Two truths about leadership:
- Few people – maybe 10% – are naturally very gifted leaders. They don’t need to be taught leadership, not because they don’t have anything to learn; rather, they make sure they go and learn it themselves – that’s what naturally gifted leaders do.
- Leadership can be learned by those who not naturally very gifted leaders. This is virtually the unanimous conclusion of writers and teachers in the field.
Why start here – because if a Rector is going to give a gift to his church other than departing, it needs to be the exercise of wise, godly, Biblical passionate leadership. That’s the first result of Rainer’s investigation into churches that have turned around without replacing their Rector.
Rainer identifies 8 characteristics of such leaders. Some are very familiar – fierce Biblical faithfulness, the paradoxical but very recognisable mix of confident humility, genuine love for the people, stickability and an outward focused vision.
Two were less familiar.
One surprise was the length of tenure – average length was 21 years for those Rectors who had turned around churches after a period of stagnation. Is there a lesson here for us, where the average is much shorter?
Second, an acceptance of responsibility. What that means is that instead of pointing out the window to factors other than themselves when things were going badly – to the secular society, to the people of the church, or even to God – they looked first, second and third to themselves. The question was always, ‘how can I change to make things better?’
What do you think? Where is our culture at with the issue of leadership, especially as regards these 2 issues?
We don’t seem very willing or able to extend the conversation on leadership beyond the commitment to “fierce biblical faithfulness” – nearly all our diocesan “heroes” (past and present) fit this description and, in some respects, to the exclusion of other characteristics of leadership.
So at times it has seemed like believing that if we say more than “fierce biblical faithfulness” then it must be denying “fierce biblical faithfulness”
Geoff,
nicely put – perhaps language of ‘adding to the gospel’ or ‘just preach the gospel’ also gets conscripted to this use.
long tenure will never be a value while ever it is normal to go to up to 5 different churches during your 10 years of training. (pre-college, college, post-college)
i’m not sure if you’ve commented on it in this series yet, but i think that an inability for rectors to plan their succession means that even a long and fruitful tenure may be quickly turned around with the appointment of the wrong guy afterwards.
also – i’ve got no evidence to back this claim – but i wonder where the 10% of natural leaders is really only 5%?
I’ve been a closest reader for awhile Andrew. Keep up the thought probing posts
@davemiers
I hear you regarding succession planning. We shouldn’t ape corporate culture but it’s becoming widely acknowledged that good succession arrangements often include a period of overlap between the outgoing executive and the incoming executive. 3 months – 6 months?
Also, outgoing executives often have a big part in choosing their successor (with the board). That way discontinuity is minimised and a successor can be chosen who will further develop the agreed direction of the organisation.
The fact that we normally start looking for a successor only after a resignation takes effect mitigates against much that can be done. Is this something that needs to be changed in the Anglican Church in the interest of long term growth? How can it be?
again thought provoking
1. it would be worth testing this against local stats. my guess is that as a ‘fact’ by itself it means squat.
2. yes indeed – surely being response able is integral to any kind of leadership. I wonder whether the chief responsibility of a rector is to stop being one! by which I mean devolve the centralized parish government into a genuinely plural elder government. centralized single ruler models seems to choke growth and leadership development.
also re a leadership process and leading an organisation through change needs leaders who are able to personally embrace change. there seems to be a strong correlation between the two.
Shane,
I’m sure length of tenure is not in itself a guarantee of turning around a church – it’s possible to stay too long! But there seems to be some correlation between short tenure and plateaued / declining churches, and at least for some, long tenure (I’m thinking Croydon, Figtree, Carlingford, Matthias) and sustained growth. And of course there are flipsides – long tenure slowly killing a church.
Regarding plural eldership, I know you hold it on Biblical grounds, but here you mention choking of growth. Is there any correlation between plural eldership and growth? I would have thought it was the other way round.
Shane,
you have picked up on a very important idea. The rector model creates a problem of “succession”.
If we ran our churches on a elder/deacon, this problem wouldn’t exist.
however, if we ran our churches in the elder/deacon model then other problems would arise, such as the 10% rule. Presumably if you have one rector you would make sure that he was in the top 10 percentile, however if you have say 5, 8 or even twelve elders then whose to say that they are all top fellas…
I won’t make a judgment on that because i have never experienced an elder/deacon model (but have heard good things). However what i will say is that this line of posts emphasizing the extraordinary capacity of rectors to grow churches is false. Members of the congregation grow the congregation. (all under God… obviously…)
If a church has a bad rector, people will still turn up as long as their friendship and support community is there. They will not grow necessarily from the sermons or whatever events this individual puts on, but they will grow by ministering to eachother. This is stagnation and its pretty easy to see how this develops into deterioration of community)
The difference between a good rector and a bad one is that one can make a church service just bearable. If the service is bearable, if the sermon is snappy and the announcements and events aren’t cringe worthy then the congregation can get to work. No longer does the congregation have to spend their hours ministering to eachother, instead they are empowered to go out into their communities and add to the congregation. Just as long as they aren’t ashamed of their ministry team. If the rector can make it just bearable then the congregation can finally get to work and do what they do best.
Let me remind rectors one and all that you are servants and slaves of the congregation. Its not your congregation, its Christs congregation and you live to serve.
If any rector thinks they can grow a church community they are misguided … All they can do is empower the congregation to do their ministerial work day in and day out. Ministers can spend 20 hours a week preparing for a 20- 40min sermon, without veiling the power of the spoken word, each member of the congregation spends an entire working week ministering to their colleagues in word and deed. The role of the congregation in adding to their own numbers cannot be disregarded.
@mike
ephesians 4:12 would say that the role of the pastor is to equip the saints for works of service.
so while i agree that you’re right – under God – the congregation are key to growing the congregation – i do think that if you’ve got a dud rector then the congregation are more than likely to be less mobilised for action.
(by the way… “rector”… what a stupid name!!!)
Rector means ruler, not a particularly biblical label for leadersip but an important function none the less. More of a prob is that it is singular and not plural.
We’re big believers that words not only define but also create. So the elders/ pastors in our gospel community refers to themselves as one of the pastors
Mike, even by my standards a fine rant. With dave I think it is fair to say your elders have a vital role as ministry enablers, and although I get what you are saying I may be a little less pessimistic about them just managing to make the service bearable.
I think succession can be just as difficult in elder deacon govt by the way, but would argue that the strength of plural government is that there is less liklihood of ministry bottlenecking around one particular leader.
@Geoff,
While many of our local big wigs speak about faithfulness at the expense of other factors, my observation is that they are actualy quite good at all the other stuff … delegation, recruitment, making things happen, selling a vision etc… they do what everyone else says leaders should do. For some reason they don’t recognise it formally. I don’t get it.
Do you think there is any significance that none of the “Breakout” churches were Episcopalian – ie the American equivalent to Anglican in church government structure?
(recognising that there may be ‘other issues’ at play in why there are no Episcopalian churches in the group)
Mike and Shane,
seems to me to be a false either/or is being set up here. Either a Rector is a ‘ruler’ (1 Tim 5.17) type or he is an enabler type.
But surely this is reductionistic. Leadership includes both clarifying and promoting vision, defining direction, making decisions etc, and all of that is done in the context of a team which is empowered and released and held accountable etc.
It’s just not true that “all a Rector can do is empower a congregation to do their ministerial work” – that’s a huge part of it, but there’s more as well.
The danger here seems to me to be that you will cast out one unclean spirit, but find that it returns with 7 others more evil than itself! (Matt 12.43-48) What we need are better leaders all round, not truncated leaders who decline to exercise the oversight.
I’d like to challenge Mike on a concept.
Where there meets a number in God’s name (where the meeting’s purpose IS God) there too is God. While I don’t say that all the time human’s will get things right (far from it), community allows people to witness to each other in a way that could NEVER be done from the pulpit. Communities ministering to each other and ensuring each other is “on the narrow road” sounds like a caring group of Christians being a “body”… that doesn’t sound like stagnation to me. They may never become a body of theologians, but then bodies need more than eyes, ears and feet. Church is not about producing theologians, its about producing growing Christians “in a body” (i.e. functioning community). Moore College is for producing theologians; growing in theology is not neccessarily growing in Christ.
The point of a Council at any church, along with the Minister/Pastor/Rector/Deacon/Leader, seems to be a mirror of the far older tribal-rulership system. There is a single “head” who is in constant communication with trusted leaders of the group who have the power of the broader group to replace the leader. It is a “mini-body” and should contain a variety of people with a variety of skill sets and gifts. A church council with eyes, ears, feet, hands, bowels and even “unmentionable parts” may do a far better job of growing a given church. For those Elder/Deacon churches, do they have a BROAD representation of people in the church? Do they include young people to represent the youth? Do they include the elderly?
My suspicion is that those who have spent a significant tenure at a church and grown that church have been there and established themselves as community leaders at least as much as they are Christian leaders. Also, those Pastor/Minister/Deacons have probably built up a council of “elders” who also go about doing things in the community and as a community. Was that thought expanded upon in that study; the connection between extended tenure and broad-based active elder-groups?
“seems to me to be a false either/or is being set up here. Either a Rector is a ‘ruler’ (1 Tim 5.17) type or he is an enabler type.”
really can’t see how I have done that.
again 1 tim 5:17 – it is rulerS (plural)
“The danger here seems to me to be that you will cast out one unclean spirit, but find that it returns with 7 others more evil than itself! (Matt 12.43-48)”
– very creative use of scripture by the way – will have to work out who those seven demons are
I am a bit slow – I have no idea what you are getting at regarding truncated leaders – are you saying that plural elder government is for rectors who can’t exercise oversight – that seems rather ‘either/ or’ if that’s what you are saying?
the oversight I am keen for is a genuinely plural oversight, which reflects the consistent witness of scripture, and which together in community pastors, leads, strategises etc
Shane,
it was Mike’s comment “all they can do is etc” that prompted my comment about truncated leaders. Certainly leaders equip the saints – but Biblically that’s not all they do.
Andrew C, Andrew K and Shane,
The only example in the bible i can find on the idea of a church “ruler” is that in 1Tim 5:17 and i must admit that your evidence for such a claim is wafer thin at best.
I dont speak, read or write ancient anything but when the ESV says “rule” and the NIV says “direct the affairs of” i get concerned that you have got the wrong picture. One gives the impression there is authority and power, that akin to a king. However the later gives the idea of servant leadership. I will tend towards servant leadership because that is how Jesus wished his church to be. No part of the body is better than the other.
If you simply read the verse before, you will notice that the church is to help widows who are really in need as a part of their work. Does that sound like something you rule over? can you possibly rule over the aid given to grandma? NO! if you are at the pinnacle of church leadership, then you can be the one who directs, in consultation with the other leaders, how much money to give each widow each week.
Anglicans have created a structure of power and leadership, no wonder Ministers are happy to fit the word “ruler” into their job description. But the church of Jesus has them serving God’s people not ruling them.
a reason why we have power structures and are happy with the idea of ruling is because, well, SERVING SUCKS… people will tread all over you, people will abuse your kindness and graciousness, people will not say thank you, people will forget you and not listen, people will slander you and be disrespectful, you will have no savings because you give everything to the poor, people will take and never give, you will get your hands dirty, you will lose the shirt off your back and all your time and energy, you will be spat on by homeless people who reject your conversation, your relationships at home will suffer because you are spending so much time meeting with people who are in hospital, mayors and elected MP’s will postpone your meetings … but isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?
If there are people out there who wish not to get their hands dirty and would much prefer to teach humility and service from the pulpit without any acts of it, i say that they have missed the point of the gospel. Sure, Professional training of theology is great, and maybe ten or twenty guys and girls should teach that at Moore, but it is unreasonable, wasteful and hypocritical to put a theologically trained “ruler” who speaks of doctrine and the priesthood of all believers but doesn’t show humility or servantheartedness as the leader of the church.
That leader needs to have been, and be willing to be spat on again and again…