INTRODUCTION
Leadership teams make sense. Whether the church is large or small, effective leadership demands that the responsibilities and authority of leadership must be shared and coordinated. The pastor cannot do it all. Actually, he can’t even do what must be done alone, but he can bring a team of people together to do what needs to be done to grow a healthy church that pursues the purposes of God. Laurie Beth Jones in Jesus CEO makes the case for the necessity of leadership teams when she states, “The truth is that good ideas, noble intentions, brilliant inventions, and miraculous discoveries go nowhere unless somebody forms a team to act on them.”
There are good teams and bad teams. Where there is harmony and teamwork, there is effective progress toward achieving God’s purposes. Where there is conflict and division there is paralysis and failure. Jim Jackson contributing to Building Teams in Ministry identifies a number of ways a church can be affected by conflict on leadership teams. The first is what he calls the domino effect, “when something goes wrong in one area of the church, it is likely to create a huge drag.” He goes on to say that church is like a family, when one child gets sick the whole church can become infected with a spirit of negativity.
Another concern he raises is the potential for division in the church body. He states, “Every staff person has spheres of influence among laypeople who get involved when they feel their staff friend is being treated unfairly.” The situation can quickly escalate into a political power struggle.
Church leadership must learn to intentionally manage the leadership team rather than wait for conflict to arise or there will be a continual running from one crisis to another.
What can be done to promote harmony
in leadership teams?
1) Establish a clear line of authority
Dale Galloway, in Building Teams In Ministry, makes this crucial point, “To build a great church, it is absolutely necessary that the senior pastor have authority to hire and fire personnel.” He goes on to say, “When the direct line of authority comes through the board to the senior pastor to the staff, everyone—including the board, staff and congregation—knows who the leader is and who is casting the vision. Then staff members know where to go for guidance. They feel secure in their relationships and fairly treated in their accountability. They know that they will be evaluated by the one who knows the most about their ministry.”
Why is this important? Galloway presents this insight, “when no one knows who has responsibility over staff, chaos easily erupts in a church. Then mass confusion reigns because everyone feels a need to build his or her own power base.”
2) Have a clearly defined church purpose statement
You cannot have an effective team unless the team members are in agreement with the leader of the team. The people on the leadership team must share the pastor’s concepts of ministry and be committed to walking them out. Purpose and vision cannot be decided by committee, it must be something that is revealed to the leader by God. Henry and Richard Blackaby state in Spiritual Leadership, “Leaders can dream up a vision, but they cannot discover God’s will. God must reveal it. The role of spiritual leaders is not to dream up dreams for God, but to be the vanguard for their people in understanding God’s revelation.”
As the team members develop purpose statements for the ministries they lead, the statements must be in harmony with the general-purpose statement. The church must not be pulled in different directions causing division and strife.
Long-term pastorates are important to establishing God’s direction for place. When pastors come and go it leaves churches without true vision and the life of the Spirit perishes.
3) Choose team players
The pastor needs to exercise due diligence when adding new staff members to the leadership team. While competency and experience are important, character issues must not be overlooked or underestimated. Emotionally unhealthy people are almost sure to cause conflict and problems.
When a senior pastor is interviewing someone, how can he be sure that he is looking at a healthy person? In an interview for Leadership Journal Bill Hybel, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church gave this council, “You can’t be 100 percent sure, but a person who has never wrestled with how his upbringing impacts his adult relationships is a sure bet for a barrel of conflict. In our interviewing process, we often ask, ‘Were you raised in a perfect family?’ Most often, of course, the answer is no. Then we probe deeper: ‘How did your parents let you down? Have you worked through that?’ People on the journey toward health generally can answer yes to two important questions: (1) Will you admit that you have baggage from your past? And (2) will you do honest work on it so it doesn’t distort your relationships and work around here.”
Questions should also be asked about how they have done in relationships in previous assignments. Did they have a problem with the senior pastor? Did they relate well with the other members of the staff? What about the people they served, did they get along well with them?
Each member of the leadership team is a leader themselves and they must have the necessary people skills to be fruitful in their ministry responsibilities.
4) Define roles and responsibilities
Each team member must understand his role on the leadership team as it relates to the team leader. They are a part of a team under the authority of a leader who has been charged with the responsibility of leading the church. Because the senior pastor is ultimately responsible for the ministries of the church he has been given the authority to lead the church forward in following the will of God. They were brought on the team by the senior pastor to assist him with his responsibilities.
The team members must also understand their role as a member of the church leadership team. If the team is to be successful they must mutually support one another. It is not about individual ministry success but team success.
The responsibilities of each team member should be clearly defined. A realistic job description for each team member should be developed and policy and procedures should be in place for the entire team.
A thorough presentation of the roles and responsibilities of team members should be made when new team members are being recruited. This should be followed up when a new team member comes on staff.
5) Give ongoing support to team members
The senior pastor should not only expect loyalty and support from the members of the leadership team, but he should also extend it. He represents the leadership team to the congregation and the church board. The overall success of the leadership team is his responsibility; after all he is the leader and it is his team.
That support should be two-fold.
(1) He should speak well of the team members. He has a responsibility to listen to concerns and be sensitive to the feed-back of individuals, but the information should be used to evaluate and make improvements and adjustments in the individual’s ministry, not to criticize the person in front of individuals or groups.
(2) He should support each team member’s spiritual, emotional and ministry growth through mentoring and coaching, either doing it himself or providing for someone else. The members of the team should feel that the senior pastor is working for their good. The purpose of his coaching is not to micro-manage the ministries of the team members but to help each individual to identify their own ministry goals, lay out their plans, and both hold them accountable and encourage them.
(3) If the team members are paid staff the pastor should work with the church board or finance committee to provide a generous compensation packages.
6) Create an atmosphere of community
The church leadership team should be more than individuals working at doing church business together. They should look at each other as family and friends, brothers and sisters in Christ living in community, supporting one another as they experience and serve Christ together.
Teams would do well to begin their community building process by building friendships. If the relationships among the group members are not strong and healthy, destructive conflict will be the result.
Let me suggest three components to building true friendships.
- Pray together. Make prayer a part of your weekly staff meetings. Share praises and prayer requests and encourage each member to share not only ministry related praises and needs, but personal victories and personal needs. The senior pastor needs to lead the way. The other members of the team will be reluctant to open up if the leader doesn’t lead.
- Have fun together. Choose sports and activities that you can do just for the fun of it, miniature golf and bowling work well. This is not a time for the jocks to shine, but an opportunity for the team members to enjoy themselves.
- Spend time together. It takes time to build friendships. Go to conferences together, plan retreats into your schedule, and celebrate birthdays by going out to lunch. Think of ways to bring the group together outside the structure of work.
Being in community does not mean demanding conformity. Unity does not demand uniformity. It is acceptable for team members to disagree but it is important they do it in an agreeable way and to respect the other person’s opinion. The members of the team need to operate in grace and be quick to forgive. The team should have a reconciling spirit.
7) Practice good communication
Good communication involves what the senior pastor tells the leadership team, what the leadership team tells him and what the leadership team tell each other.
Weekly leadership team meetings are important. This gives the senior pastor an opportunity to communicate with the leadership team, it gives the leadership team an opportunity to communicate with the senior pastor and it gives the team an opportunity to communicate with each other.
The agenda for the leadership team meetings could contain the following items: praises, prayer requests, prayer, Sunday bulletin and monthly newsletter items, up-coming ministry events, new comers update, hospital update, and ministry calendar updates. Schedule time for each team member to share what is happening in his or her ministry. Reading a book together and discussing a chapter each week or viewing a training video could provide in-service training.
Regularly scheduled planning meetings should be held to plan the fall, winter, spring and summer schedules. Care should be taken to have an orderly process of scheduling to avoid conflicts.
8) Do not play favorites
This can be a real challenge. Just the perception of favoritism, can be destructive to the harmony of the team. Socializing on a regular basis with individual team members should be avoided. Care should be given to the fair allocation of building space and office resources. Thought must be given when recognizing leadership team members before the church, exercising care that each member is treated equitably.
Conclusion
One of the most important duties of the senior pastor is to assemble his leadership team and lead them forward in unity to do God’s will. It will take preparation, perseverance and a servant’s heart to be successful, but the success of his church depends upon the success of his leadership team.