Leadership Changes in the Church

Leadership: Larry Thomas
Monday, May 1, 2006

To understand the leadership changes affecting our churches, let's examine the context in which leadership occurs by looking at some of the shifts happening in churches. Consider the following trends that are reshaping what leadership in ministry looks like today.

Increasing numbers of Senior Pastors are shifting from being a preacher-counselor to a leader-trainer. Without diminishing the importance of preaching and teaching, there is a heightened realization that the congregation relies upon the Senior Pastor for vision, motivation, and mobilization. The result is a redefining of how pastors use their resources to have impact.

Four forces are converging to change the role of the laity in leadership.

  1. People are demanding participation in the development of their current experience and future conditions.
  2. Christians are becoming more aware of their spiritual gifts - and desirous of using those gifts in personal ministry and for the benefit of their church.
  3. Seminaries are not producing leaders, requiring churches to look elsewhere for individuals who have been called by God to lead, have been trained to do so, and have leadership experience.
  4. Pastors are increasingly open to sharing the leadership of the church's ministry with competent and committed laity.

The outgrowth of these new realities is that churches are identifying, training, and deploying people from the pews as key leaders within the ministry. Pastors, staff members, and preachers are increasingly being promoted from within the congregation instead of from resumes presented by outsiders.

Few churches do a good job of determining what success in ministry looks like. One trend that may help to overcome that disability is the transition from thinking about church planting exclusively, which is a valid pursuit, to focusing upon healthy churches planting churches, which I am convinced is God's plan. Another trend is the "refocus" on personal surrender and personal witnessing. These changes in emphasis will necessarily demand a different leadership focus and new skills.

In the past decade, the Holy Spirit has received greater attention and devotion than at any time in the past half century. One implication of this "comeback" by the Third Person of the Trinity is that church leaders must consider the appropriate blending of business-oriented skills with sensitivity to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Although this practice may be "outside the box" for some leaders, it produces a better balance of head and heart in leading the ministry.

More than three decades of extensive research has confirmed the view that although leadership skills can be taught, leadership, because it deals with people, will always be both an art and science. As such, while methodology is important and techniques can be taught to bring about superior outcomes, the acceptance of leadership as a "soft science" frees churches and practitioners to concentrate on leadership as a ministry, rather than a discipline that facilitates ministry. The bottom line is that leaders minister by serving others.

Church members demand excellence and relevance from their church. This perspective has also changed the way in which they want to be referred to when they invest themselves in ministry. Rather than being described as volunteers, church leaders are discovering that people need to be treated as ministry professionals. Within our denomination, we are changing the terms they use to describe volunteers, the quantities of resources made available to them, and are providing forms of supervision not before used to these ministry partners. This alters how full-time church leaders perceive and carry out their work within the congregational context. Each of these trends points to a meaningful shift in how people think, interact, work, and perceive ministry. When the context changes, leadership must adapt. The changes described demand that leaders perform the same fundamental functions - giving people a sense of where to go and how to get there - but to deliver the related resources in ways that fit the new cultural context.

Until next month, remember that a person's most lasting memory of you is how you made them feel. God bless you as you lead and serve. To receive more information about trend changes in church leadership contact me at Lthomas@hoksba.org or 316-204-5632.