blackbaud Church Management connects your staff and congregation, ensuring deeper relationships and effective ministry. To see how to connect your church community with one holistic system, visit hello.blackbaud.com/blackbaudchurchmanagement.

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Source: Episode 446: What is the Best Leader to Team Member Ratio?

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7 Things Lead Pastors Wish They Could Say to Worship Leaders

Patrick Bradley — Tue, 08 May 2018 09:00:59 +0000

Today’s post is a guest post by Unseminary’s Rich Birch:

Lead pastors spend a lot time in the front row of the church participating in worship services. In fact, if you’re a church leader reading this you know the double track mind that we end up having during these experiences.

On one hand we’re attempting to be engaged in what’s happening while at the same time we’re evaluating what’s going on and thinking about the feedback we’d like to give to the worship leader.For many pastors leading a church we find ourselves wishing we could strike up a conversation with the worship leader about what they “do” but it can be hard to know where to start.

Worship leaders are typically center stage every weekend as they lead the church towards a deeper relationship with Jesus. They spend their time in middle of what happens in the worship ministry and sometimes don’t have a clear picture on what’s actually happening in their area. Tension could easily develop in the relationship between the worship folks and the leadership folks and if not kept in check it might foster a rift in the church over time.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of serving closely with some dynamic lead pastors. Whether it was Bruxy Caveyat The Meeting Houseor Carey Nieuwhofat Connexus Churchor Tim Lucas at Liquid Church, it’s been an honor to serve in a “second chair” to these leaders. In each of those churches a part of my role to was help give leadership to the service programming department. Functionally, that meant attempting to translate the vision of our Lead Pastor to the creatives and worship people. Over time, I’ve seen similar patterns in the conversations we ended up having that I wanted to share here in the hopes of stirring conversations in your church!

What conversations would lead pastors love to have with the worship leaders at their churches?

What would a lead pastor say to the worship leader if they were given the chance?

How would a lead pastor frame conversations with the creatives in their midst to help the church move forward?

Here are seven conversation starters that I could easily imagine leadpastors launching into with worship leaders!

1. What you do is really important to the life of our church

For most churches, the musical worship portion of the service is the first thing that happens every week. As a result, it sets the tone for everything else that follows. We know that first impressions really matter, so what you and your team does determines a lot.We’ve invested to make sure we have great sound, video, and lights so these first few minutes are fantastic.

In fact, the majority of our technological investments as a church are to help your team do what you do. It’s really important to us. Thanks for bringing your best to these opening moments of our services!

2. Your long-term value is in producing other worship leaders

At the core of church growth is leaders producing other leaders. We look to bring up people around us and give them the opportunity and the skills to lead. The role of leaders in the local church is to help reproduce more leaders. In fact, great leaders make more leaders, not more followers.This can be particularly difficult in your area of ministry because it often seems like worship music is built on a “rock star” model where a few super qualified people just keep drawing crowds and making fans rather than passing along leadership to others.

If we fall into that pattern in worship ministry, we limit our ability to reach more people as a church. If you, specifically, fall into that temptation, it will limit your ability to grow and expand the church. You won’t always be leading on stage at the church, but the ability to develop leaders will be something you can take with you and use in whatever you do.Your ability to produce other leaders around you will be what determines your long-term value to our church.

Great leaders make more leaders, not more followers. @richbirchClick To Tweet

3. No, I haven’t heard the latest Bethel song

Can I level with you for a minute? Most people who attend our church don’t listen to worship music outside of Sunday mornings.I know, it’s shocking. Lots of families listen to the Top 40 radio station in town or people are increasingly just streaming music that they listened to when they were kids. The problem with that for us is that they don’t necessarily know the latest worship song by Bethel or Elevation or Vertical Church or whoever we are tracking with these days.

We need to sing the songs that our community resonates with more than you are probably going to like. We might need to repeat the songs that seem to engage our community a lot more than you and your team are comfortable with.

The goal is to engage with the people who are attending our church and not to keep up with the latest songs from across the country.When we do (rarely) introduce new songs we need to do it slowly and deliberately. We need to teach people new songs and not assume they know them all. Oh, but by the way, I do like that new Bethel song! It’s great.

Worship leaders, sing the songs that resonate with our community, more than the songs you like….Click To Tweet

4. Your internal spiritual life impacts your ministry, deeply

How are things with your soul? As a worship leader you are in a particularly vulnerable spot. Having the public spotlight trained on such a private aspect of your spiritual life can do strange things to your internal spiritual life.

If your worship becomes more of a performance than an overflow of your relationship with Jesus, it will deeply impact our ministry and could do some damage to your soul. Like our teaching pastor, we need you to ensure your heart is right with Jesus. Your private spiritual disciplines will shine through in how you lead publicly. Take time to read scripture, pray, fast, journal. It’s vitally important that your heart remains soft and open to what God wants to do in your life.

We can’t set “outcome goals” around your internal spiritual life, but it really does impact the outcome of your ministry.I’ve seen worship leaders who have landed that tricky guitar solo, but it comes off stale.I’ve wondered as I’ve watched them lead if that reflects something going on in their personal relationship with Jesus. I don’t want you to be a shell of a person living in mission with Jesus; rather, I want you to be fully alive in your relationship with Him!

A public life requires a rich interior life. @richbirchClick To Tweet

5. Engaging the people in the back row is the highest priority

You know those people in the front row that are totally into what you and your team do every week? It’s not about them.

They’ll most likely be engaged with the musical worship because they are “into” worship in their personal life. Our goal is to engage those people who come in late and stand near the back of the auditoriumwith a cup of coffee in hand.Sometimes I think it might be interesting to record a video of the audience so you can see how those people are reacting (or perhaps more pointedly not reacting) to what the worship team is doing on stage.

Our church is trying to help people who are far from God connect with Him. We’ve noticed that those individuals who stand at the back of the room are often people who don’t normally attend church on a regular basis. Engaging our entire community is what we’re aiming for and it is our purpose. It means we need to think about the people at the back of the room a whole lot more. We need to consider what it will take to draw them in. We have to work to ensure that they feel like they are part of what’s happening at our church.

Worship leaders, engage the back row, not just the front row. @richbirchClick To Tweet

6. Can you finish your expense report on time this month?

Can we talk about your expense report? I know, I know, it’s not the most exciting topic. Our finance team works hard every month to ensure we have up to date records. We use these records to make informed decisions about the future of the church.I know that (most months) you don’t spend that much, but if you don’t submit your report we end up with an incomplete picture of where things are at financially.

We trust you. We know that you invest the finances of the church wisely to help us achieve our mission. When I ask you to get those spending costs in on time, it’s not that I’m expressing a sense of distrust in you and your team. I’m not trying to be a killjoy or have some sort of tight leash on you. It’s just a part of the monthly process we need to work through here at the church.

Finally, there is a bit of an undercurrent when you don’t hand them in on a regular basis where it unwittingly communicates to the finance team that you think what they do isn’t that important. I know that’s not what you want to communicate but that is the sense it suggests.As your leadership grows, you are going to have more opportunities to manage finances in your role. Taking the time to learn about the rhythms of regular financial reporting by handing these reports in on time will prepare you for more responsibility in the future.

7. I’d really love to talk. When can we chat?

Can we have a DTR? I’d love to define the relationship between us. I know that we come from different worlds. I perceive you as an artist and you perceive me a suit. But I know we are so much more than the flat stereotypes that our roles at church could push us into. It’s true that I don’t understand a lot of what you do, and I’m pretty sure the feeling might be mutual, but I want to forge a strong partnership. I love what you do for our church, and it’s an honor to serve alongside you. I’m thankful you’re on the team, and I love seeing you use your gifts and talents to serve the church.

I’d love to know how I can better help you. I’d love to grab a coffee sometime and hear what’s happening in your area. Granted, I might not be able to help with a chord progression (I’m not even entirely sure what it is!), but I would love to help with other parts of your ministry. I value learning from you because you are a clearly gifted leader and we’re a better church because you are leading here.My door is always open, and I’d be more than willing to have a conversation.

A worship leader is more than an artist and a pastor is more than a suit. @richbirchClick To Tweet

What would you add?

Are you a senior leader in a church and you have a conversation that you think we should have included in this list? Are you a worship leader and there is something that you think we missed? We’d love to hear it in the comment section below!

About the Author – Rich Birch

Rich is one of the early multi-site church pioneers in North America. He led the charge in helping The Meeting Housein Toronto to become the leading multi-site church in Canada with over 5,500+ people in 19 locations. In addition, he served on the leadership team of Connexus Churchin Ontario, a North Point Community Church Strategic Partner. He has also been a part of the lead team at Liquid Church– a 6 location multisite church serving the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey. Liquid is known for its innovative approach to outreach and community impact leading to it being featured on CNN, The New York Times and Outreach Magazine.

Rich is passionate about helping churches reach more people, more quickly through excellent execution. He has a weekly blog and podcast that helps with stuff you wish they taught in seminary at www.unSeminary.com. His latest book, Church Growth Flywheel: 5 Practical Systems to Drive Growth at Your Church, is an Amazon seller and readers of Carey’s blog can get the first chapter for free at this link.

The post 7 Things Lead Pastors Wish They Could Say to Worship Leaders appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: 7 Things Lead Pastors Wish They Could Say to Worship Leaders

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The Three Things Every Campus Pastor Needs to Do

Patrick Bradley — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 10:00:22 +0000

By Sam Yoon: As a campus pastor, I want to hit it out of the park. I want to reach more people for Jesus and have the church grow. To accomplish this, I feel the need to control every situation and manage every part of the church. Who else is better equipped to do this than me, right?

But after attempting to control a church with over 20 ministries and a staff of 7, I started to stress out and burn out. I essentially failed. The more I controlled, the less impactful I was. My failure opened my eyes to one big truth. I thought I had to do 20 different ministries effectively to meet my goals. But what I learned was that I just needed to do only three things well.

When I focused on just these three things, I was less stressed and more influential. I was able to empower and coach leaders to manage those 20 ministries. The church actually started to grow. These three leadership principles are my game plan for being an effective campus pastor. It is what I do on a regular basis. They are simple principles that any and all pastors can implement. I believe it will help you in your church.

1. Communicate Vision

Your biggest role as the leader is to communicate the vision. No one will be more passionate or care about the vision than you, the leader. The best way to do communicate your vision is through stories. Stories are the best way for your people to remember your vision and values. Stories inspire and motivate you to continue to live and fulfill that vision. Number and statistics are great, but stories of life change move people to action.

Use all forms of communication to share these stories. I will always share our vision at our weekly staff meeting, our volunteer Facebook group, email newsletters, and whenever we have volunteer meetings. My goal is to over-communicate the vision. How do you know if you are over-communicating? You know that you are on the right track when you hear your leaders or volunteers tell others the vision to others.

Do you have a clear and simple vision statement, and do you share stories on a regular basis to inspire?

2. Connect to Build Relationships

John Maxwell says, “People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Ministry isn’t a job; it’s a relationship. It’s a relationship with God, with your family, and with your church family. It’s your primary role to model and train others to build relationships with your staff, volunteers, members, and guests.

There are so many different ways to achieve relationships, and it requires intentionality and time. It’s my first instinct to finish a task rather than to build a relationship. Therefore, I have to set intentional time to focus on relationships. I make it a goal to hang out with our staff on a regular basis outside of work. I also make it a point to send birthday and thank you cards on a regular basis. I set goals on how many people I want to meet with on a weekly basis.

Do you have an intentional relationship plan? What are ways that you can build and model relationships with your staff, leaders, volunteers, and members?

3. Coach to Train and Develop

The last leadership principle for every campus pastor is to help your people grow. Leadership development and coaching is your primary role and responsibility. This doesn’t happen automatically. It requires careful planning and creating a space to either get developed by an outside organization or through your own leadership development training.

It’s important to always be coaching, teaching, or helping develop your staff and leaders. And this shouldn’t just happen once a year at a conference. It should be happening on a regular basis. With your staff, it needs to be a weekly basis. Our staff goes through different leadership books, and I ask them to apply it during the week. With your volunteer leaders, it needs to be monthly at least. I’ll be taking our leadership team through different assessments like the Myers Brigg and Strength Finder so that we better understand each other. This will help build our team dynamic.

There needs to be a regular system and flow to grow your leaders. This goes without saying, but you as the leader need to be growing and poured into as well. You can’t lead or coach if you yourself are not growing and developing.

What’s your coaching plan for your staff and leaders?

Source: The Three Things Every Campus Pastor Needs to Do

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Are You an Organizational Leader or a Shepherd? (10 Easy Ways To Tell)

Patrick Bradley — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 16:30:11 +0000

by Carey Nieuwhof:

So are you an organizational leader, or are you more of a relational leader—a shepherd?

It’s an interesting question, and a highly polarizing one in the church today. Ditto for this blog. Just check out the impassioned comments on this post, where I argue the church today needs more entrepreneurial leaders, not more shepherds.

Why does this matter?

Well, it matters for a few reasons.

First, if a church is ever going to reach more than 200 people in their weekend services, that church will require leaders who are skilled in organizational leadership, not just relational leadership. 85% of all churches never break that barrier. (I’m offering a new course on scaling the 200 barrier this fall. You get on the insider track for that course here.)

Second, many church leaders grow frustrated because they want to reach more people but can’t understand why that proves so difficult.

Third, sometimes congregations expect leaders to behave relationally when what’s required to fulfil the mission is a more organizational style of leadership.

Finally, many leaders get frustrated when they are asked to lead in a way that’s different than their natural style. When an organizational leader tries to lead like a relational leader (and vice versa), frustration erupts.

When an organizational leader tries to lead like a relational leader, frustration erupts.Click To Tweet

Some Clarity

Some of us are organizational leaders, and some are more relational leaders.

You might be able to push your number higher through skill acquisition and hard work, but can a relational leader with a capacity of 100 really lead an organization of 10,000? Probably not. We might be able to double our number (from 200 to 400), but to stretch far beyond it might be too much for most of us. And it might never have been God’s plan for us in the first place.

Before you dismiss this as some kind of corporate leadership idea opposed to faith, think through it.

Moses embraced this kind of distinction between leaders when he reorganized a nation around leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. And, I suppose he was the leader of hundreds of thousands. You could argue Jesus followed a similar instinct when he organized disciples into groups of 70, 12, 3 and ultimately 1 (Peter).

Your Problem (And Mine)

Your problem (and mine) happens when an relational leader tries to fill the role of an organizational leader. And to a similar extent, when an organizational leader tries to fill a relational role.

The culture we live in raises the tension because:

We assume that bigger is better

The conferences we attend and books we read are written by leaders of large movements and organizations

We’re caught up in constant comparison and feel inadequate if we’re not moving toward the ‘next stage’

Add to that the outward thrust of the mission of the church and many leaders find themselves in a position where they are trying to lead in a way that pushes past their natural number.

You may dream of leading a big organization, but your wiring keeps pulling you back to a small one.

So…what are you? A relational leader or an organizational leader?

Relational Leaders

Here are some characteristics of relational leaders I’ve observed. Relational leaders:

1. Are Fueled By Direct Contact With People

If a day behind the computer screen or in meetings drains you, it might be a sign that you’re a relational leader.

You don’t care who you’re meeting with as long as you’re meeting with someone.

Relational leaders don’t care who they’re meeting with, as long as they’re meeting with someone.Click To Tweet

2. Hate Not Knowing Who’s In The Room

A relational leader feels an innate sense of panic if they don’t know everyone in the room.

They want to find out who’s who, catch up, and make sure they’re ‘known’ by everyone in their organization.

3. Stay Up To Date On The Details In People’s Lives

Because of the desire to know everyone, relational leaders will often want to know all the details at play in people’s lives.

Who got a new job.

Who’s sick and who’s healing.

Who’s in love.

Who got accepted to which college.

Who’s thinking of moving or a new job.

Who’s expecting.

They just want to know. They can’t help it. And they care. Deeply.

4. Think Systems Drain Energy Out Of A Great Community

There’s a world of difference between bureaucracy and systems, but a true relational leader struggles with systems.

They can’t imagine an organization where they don’t know most people, and the idea that ‘systems’ can care for people chafes at their core.

5. Struggle To Develop Other Leaders

Because of a relational leader’s desire to be known and to know others, relational leaders always struggle with developing other leaders.

Some might see other leaders as a threat. But some simply can’t imagine the idea of being in an organization larger than their personal span of care.

For this reason, most relational leaders will never lead an organization larger than 200 people. (I also wrote about this from several other angles in this post on 8 Reasons Why Most Churches Never Break the 200 Attendance Mark

An exceptionally gifted relational leader might be able to grow an organization or ministry area to 400 or even 500, but after that, they burn out and the span of care breaks down. This isn’t bad; it’s just true. You end up trying to be someone you’re not.

I’d love to hear from some relational leaders on the tension, struggle or blessing you feel from being a relational leader. Leave a comment! As you may have guessed, that’s not my style. I’m wired more as an organizational leader.

Organizational Leaders

By contrast, here is how organizational leaders think and operate. Organizational leaders:

1. Are Fueled By Systems That Help People

An organizational leader doesn’t have to care for people directly; he or she is content that people are being cared for well (by others). They think about how the system or organization can be improved to care for more people.

Again, it is very easy to characterize relational leadership as ‘Christian’ and systems as ‘non-Christian’, but that’s just not true. Read Acts 6 for more on how systems expanded the early church’s capacity to care for more people. No side can claim the moral high ground here.

2. Have No Deep Desire To Know Everyone In The Room

An organizational leader realizes by instinct that if the mission is going to grow, it’s going to mean their personal span of care is limited.

They are more excited that people are being reached by the mission than they are energized by knowing the people who are being reached personally. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, it just means they realize that a system that is going to reach hundreds or thousands demands that they not play a personal role in every aspect.

Organizational leaders realize if they need to know, their church won’t grow.

Organizational leaders realize if they need to know, their church won’t grow. Click To Tweet

3. Track Closely With People Within Their Direct Circle

Instead of trying to know a lot of people, an organizational leader will go deep with a few.

Strong organizational leaders will have an excellent relationship with 5-12 people who report to them or to whom they report. They are not people who simply sit behind a keyboard all day, because any great organization (even large ones) are always driven by people and healthy relationships.

Rather than being there for everyone, organizational leaders are there for the hospital visits, life celebrations and every day moments of a few of their closest and highest capacity leaders.

It doesn’t mean they never step outside that span of care to help others, it just means that inner circle of their closest leaders receive 80-95%% of their relational focus.

4. Are Comfortable With The Reality That Systems Are Key To A Growing Community

Organizational leaders have a heart for scale and systems because they believe that effective systems create capacity to care for even more people.

While being ‘organic’ and ‘authentic’ and ‘decentralized’ sounds more romantic, the truth is the most effective organizations that change the most lives (even for good) are the result of careful systems. The reason the device on which you’re reading this post works (or doesn’t work) is directly dependent on the system that produced it.

Ditto for the quality of your Disney vacation, or the organic food you’re eating for dinner tonight (assuming you didn’t pull it all from your garden today…and even if you did, you would need a minimal system to ensure it didn’t rot and the rabbits didn’t eat it all.)

5. Love Developing Other Leaders

Organizational leaders realize that as the organization grows, they have to develop and release more and more leaders. So they develop and deploy them.

Although in some respect that creates more distance between them and others in the organization (and sometimes that’s sad even for the leader), they understand it’s part of how growing systems work on this side of heaven.

Further more, they find considerable pleasure in watching other people develop their God given gifts and leading areas that they themselves used to lead.

While there can be a tendency to think releasing others to do what you used to do can make you less valuable to your church, ironically it makes you more valuable.

Releasing other leaders to lead doesn’t make you less valuable, it makes you more valuable.Click To Tweet

Anything to Add?

Those are some key difference I see between relational and organizational leaders.

I hope this helps you figure out which you might be and where you might best fit within an organization. At least, I hope it helps you address a tension many of us face when we try to figure out why things aren’t growing as fast as we had maybe hoped (again…not that growth is a goal for every leader…it just is for me and many others given the mission we’re on).

What do you see? Leave a comment!

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Source: Are You an Organizational Leader or a Shepherd? (10 Easy Ways To Tell)

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