Church Leadership and Administration

Transcription

1 Church Leadership and Administration ML501 LESSON 14 of 24 Kenneth O. Gangel, PhD Experience: Scholar in Residence, Toccoa Falls College There is an enormous importance in recognizing how one utilizes various leadership functions not only for the achievement of goals, a point to which we have spoken so many times already in this lecture series, but also simply to stay alive and functioning and healthy in significant roles of Christian service and Christian leadership. Perhaps none is more pertinent than the one that we deal with here, the matter of delegation. Now let me try to correct a misunderstanding of delegation without trying to formulate a specific or technical definition. Many people believe that delegation is doing all we can until our schedules are totally full and our time is totally consumed and then giving away the rest of what we have to other people. That is an incorrect understanding of delegation. Delegation simply stated is giving away all you can and only doing that which is left. And if you have a major leadership or administrative role, you will still discover that you have ample opportunity to carry out the work that is left, that is, you will have plenty of work to fill whatever time is left. Now the pattern of delegation comes to us directly from Scripture. And the passage before us and I urge your following through in the Scripture text. I m using the NIV version of the 18th chapter of the book of Exodus where you have the visit of Jethro, the fatherin-law of Moses, the priest of Midian, to the encampment of the Israelites in the wilderness. And Jethro, verse 9, says he was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. And he said, Praise be to the Lord, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians, etcetera. And he said, Now I know the Lord is greater than all gods and so on. And then in verse 13 we read that, The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge while all these people stand around you from morning till evening? Moses answered him, Because the people come to me to seek God s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me; and I decide between the parties and inform them of God s decrees and laws. Moses father-in- 1 of 9

2 law replied, What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. Now here s Exodus 18:18b, and it is without question one of the basic statements of all time with respect to the matter of delegation. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me, and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people s representative before God and bring their disputes to Him. Teach them his decrees and laws, and show them the way they are to live and the duties they are to perform. But select capable men from all the people men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide for themselves. That will make your load lighter because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied. Moses listened to his father-in-law, and did everything he said. He chose capable men from all Israel. He made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple ones they decided themselves. Then Moses sent his father-in-law on his way, and he returned to his own country. This is a fascinating passage. I m fully aware that some people approach this passage negatively. That is, they say this is not a right process. Moses was wrong here. He was listening to a pagan priest in the first place. And secondly, if he would have just had the patience and the courage to face the task before him, God would have given him the strength to carry out this role alone. Well, I think that criticism is wrong on both counts. First of all, there s no evidence at this point in history, namely the 18th chapter of Exodus, that Jethro was still a pagan priest. We read earlier in verse 11 that Jethro stated to Moses, Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods. Then Jethro, Moses fatherin-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses father-in-law in the presence of God. It doesn t sound to me like a pagan priest at all. Now once he was, of course. But then you have a forty-year opportunity for Moses to witness, if you will, to share the faith of Israel, the faith of Jehovah with Jethro. 2 of 9

3 And though he might not be a very mature believer at this point, he s not exactly Nehemiah. Nevertheless, I think we can assume that he s operating with an understanding given to him by the Spirit of God. But the second complaint is even more dangerous, because the Scripture itself never criticizes Moses for this act. You have a parallel here to the first chapter of the book of Acts where Peter is criticized for casting lots and choosing Matthias when he should have left that twelfth apostle slot open for Paul. But the Bible never says that he should have done that. There s no criticism whatsoever. And you see the Scripture is accustomed to offering criticism for those of us who are learning from its lessons to follow. The example would be in the case of David numbering the people when Jehovah said, well, you should not have done that. And the Bible records that David was wrong in that situation. It does not tell us that Peter was wrong in Acts 1; and it does not tell us that Moses was wrong to listen to Jethro in Exodus 18. I think he was right. And I think he gives us here a demonstration of the basic pattern of delegation which can continue to the present hour. And there are six or seven specific lessons here which should occupy our attention. First of all, we should notice in the text that delegation does not come naturally. Moses was a very bright man. He had been in training, so to speak, for this task for eighty years; forty years in the public eye as the prince of Egypt learned all the learning of the Egyptians including warfare, including all of the aspects of architecture and astrology and astronomy known to the Egyptians at that time, perhaps in medicine and other skills that they had developed as a culture. He was very bright and very highly skilled, very highly trained, and then for 40 years in humility and service on the backside of the desert. And now God brings him out and says, okay, take over. But he does not automatically slide into delegation. It does not come naturally to him. It s interesting that people who are so very bright in other aspects pastors and church leaders who are right on target on many of the things they do in leadership do not stumble upon delegation. It is a trained process. And one of the problems that we have in working with pastors and church leaders is that they do not grasp the significance of this. I might say that the failure to delegate is an emotional problem, not a rational problem. We ll come back to that a little bit later. Secondly, we want to notice that delegation is essential for survival. The King James text is great at this point. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee. In other words, Moses, you ve had it. You re going to burn out. That s the proper terminology right now as I make these tapes. You re going to experience administrative or executive burnout. You re simply not going to make it. 3 of 9

4 You re going to be ready for the grave at the young, vigorous age of 85 if you keep this up, Moses. We want you to be able to go on to 120 and carry out the work that the Lord has carved out for you. But you ll never make it going about your task the way you are now. How is that? By doing everything yourself. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone. Now I ve already emphasized that delegation is a biblical technique. It is a biblical technique here, and it is a biblical technique when it is practiced in the New Testament by the apostles in Acts 6. It is a biblical technique when practiced by Jesus with His disciples throughout the Gospels. It is a biblical technique. It is not some function of management science superimposed upon Christian leadership. In the fourth place, it is important to recognize that delegation does not abrogate accountability or responsibility. Accountability is probably a better word here. It is one thing to delegate a task. It is another thing to delegate a task and authority and with that task and authority to demand responsibility on the part of the person to whom it has been delegated. But the leader can never abrogate his own accountability. The pastor is responsible probably to the board, perhaps to the congregation. And he cannot say to the board, Well you can t hold me responsible for this. I gave this task to the associate pastor. He s supposed to be dealing with it. You talk to him about it. I spent some years as a college president. And I want to tell you just as clearly as I can that at no point during those years would the board ever allow me to say about one of the administrators in our organizational framework, I m no longer responsible for this. I gave this job to him (the business manager, the director of student services, the academic dean). You ll have to talk to him about it. I no longer have that accountability. Oh yes, I did, and oh yes, you do. And oh yes, Moses did, as is apparent in the 19th verse, particularly the second part. You must be the people s representative before God and bring their disputes to Him. You re not off the hook on that, Moses. You re still the head man. You still have ultimate accountability. Letter E or number 5, delegation should be practiced with qualified people. The Scripture is very, very clear at this point. We want competent people. Why in the world would you ever delegate something to a person who you know is going to fail at that particular task? It s very, very important to recognize that we want qualified people. Verse 21, Select capable men [competent men] from all the people men who fear God, men who are trustworthy, men who hate dishonest gain. These are the qualities of these people, and these are the people you work with. You select people who will be successful in the process. 4 of 9

5 It s just very crucial to recognize how this fits together in the process of delegation. You don t just grab anybody and say, Hey, I need to delegate. I ve got too much work on my desk. Let s move ahead; and you take over the responsibility. Qualified people. Next, delegation requires a span of control. Verse 22 deals with that. They are judges for the people at all times, bringing difficult cases to Moses; and then you spread them out, and some are responsible for thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. I haven t got time to deal with span of control again here. We ve dealt with it before. It s simply to say that everybody in the organization can only delegate insofar as he or she knows those people for whom he is responsible and is able to understand in the organizational chart who he it is he supervising, who it is that he is responsible for in terms of supervision, leadership behavior, and evaluation of goal achievement. These are the people to whom we delegate. We don t delegate down the org chart two or three levels. We don t delegate up the org chart two or three levels. It is necessary sometimes to delegate upward, but we ll talk about that in just a moment. Let s pick up the last pattern here or the last fragment of the pattern: that is that delegation results in a harmonious organization. The whole process here of the result is spelled out in verse 23. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied. As a leader, I find it interesting that Jethro is not promising the strain will go away: When you delegate, everything is all relaxed, just laid back from that time on, Moses. No more hassles, no more worries. No, it s just, now you ll be able to stand the strain. Strain is still there, but now it s endurable. Delegation is the key to survival, not the key to comfort. Well that leads us logically I think into the next section on purposes of delegation. The first one is survival. We don t want to wear away. We don t want to burn out. There is no excuse for not slowly wearing out as God utilizes us in various positions of leadership at His will and at His discretion. But another purpose of delegation is to provide training. I have to guess that one of these people who served under Moses, let s say two of them, in the various levels probably very near the top would have been Joshua and Caleb, two people upon whom Moses came to rely very heavily in carrying out the work. If Moses was the senior pastor, there s no doubt about it that Joshua and Caleb were his immediate associates. And he became progressively to depend on them with an increasing intensity so that you get into the book of Joshua where Moses is no longer there, and you obviously have Joshua as the new leader. But Caleb is still a very significant force, probably a leading decision maker and elder among the children of Israel as they enter the Promised Land. So you have the training of subordinates as a major role. 5 of 9

6 They do not learn simply by being told how you do things. They learn by being given the responsibility of carrying out those things under your supervision, whatever those things might be. It might even be the preparation of the worship service or the preparation and delivery of the sermon on occasion. Whatever it is, it s a team effort. And the delegation process puts these responsibilities and tasks in the hands of the subordinate. The third is the perpetuation of the organization. It is sort of twofold. The perpetuation of one s own leadership is serviced greatly through delegation, but also the perpetuation of the ministry. You want the church to go on. Maybe you ve seen churches in which the pastor and his wife did everything. He preached all the sermons and taught the adult Sunday school class and led the prayer meeting and ran the summer vacation Bible school and was head counselor at the camp and so on. And what he didn t do, his wife did. She served on the Christian education committee and was Sunday school superintendent and organist, and on and on the story goes. Now all of a sudden, the Lord calls those people away from that church. And you re not just missing a pastor and his wife, you re all of a sudden missing thirteen people who would have been performing and functioning in those various roles. Now obviously, there are certain things that cannot be delegated, things which are a part of one s own job description, things which are clearly demanded of a person in a particular post. A pastor, I would think, could not regularly delegate the preparation and delivery of sermons. He can do that on occasion, and most pastors do on occasion invite other people to take the pulpit, even associates. But basically that is the pastor s task. He is the preacher. That is his role. Everybody understands that, and that is not a delegated kind of thing. But essentially we are also dealing with the perpetuation of one s own ministry and the perpetuation of the ongoing of the church through giving out tasks, thereby training leaders, thereby ensuring a release of the strain or release from the strain, lessening of the strain and survival for the leader himself. As to the process of delegation, I raised several questions here. Why should leaders delegate? Well the answers are obvious, aren t they? Because most leaders are too busy; because delegation does train other people; because failure to delegate sometimes provides too wide a span of control for a given leader; because it s biblical to do so; because it s good human relations or staff relations to do so; because more will be achieved in the long run both by the leader and by the staff, therefore, by the organization; and on and on the list goes. 6 of 9

7 Why do some leaders fail to delegate? Now let s go back to what I said earlier, and that is that failure to delegate is not a logical or rational problem. No leader that I know sits down logically and thinks through all of the responsibilities he has and all of the time that he has to get those things done and says, Well, now I ve thought through it, and I will not delegate. It simply makes no sense to do that. It only makes sense to do everything myself. Nobody does that. We logically and rationally think our way through to the necessity of delegation and then fail to do it. And we fail to do it simply because we sometimes feel that it takes too long. I d rather do it myself. I can get it done more quickly. And right now, you can. But in the long run, of course, getting rid of a job completely to a competent subordinate is a much better way of doing it. Or, I have no patience. I m just not the kind of person who can stand by and watch people do things and get it wrong again and again and again and finally say, now do it this way. Do it this way. Part of the problem there is, of course, you re delegating too much, not just delegating results but delegating process. And that s a no-no in the whole process. But perhaps the two outstanding reasons or maybe three outstanding reasons why leaders don t delegate are first of all that they simply don t know how. They don t know where to begin. They don t know what to say. They don t know how to sort the tasks out and then give them off to other people. Secondly they re afraid this person to whom something is delegated will fail. What if I give him this and he really fails? Okay, he fails. That s part of the learning process. That s part of the whole interaction, the whole dynamic of working with people in an organization. Of course occasionally a person will fail when you give them a task. Now it becomes necessary to decide whether this is going to be a whole pattern, failure after failure after failure after failure and whether then this person is no longer responsible, can t be retained in the organization or must be retained in some post where no delegation will be given. You need to find that out. You can t live in secret all the time as to whether there is a competence there or not. Of course there will be failures. I ll talk in just a moment about cutting down on those failures, however. And then of course, the third major reason why leaders fail to delegate is that they re afraid this other person might just be too good. What if I give him this task that I have been doing for ten years, and within a year he does it better than I ve been doing it? He does it faster. He does it with more polish, more pizzazz. Well if you re a Christian walking with the Lord and understand anything about the New Testament, your reaction to that would be, Wonderful, terrific! Jesus said to His disciples, greater works than these shall ye do. Yes, you ve watched Me do miracles. Yes, you ve watched Me heal and open the eyes of the blind and bring people back to life. Greater works than these will you do in scope, in time, in geography, in many ways. 7 of 9

8 The ministry of the disciples following the ministry of the Lord after His ascension was greater than what He was able to do in the boundaries in which He worked during the time of His incarnate ministry on earth. Now we ought to be able to honestly with integrity say to our subordinates: Greater things will you do. You will be a better leader than I am. You will be a better pastor than I am. You ll be a better preacher than I am. And in order to launch you along that way, I am going to give you great responsibility. I expect great things of you and hold you to the task and then thank the Lord as you grow and develop and progress along the role of ministry which He has selected for you. I ve indicated already what can be delegated, everything that you can possibly get off your desk, and what cannot, namely those things which you specifically have in your job description and for which your superiors hold you responsible. The types of delegation are spelled out in the textbook. I think I will not touch on that too much here. Let s move quickly to the matter of the principles of delegation, because this answers the question or speaks to the problem of why people don t delegate when they simply don t know how to do so. The first emphasis here is exhibiting confidence, demonstrating your enthusiastic backing of the person who is now going to do the job. Yes, you can do it. Yes, I have faith in you. I expect this to really be done well. There s no question about it. There is a real ability here for you to do this. I believe God has gifted you. Whatever the words are, it is a demonstration that you are confident the person can do this. This is not put on. This is not a lie. This is not something that you are attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you see you have only selected competent people to begin with; and having only selected competent people, qualified people, now of course you can exhibit confidence. And you define the expectations. Let s get back again to something that I said a moment ago. You don t want to spell out every step along the way. That kills the creativity. That destroys the opportunity that the person (let s call him the delegatee ) has to develop new ways, new systems, new routes for getting the job done. You develop the end result, not the process. You define those things and then are thrilled to death when he proceeds to go about it a different way, which might be better than the way the organization has always done it in the past. Of course, reinforcement is very important; the reinforcing of satisfactory results, not just end results, but all the way along the line constantly saying, That s great. I really appreciate it. That s a fine rough draft. Yes, that s a good tentative outline. Keep working on it. You re doing a fine job. 8 of 9

9 Providing all necessary resources is also very crucial. People can t get the job done, to whom you ve delegated this task, unless they have the kind of resources that they need. Maybe financial resources, maybe equipment resources, a typewriter, adding machine, calculator of some kind, duplicating whatever, copying machine. You can t expect people to create these things. You provide them when you delegate or at least you lead them to the resources. It might be resources of other personnel, maybe the person needs a secretary, and you need to provide secretarial support in a given situation. We ve already talked about delegating to qualified people. In fact, it s come up so often that it should be very, very clear by this point. Establishing controls, however, is very important. Failure in delegation comes when a leader delegates something and then forgets about it only to discover six weeks down the pike that it hasn t been done, indeed that nothing has been done on this project. Then he gets all upset, and the other person gets all upset. And the organization begins to fray around the edges, and there s a real problem. That s because there haven t been controls. There hasn t been a system; and let s move on to the last item, a system for adequate reporting whereby the person to whom the task has been delegated reports back and says, I m doing this now. Here s my monthly report. Here s my report for this week, whatever it might happen to be. So you can check all the way along, and you can encourage where it s necessary. And you can reprove and exhort and rebuke where necessary. You still have the accountability. You re the person who stands to lose the most if this person fails. So you want to do everything you can to make him successful. And you want to do that not just for your sake, of course, and not just for his sake, though that s very, very important in the training process of the organization. Ultimately of course, you want to do it for the Lord s sake. The most potent factor in leadership training is personal association with a leader who really has it on the ball. And this is demonstrated by the Lord Jesus and the disciples which their contact with Him produced a lasting image on their lives, introduced them to a constant, vibrant, dynamic faith in the Father and showed them how to live in the world effectively. That s what you want to do for the people who work with you. That s what you want to do for your subordinates. That is delegation. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 9 of 9