How 2020 Is Changing My Leadership
In my last post, I talked about five things that were exposed through the pandemic of 2020. These were things that I had not see before. My perceptions about our strength and health as a church were blurred by signs of growth and success. What I discovered is that we were a lot more out of shape spiritually and organizationally than I thought!
What were those five discoveries? Tribalism, Misalignment, Division, Superficiality, and Dysfunction.
So what do we do about these things? How do we start to add some depth, alignment, health, and stamina to who we are? How do we begin to prepare our churches to thrive and grow into the future?
1. THE SOLUTION TO TRIBALISM: Model & Teach A Healthy Approach To Social Media & The News
If you have not yet watched the Netflix documentary, ‘The Social Dilemma’ - you need to take the time to do so. It documents how algorithms are built into the business model of the various social media platforms that is designed to selectively determine the narrow amount of content that you see, with unique strategies to keep you engaged and addicted to their sites.
This creates an echo-chamber that keeps you in a closed loop, hearing only one side of any particular issue. Before you know it, your thinking is being shaped by voices that may or may not be healthy for your theology, your world view, your life, or your soul.
While the design of news media is to keep you watching by stoking either anger or fear, the design of social media is to keep you clicking by reinforcing to you that which you already want to see or believe.
It is impossible to truly disciple someone who is being trained by rogue voices on social media. Disconnecting (to some degree) from both social and news media, will reduce your stress, mitigate fear, improve your ability to listen to someone who has a different opinion from you, and enable you to remain grounded through the face to face relationships of your local church.
I think that our handling of social media may be the greatest discipleship issue of our day while the way we behave on social media might be the greatest barrier to evangelism in our day!
My choice: I will use social media. But I will not let social media use me. I want to model and teach this to those that I pastor as well.
2. THE SOLUTION TO MISALIGNMENT: Communicate your vision and values with regularity and clarity
Not everyone who leaves your church is actually a loss. It is possible for someone to leave because they begin to understand who you are, as defined by your values, your priorities and what you teach and come to realize that they do not believe the same things. In this case, their departure is a blessing to both parties.
Truly, good people can disagree on values. Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15) had different values and they had a ‘sharp disagreement’ according to Luke’s history documented in the book of Acts. Barnabas valued redeeming underdog leaders like John Mark. Paul valued taking difficult territory, like the city of Phillippi.
Neither Paul nor Barnabas were bad people. Neither was wrong in their approach. They were just not designed to continue in ministry as close partners. God had brought them together for a season but that season came to an end. It is better to walk in agreement with those who share your heart, than it is to walk in constant tension with those who don’t.
One of the best things you can do as a leader is tactfully and passionately clarify who you are, what you believe, and how you choose to live. Those who hear it and belong to you, will feel compelled by your clarity. Those who hear it and disagree with you, are simply being pruned from your tree so that you can become more fruitful.
3. THE SOLUTION TO DIVISION: Insist on being a community that is centered on LOVE.
Love should be a non-negotiable for a follower of Jesus. It was Jesus’ one commandment, ‘Love one another as I have loved you…this is how they will know that you are My disciples, that you love one another.’ (John 13:34-35)
Nothing trumps love! Justice is not more important than love, although true love seeks justice. Truth is not more important than love, although true love is never divorced from truth. The preservation of Christian culture is not more important than love, although love births good values and a life of obedience. Righteousness is not more important than love, although love brings about true “rightness” with God and others.
Love shows itself in tone. It is not insulting. It has no contempt. It is clothed with humility and kindness.
Love reveals itself by its willingness to listen. It’s patient. It endures. It is not quick to speak, nor quick to anger.
Love believes the best in those it disagrees with. It forgives. It lives in the tension that others are on a journey that is different from ours. It’s not that love compromises. it’s just that love is a choice the shows security in one’s convictions without having to be combative.
I would suggest that the loss of love for one another is one of the greatest tragedies of this past pandemic season. It is something that every church must seek to recover and demonstrate to the world.
4. THE SOLUTION TO SUPERFICIALITY: Raise the standard of leadership by demanding more and while providing more for those who lead.
One of the greatest revelation to me personally about how I have been leading Allison Park Church is that I have not recently done enough to pray for, instruct, encourage, and impart to leaders on my staff, in our small groups, and on our serve teams.
It used to be that we focused heavily on leadership training as a church. Back in the 1990’s we demanded that every leader attend a weekly leadership training and strategy session. Some of those sessions were scheduled at 6am on a Wednesday morning. The crazy thing was, our leaders responded to the challenge and showed up consistently.
Over time, the busy pace of life increased. Not only do leaders not show up for a weekly training gathering, many of them only attend church two or three times a month. I don’t think this reality is a lack of commitment to God or to the church, as much as it is due to a surge in other valid commitments to business, family, and life.
Because of the lack of schedule availability, we have just stopped providing content. We have lowered the demand we place on leaders. We spend less time together in vision and strategy. Although we have still maintained a strong level of momentum and growth, we have not really done justice at giving leaders all they need.
This summer, I am going to develop a Discipleship Pathway for our leaders. While some training will be required for our leaders to attend in person, much of the material will be in the form of on-demand training videos that will be available to watch as it fits into a leader’s schedule.
Leaders are the key to everything. If leaders are more mature, the church will be as well. If leaders are more theologically equipped, the church will be as well. If leaders are more unified and aligned with the values, the church will be as well.
5. THE SOLUTION TO DYSFUNCTION: Design metrics that help you monitor the health of your church and not just its growth.
One of the biggest challenges coming out of the pandemic will be the formation of new metrics to determine what true success looks like for a church. We have always measured success by numeric values: How many attended the weekend services? How much money was given? How many people are attending life groups?
Coming out of this season, I think there are new metrics that have to be added:
How many leaders do we have?
How many leaders are going through the Discipleship Pathway?
What is the participation level in seasons of prayer and fasting?
How many people are bringing friends to church?
Where are we seeing people come together to have unifying but difficult conversations about cultural issues that tend to divide us?
What is our reputation within our community?
What kind of relationships are we building with other pastors and churches?
These are just a few of my thoughts. I am not yet sure which ones we will regularly measure. But moving forward, I know that measuring numerical growth is just not enough; we need depth and alignment as well. Praying God gives you insight into how to lead into the future as well!