LeaderGuides: Focusing Your Church’s Leadership

Mark Tidsworth, Pinnacle Team Leader

What does this church need from its pastoral and lay leaders to live into its best self this coming year?

Soon, as new lay leaders rotate onto your leadership teams, many of you will be filling in answers to this question. As you do your retreats, orientations, and planning sessions, you will be describing how to best function as leaders for your congregation during 2020. So here’s a great way to begin your year as pastors, church staff, and lay leaders….praying the leadership question above together. “What, O God, does this church need from us in order to live into its best self; in order to more fully accomplish the mission to which you are calling us?” Since we will fill in answers, whether consciously or unconsciously, all year long, the beginning of this new year coming is a great opportunity to be intentional about the role of leadership in our churches.

LeaderGuides

One church with whom we are working is focused on cultivating a culture of transformation. They are learning about adaptive change; how significant transformation happens due to the ecosystem we cultivate over time. During this consultation, these key practices for their leaders rose to the surface of our awareness. Now we are calling them LeaderGuides, since they function as direction for leadership. While reading them, consider what effect may take shape when the pastoral and lay leaders of a church are using these key practices to guide and focus their efforts during the coming year.

We will affirm every effort to form disciples who partner with God to transform this world

We will affirm every holy experiment, reinforcing our efforts to follow Holy Spirit nudges

We will empower and equip the dreamers among us, blessing their efforts to call us forward

We will pursue and practice Christian disciplines which form us more fully as disciples

We will embrace the call to stewardship of life, committing all that we are to God’s mission

We will continually adapt our organizational structures toward supporting our mission efficiently and effectively

We will look for those persons in this community for whom this church would help open the door to God through Jesus Christ

We will pursue a culture of respect and dignity for all persons in this Body of Christ, loving one another as Christ loves us

We will speak directly and honestly as we interact with each other, yet always with an eye on what’s good and healthy for one another

We will invest in leaders, encouraging them to lead, support, and challenge us toward spiritual growth and mission fulfillment

Download a pdf of these LeaderGuides here

So what would your LeaderGuides be; that which your leadership could do over the course of a year to help your church live into its best self? After leading hundreds of lay leadership team retreats wherein motivated leaders wanted to know how to lead effectively, we can tell you that spending time on identifying your LeaderGuides will be greatly appreciated. Perhaps your coming retreat or planning session just came into greater focus.

May we follow God’s call to be faithful and relevant churches in this 21st century with courage and boldness. May we lean into the unfolding story of God as expressed through our churches. And may God bless you as you lead through faith, hope, and love in 2020.