Leadership Reflections

Here’s a list of things I’m thinking about that I’d like you to jump in on before I do.  But first, I have a celebration to share.

Today’s my anniversary!  One year ago today I wrote my first post.  I started blogging because Heather Hanson, VP Administration at CCCC, came back from a social media conference and said CEO’s should be blogging.  At first I didn’t know what I would write about or what I in particular had to contribute, but this is post #55 and I have another 27 posts started.  As always, once you start down a road, the creative juices start flowing!  Ideas for what to write about come from four sources:

1. hearing leaders talk about what’s on their minds,
2. things I’m thinking about regarding my own leadership,
3. connecting CCCC’s mission and values to leadership, and
4. neat thoughts that come to me as I read.

I’ve got lots on my mind, but here are some really big topics that I’m thinking about, and I welcome anything you’d like to contribute on any of them.  Please share your thoughts.

• Church boards:  Over the last year I have broadened my thinking considerably about how church boards relate to the pastoral staff.  I served on a church board once that was divided for about fifteen years on the issue of whether the pastor was a hireling of the board or the board was a support for the pastor.  It was an awful time of extended paralysis that originated with a pastoral moral failure that broke the board’s trust in pastors and their denominational oversight.  In sympathy with the pastors who followed the one who failed, I have generally championed the pastor as leader in much the same vein as the executive director of an agency is leader.  However, I am coming to realize two things: 1) my church board experience is limited to one particular model and there are other models that have much to commend them; and 2) that by expecting pastors to fill the organizational leader role, I may be setting pastors up to fail because the skills and personality traits that make for great pastors may not equip them as organizational leaders.  I really like policy governance as a means of liberating the staff to do what they were hired to do, but while policy governance may work for large churches that have executive level administrators, I am thinking that a more collegial, shared leadership model between pastors and boards may work better in small- to mid-sized churches.  I’ve already shared a bit about this issue, but want to explore the issue a lot more.
• The Humanity of Ministry Leaders: Leaders are people just like everyone else, walking through life learning how to be better people, trying to become more Christ-like and doing a lot of on-the-job learning.  I’ve studied leadership for years, but until you are personally in the position rather than advising, supporting, or second-guessing from the sidelines, you really don’t know what a leader’s life is like.  There is a tremendous feeling of personal responsibility and accountability for the welfare of the staff, the organization and its mission.  Others may share these feelings, but they don’t have the ‘buck stops here’ aspect that the senior leader has.  There is also the added responsibility in Christian leadership not just to do the best you can, but to fulfill the call of God for you and your ministry.  What does God expect of me and of CCCC?  That’s huge!  Leaders are also stewards of the human and financial resources and the opportunities that God has provided.  I am acutely aware that I will be held to account for my term of leadership at CCCC in all these areas.  There is also the need to maintain your own personal spirituality and identity, a vitality of inner life independent of the ministry, while at the same time your call to this particular ministry combined with your public figurehead role are like gravitational forces pulling your personal identity closer and closer to merging with your ministry’s identity.  Senior leadership is frought with such challenges, and fallible people do their best to fulfill the responsibilities.  Yet most people expect leaders to be perfect and often they are not shy about highlighting a leader’s deficiencies.  When I think back to my banking and consulting careers, I’ve come across arm-chair CEOs everywhere.  So I’m thinking about how ministry leaders survive the potshots and stay confident, maintain humility in the face of God’s blessings and the accolades that come with the role, and acknowledge the need for continuous personal development without at the same time sabatoging their ability to lead or losing the confidence of their boards and team members.
• Responsibilities of Team Membership:  There is such a large number of leadership books and conferences that I think we are liable to put too much focus on the leader.  I wish there was a much greater emphasis on the responsibilities of team members being great team members.  I see the organizational leader as just another team member with a particular set of responsibilities.  Organizational success takes team work, and everyone must give equal commitment to personal performance and development.  Roger Patterson, co-author of Leading from the Second Chair,will be presenting six workshops at our conference this year (and doing a special presentation at the church administrators’ conference that immediately follows our conference).  I’m looking forward to hearing his thoughts on followership.

Okay, now over to you.  If you were framing these three topics for discussion, what issues would you put on the table?  What opening comments would you make?