Who You Influence: Five Types of Followers

January 25, 2013

Either people are on board with your leadership or not, right? Nope. There are degrees of influence and different types of followers. The mantra of “get on board or get off” does not take into account the numerous types of followers and differing levels of leadership influence. Most definitions of leadership allude to influence as the key driver. But I do not believe leadership and influence are synonymous—leader and follower exchanges are more complex than mere influence. However, leaders Read more [...]

Leading Awkward People

January 21, 2013

Some people are just awkward. Awkward people are in almost every organization. The church—a place for all types—will have, by design, its share of awkward people. As a leader, you might be tempted to avoid them (unless you are among them, but that’s a subject for another post). Too often leaders ignore awkward people in their organizations. We treat them like odd zoo creatures—they are best observed from a distance. So leaders ignore their emails. Leaders find ways to avoid meetings that Read more [...]

Can I Be an Effective Pastor if I Don’t Like Management?

January 18, 2013

Pastors are not managers, at least in a corporate-business-world-publicly-traded-company-sort-of-way. But pastors are shepherds. And shepherds manage sheep. Leading a church involves management. Perhaps you’ve had the privilege of attending a meeting discussing the finer details of administering the Lord’s Supper. If so, you probably recognize the importance of the managerial role in the church. A church hierarchy assumes management. And most churches—even congregations with smaller staffs—are Read more [...]

The Tone of Pastoral Leadership

January 16, 2013

Finding the voice in which to communicate content is sometimes just as difficult as determining the content itself. In other words, how you communicate is an important component of what you communicate. Content is critical, but so is delivery. As a senior pastor, I set the tone of the church. My heart in writing such a statement is not arrogance but rather self-awareness. Of any leader in the church, I know my vision—and how I communicate it—will affect the church more than any other person. Read more [...]

The Advantages of Informal Authority

January 14, 2013

Ambitious leaders often pursue positions with formal authority. It makes sense. Those who desire to lead want the official capacity to do so. Positions with titles imply a legitimate endorsement to lead. But there is an advantage to leading with informal authority. Informal leaders have no official titles and no authoritative positions, yet they can wield much influence. While much power comes from formal positions with legitimate authority, a different kind of power is found in leadership roles Read more [...]

The Need for More Homegrown Leaders

December 26, 2012

The church needs more homegrown leaders. It’s not a novel plea. In fact, church researchers have called for local equipping of leaders for a long time. In our globalized society, however, it is becoming even more important. Today everyone has access to the same information at the same time. Podcasts, blogs and sermon videos are ubiquitous. The best teachers and preachers in the world now broadcast messages for free. Anyone can listen and benefit from excellent teaching—simply take your pick Read more [...]

Looking Ahead to 2013: What Should the Church Expect?

December 14, 2012

If you do not make assumptions about the future, then you are not leading. Good leaders constantly assess the cultural climate. In other words, they do research. Good leaders are also willing to change their assumptions. In other words, they are flexible. Holding firm to assumptions from the Y2K era is about as relevant as giving a set of Pokemon cards to your kids this year for Christmas. So at the end of every year, I pause to challenge my underlying assumptions of what I believe the future Read more [...]

A Common Way Leaders Communicate Confusion

November 27, 2012

Leaders often confuse followers by communicating imperatives as declarative statements. An imperative is a command. An imperative sentence has a grammatical structure expressing a directive. A declarative sentence is quite different; it makes a statement. In an effort to sound less forceful, leaders will often make declarative statements and expect followers to recognize them as imperatives. Sometimes this tactic works. For instance, the garbage stinks is a declarative statement that—when spoken Read more [...]

The New Megapolitan Church

October 15, 2012

America is a land of wide open spaces, vast expanses with enough room for buffalo to roam. The frontier ethos of our country evokes an individual, self-made spirit that pervades many aspects of our culture. It’s what makes us American. Most people in America, however, do not live where the deer and the antelope play. They live in cities. In Megapolitan America, a new work on the urbanization of America, Nelson and Lang reveal two-thirds of the U.S. population lives on less than 20% of the privately-owned Read more [...]

I Want to Die in the Trench

October 9, 2012

The local church is the front line of ministry. In the battle against the spiritual forces of evil, the church is the trench. Christ’s bride is dug in, charged up, and ready to die for the freedom of souls. I relish the trench. It’s messy, at times gruesome, and the noise makes it difficult to sleep. But I love it. While there is no beauty in warfare (spiritual or otherwise), the battling bride is a gorgeous organism. Despite the muck, despite the damage, and despite the fight, she remains Read more [...]