Habits

Those of you who've been to my office know that I have stacks of books that I am reading. I read so that I may improve my effectiveness. I am deathly afraid of sinking into a rut or of coasting, no matter how comfortable those things may be sometimes.

The main book I'm working through now is entitled The Habits of Highly Effective Churches. It is about the helpful and hurtful habits that churches develop over time. You may not know this, but churches have life-cycles just like people. It becomes increasingly more challenging for a church to maintain its viability as it ages. Viability is the ability to bring about new and enrich already existing spiritual life.

One of the habits that maintains a congregation's viability is effective leadership. Having someone in a position of leadership is not the same as having a leader in charge. According to this book, an effective leader is called by God (Romans 12:8), possesses the character of a person of God (2 Timothy 2:22-26), and demonstrates a group of competencies that result in leadership (1 Timothy 3:13, 5:17).

An effective leader also demonstrates an ability to motivate people, mobilizing them for action, providing the resources for them to be effective, and directing them to pursue a jointly shared vision. You see, leaders are supposed to focus (arrgghh) on communicating and gaining widespread ownership of the vision, strategic thinking, creative problem solving, team building, conflict resolution (Christians fight?), long-term planning, developing future leaders, and evaluating the effectiveness of the ministry.

Success as a leader is defined by a different set of standards than what we might normally think. For instance, ministry success is achieved when:

The leadership is in turn developing a growing corps of competent leaders within the body as a whole.

The responsibilities of the paid staff are focused and limited; they are seen as support for the ministry leaders, not the ones responsible to do the congregation's ministry.

The congregation views change positively and invests themselves in intentional and strategic changes.

The leadership models change in their own lives and ministries which is recognized by the congregation.

Individuals in the congregation who demonstrate a serious commitment to significant change in their own lives and ministries are publicly supported.

The congregation is consistently pushed to grow by pushing the outer edges of its comfort zone.

The leadership doesn't have to be involved in every decision because they have trust in the competency of the compartmentalized leaders to make good decisions.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this particular chapter was that most of the leadership in a vibrant congregation comes from the membership. All who feel called to lead are given ample opportunity to respond to that calling and to use their gifts (8-12% of the membership are involved in leadership in viable congregations compared to only 3-4% in plateaued or no longer viable congregations).

Leaders constantly assess the effectiveness of everything for which they are responsible, including themselves. We have many in leadership positions in this congregation. Are those of us in leadership positions being effective according to the criteria listed above? If not, what are we going to do about it?

Shawn