I have always been fascinated with leadership as well as church leadership. I read leadership blogs, buy leadership books and watch leadership videos. I love the leadership concepts the church has leveraged over the past 30 years for Kingdom effectiveness. Lately, however, I have been struggling with the disconnect I see between some of the leadership models in the church and the leadership model Jesus presented. This struggle was brought to the forefront by Simon Sinak’s latest TED Talk. (I highly recommend watching the 12 minute talk at the end of this post). What struck me was that Sinak seems to better define biblical leadership than many pastors, including myself. To quote Jesus’ brother James out of context, “These things ought not be.”
In response to a disagreement among his followers over who should be on his Executive Team, Jesus sums the model of leadership Sinek proposes this way:
But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:25-28 ESV (Emphasis mine)
Every pastor preaches this models of servant leadership, but I fear several marketplace strategies we’ve adopted undermine the core of Jesus’ model. Here are four ways the church is getting leadership wrong:
1. Allowing the urgency of the mission to dictate leadership culture
This one sounds something like this
“We can’t let the needs of individual leaders override the importance of the mission; rescuing people from the gates of hell. We are in a war and every war has casualties.”
I have a friend who pastors a church which is reaching large numbers of unchurched young adults. He is extremely focused on the mission and he refuses to let anything or anyone stand in the way. A mutual friend recently witnessed this pastor come apart on a couple of leaders who did not follow the prescribed protocol in their area of ministry. If these leaders don’t bring their performance up to standard they will be fired. In the pastor’s mind the urgency of the mission overrides the needs of the individual.
I can’t argue with my friend’s results (more on that in the number 2 below), but I’m not sure his leadership style lines up with Jesus’ model. No one has ever had a mission as important as Jesus, but even when his disciples messed up Jesus valued the individual over the urgency of the mission. Jesus didn’t even fire Judas.
2. Using growth as justification for culture
We’ve become so enamored with results in the church world that success can trump everything else. I’ve heard myself say, “Their church is growing so fast they must be doing something right.”
The reality is unhealthy leadership exists as much in growing churches as it does in flatlined churches, but sometimes growth masks underlying mistakes. Jesus never promised his model of leadership would grow a local church. Attendance shouldn’t mean we get a pass on sacrificial love for our staff and volunteers.
3. Seeing staff (and volunteer) churn as healthy
Many churches have bought into some aspect of top grading made famous by Jack Welch when he ran General Electric. The basic idea is that you only want “A players” on your team. To achieve this goal an organization regularly grades the staff; the A players are rewarded while the B and C players are weeded out. Some churches regularly force out 10-30% of their staff to continually upgrade their leadership. While other churches might not be quite so pragmatic, the idea of consistently weeding out under performers is almost universal.
The logic and results of this approach are hard to argue with. The challenge is this isn’t how Jesus’ led. He didn’t force Peter to resign because he just didn’t get it. He didn’t suggest to Thomas that he might want to look around for another rabbi since he didn’t seem to buy into Jesus’ vision. If Jesus utilized top grading he would certainly have let Bartholomew and Thaddaeus go for under performance.
4. Replacing rather than developing staff
When youth group attendance stops growing its time to get a new youth pastor. When a ministry struggles its time to replace the volunteer with a staff member. When the children’s director struggles managing multiple campuses its time to find a higher capacity leader.
Simon Sinek shares the story of Next Jump, a company that has a “no fire policy” From their website,
“We don’t hire employees, we adopt family members. We don’t fire at Next Jump, we coach.“
Charlie Kim, Next Jump’s CEO, says no one would lay off an under-performing family members, why would a company?
Sure, that works at a secular company, but could a church that follows the teachings of Jesus operate that way? I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be fun to try?
Where do we go from here?
My point isn’t that “they” are doing it wrong, my fear is that I am doing it wrong. I have read so many leadership books and studied so many successful models that I wonder if I have unintentionally moved away from Jesus’ model. Jesus was very clear,
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you.
What churches do a great job of demonstrating Jesus’ model of leadership?
