Three High-Yield Actions For Church Leaders

by Mark Tidsworth, Pinnacle Team Leader

Over the last 22 years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time and energy helping leadership coaches, therapists, and consultants develop their practices. It turns out, there’s a short list of high yield activities which are pretty straightforward and uncomplicated. When professionals learn these activities, followed by application, they nearly always see positive growth in their practices. Most people development professionals recognize and accept the reality that they must actively cultivate their practices in order to serve clients.

Over those same 22 years, I have served as a leadership coach with clergy and as a consultant with churches and denominations, recognizing some strange dynamics at play. There is a hesitancy… nearly a reluctance, if you will, on the part of church leaders to do the simplest and most obvious activities for growing their churches.

Even casual observation reveals what’s happening. So many of us as church leaders are reacting to obnoxious church leadership; determining we won’t be THOSE kinds of leaders. We all carry examples in our brains of ministers and lay people who engage the general public in emotionally unintelligent and irritating ways, looking much like con men and women. In no way do we want to resemble them, turning more people off than on to spiritual and church engagement.

But the problem is that many church leaders stopped their leadership development right there, in the reactive place. The result is they are driven by what they don’t want to become. This dynamic creates passive leaders who don’t actively engage others around faith nor are they helpful or healthy advocates for their churches.

What saddens me about this dynamic is we are allowing the worst examples of church leadership to push us to extreme reactivity, leaving us passive in our advocacy for faith and churches. Do we really want to continue living in religious reactivity, allowing the worst among us to influence our actions?

So rather than continue what’s not working so well, here are three activities providing high yield outcomes for people development professionals, with application for church leaders. Not every practice from other fields transfers to the life of the church, but you will quickly see the relevance of these three for organizational leaders, including church leadership.

1 – Proactively Cultivate Relationships and Build Connections

When starting a people development practice, one doesn’t have clients. Therefore, connecting with people, cultivating relationships becomes priority number one. At this point, new people development professionals must develop their philosophy of outreach. Most of them, being caring people, don’t want to engage people only for what people can do for them. They are not people-users, while at the same time they want to practice their craft of serving others. So the healthiest among them decide they will invest in people, regardless of whether they are hired by those people as coaches, consultants, or therapists.

Here’s how this relates to church. What does the love of Jesus look like in real life? One very direct expression of Christ’s love is being interested in people. Jesus was genuinely interested in those around him, initiating relationships and expressing curiosity about their lives. Some of these people became followers while others did not. Meaningful engagement, investing in others, seems to be what Jesus was about.

Church leaders, who are you curious about (who is not already part of your church)? Who are you interested in knowing better? Who is coming across your pathway who may need friendly engagement? Sitting in your office, waiting for people to come to you doesn’t seem to reflect the spirit of Christ’s ministry. Proactively cultivating relationships, simply for the purpose of loving people in Jesus’ name, is part of our calling. Some of them will likely try out your church while others won’t. Don’t worry about that. Do make sure you are proactively and lovingly engaging people in your community. People development organizational leaders do this and so should we as church leaders.

2 – Consistently Demonstrate Your Services

When first developing a people development practice, professionals have time on their hands and blanks on their calendars. We encourage them to think this way – anytime they are not providing services, they are to be doing something that may lead to service provision opportunities… providing webinars, giving presentations, giving away their services so others can taste and see. This approach is proactive and actionable.

I was coaching a group of younger pastors this spring, some of whom find themselves serving in declining smaller churches filled with older persons. These young pastors are trying to activate their churches, drawing them into active ministry with a focus on justice or evangelism or many other worthy ministry activities. Many of these pastors are also expressing frustration at the slowness and lack of positive movement, wanting their people to get on board. Listening, I found myself suggesting they go ahead and do what they hope others will do. Rarely does telling a church they should get active result in activity. Instead, we need someone in the system to step up and start doing what we aspire to do, providing a jump-start.

So, church leaders, whatever it is you want your churches to move toward, start doing it now. Engage in justice ministries yourself, reach out and connect with those who have no idea what church is about, build networks around something meaningful or significant in your community.

Go ahead and be the change you want to see in your church. Rather than exhaust yourself trying to convince others to do what they cannot yet see, go ahead and embody the change you hope to see in your church. Someone has to make the first move. Besides, most of us need to see and touch the embodied church in order to be drawn into a spiritual movement.

3 – Give Direct Invitations

“Hey, would you like to join me at my neighbor’s house for our small group weekly meeting this Tuesday at 6 PM? We share a meal and then talk – and you don’t need to bring food this first time.”

“Hey, Sunday morning our church is gathering for worship at 10 AM. Would you like to go with us? I think you might find it intriguing.”

“Hey, our church is building a Habitat house this Saturday. Want to come with me?”

Yes, it’s that simple. Invite others into what your church is doing.

Reluctant to do so? Then we have other issues to discuss (a completely different article).

When I meet leaders in organizations and they invite me to engage their organization in some way, I’m not surprised. This is what leaders who care about their organization’s mission do. I am surprised when they don’t give an invitation to engage, thinking they either don’t appreciate their own organization’s mission or they might not want me involved for some reason. Whatever their motivation for a non-invitation, it seems strange. When they do invite, it seems like the way things should be. I typically appreciate their energy, interest, and belief in what they are doing.

So friends, rather than being driven by bad examples or religious baggage, let’s cut through the noise to this beautiful way of life we are living as Christ-followers. Based on this, I invite you to consider doing these simple three activities because of your love for Christ and for all God’s people here on planet earth.