Leadership Levels

"Discouragement is the result of failed expectations."

Last night I think I realized one of the things that has bothered me.

I've been trying to get people to lead who are simply not natural leaders.

I've always partially observed people based on their chosen profession or hobbies. I've found that as long as the person is doing the job they enjoy, it's usually a good evaluator of their experience and usefulness in future projects.

In starting a church you have to find the right people to plug in the right place to get things moving. In my previous church planting experience (as a YP) this hasn't been as big of a deal. I've always had enough people around when I needed to choose. The problem is that with starting a church I haven't had as broad of a base as I've had in every other ministry opportunity I've been a part of. In my previous ministry experience I worked at a mega church and then two other church plants.

In the other plants however we grew so quickly that by the time I NEEDED others, they were around. In addition to good staff, the other church plants were the first 'contemporary' (I hate that word) church around so they grew from the quality but they also grew from some level of what I call (and have heard called) 'dumb growth'.

Where Iam now there are church plants springing up and dying all over the place. Dumb growth doesn't work here anymore. You can't stick a sign in the ground saying "We wear jeans just like you!" and get a couple of hundred people to show up right away.

Anyway, back to my origional thought:
I've tried to get people who aren't leaders in any other part of life to become leaders in the church world... guess what? It doesn't work. People don't follow and the newly knighted 'Sir Leader' feels frustrated and finds a way to resign without being mean.

I aim to think the best of people and as a part of my personality I really want to see everyone succeed in leading others... the reality is though I think I've had people in leadership positions clogging the way and quite possibly lost out on leaders who come to our church for a little while only to leave feeling that they may not have been needed. That's pure speculation but I'm assuming for a second...

Last night I came to the realization that for some of my team I've had a fuzzy white-cloud type of view of them. I've wanted so much for them to be something that they naturally weren't that I pulled the wool over my own eyes just to 'make do'. I'm done with that. I'm going to narrow down my focus again to the very few people who show a passion for the church and who have demonstrated themselves as leaders inside and/or outside the church.

I took evaluation in my own mind last night and sure enough....no one follows my 'leaders'. In the everyday work world THEY ARE GREAT at what they do but what they do doesn't involve leading other adults. This presents a small problem when the major reason I have them around me is to lead a bunch of adults :)

By the way, the way you correct the quote about discouragement above is to change the expectations. So I will. It's not a knock on anyone but myself. People are willing and ready but if you have someone in the wrong position or without the proper training, you set them up to do poorly. What's worse than that is if you get mad at them (even privately) if they were in the wrong position to begin with.

Imagine if we went to the airport today and I showed you around. You began to see pilots carrying luggage and bag handlers in the cockpit and the flight crew was working on the fuel lines... you'd think you were in the twilight zone!

How many of our churches are this way? As a result we end up trying to pretend (most of the time not intentionally) that everything is fine and that it's okay for the pilot to load bags and for the crew to fix fuel lines. We wonder however why many ministries don't soar to their fullest potential or even why some crash and burn. This is one of those leadership lessons that the leader has to take on the chin and move on. We've got to be honest with everyone we have on our team and evaluate people truthfully. Otherwise we're just delaying the inevitable.

It's funny but for a while now I've found that my intuition has a far greater batting average than my desires.

Oversight detected and deleted. I will now carry on with the regularly scheduled church plant.