Church Leadership and Administration

Transcription

1 Church Leadership and Administration ML501 LESSON 24 of 24 Kenneth O. Gangel, PhD Experience: Scholar in Residence, Toccoa Falls College If American business executives could ask for a single magical power, the wisest among them might well choose a sure way to identify the twenty- to thirty-year-olds who are most likely to succeed them. Because with that power, they could give tomorrow s managers a head start on training and job rotation. Furthermore, the loyalty of young comers could be sustained by early recognition. The paths to executive advancement in business and industry wouldn t be clogged by men of mediocre promise. In short, we could beat the Peter Principle if we could identify early enough, where are the leaders? What will they lead? How soon will they be ready, and what needs to be done to get them ready? I rather think that is not a problem only for American business executives. It could very well be a problem for the church as well. I rather suspect it is, if my subjective analysis is any measure at all. I have personally visited well over a thousand churches, probably closer to a 1,500 in one capacity or another over the last couple of decades around the world literally. And the one constant cry that marks all of them, regardless of size or denomination, is lack of leadership; not total lack, just insufficiency, inadequacy. We don t have enough leaders. And the reason we don t have enough leaders is because we don t train enough leaders. We stand around waiting for leaders to drop from the trees or, better yet, in our situation to drop from heaven. And they don t drop from the trees, and they don t drop from heaven; so we hope they ll at least move in from out of town and settle nearby and attend our church, which sometimes they do. And sometimes they don t. The one thing that we re not very good at is developing leadership inhouse. There s a marvelous example in the Scripture. In the book of Acts chapter 11, you have the development of the church at Antioch. And at Antioch, the significance of leadership right there in the church at that particular church is developed because God keeps rotating and moving the people. They think they re going to have Barnabas. 1 of 10

2 And then all of a sudden, Barnabas leaves. Then they think they re going to have the apostle Paul. He leaves at the same time Barnabas does. John Mark is there for a while. He s gone, and Silas comes up for a while; and he s gone. And Judas comes up for a while, and then he goes back to Jerusalem. So people are in and out. And you don t have the stability seemingly that we want in the church over a long period of time. And the whole thrust of what God is doing seems to fall on deaf ears when we attempt to implement what I like to call the Antioch analogy in our work in the church today. Let me just read from a modern paraphrase the flow of the text at that point from chapter 11 of Acts, verse 19. Meanwhile, the believers who fled from Jerusalem during the persecution after Stephen s death, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch scattering the good news, but only to Jews. However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene also gave their message about the Lord Jesus to some Greeks. And the Lord honored this effort so that large numbers of the Gentiles became believers. And when the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch to help the new converts. When he arrived and saw the wonderful things God was doing, he was filled with excitement and joy and encouraged the believers to stay close to the Lord whatever the cost. Barnabas was a kindly person, full of the Holy Spirit, strong in faith. As a result, large numbers of people were added to the Lord. Perfect, wonderful things are going forward. Barnabas is there encouraging people. The work is doing well. Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to hunt for Paul. And when he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. And both of them stayed there for a full year teaching the many new converts. And it was there at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians. During this time the prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch, and you know the flow of the text at that point. And then we go to chapter 13. Among the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch were Barnabas and Simeon, also called the black man, Lucius from Cyrene, Manaen the foster brother of King Herod, and Paul. One day as these men were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Dedicate Barnabas and Paul for a special job I have for them. So after more fasting and prayer, the men laid their hands on them and sent them on their way. 2 of 10

3 And on and on the first missionary journey gets underway. Now I m going to guess that if Antioch were a typical evangelical church in the late twentieth century, at the point of that very big decision-making to select the candidates for the first missionary team, there would be some people sitting there praying, Lord, don t take Paul and Barnabas. Lord, take Lucius, take Manaen, but please do not take Paul and Barnabas. We need them in the work here. We have few enough leaders as it is. The fact of the matter is they had grown from none to one when Barnabas came. You can t really count Barnabas or Paul either. They were both imported. But now all of a sudden, there are five candidates for two missionary posts in chapter 13. I m rather impressed by that. Not only that, take away the two very best leaders the experienced, fatherly Barnabas and the brilliant, didactic Paul and the work at Antioch goes on. There seems not a beat to be missed as Paul goes out and returns from the church at Antioch on all of the missionary journeys. It s really very significant. Now I ve asked on the outline, how do we determine standards? There s no point in talking about leadership training unless we know what in the world we re trying to produce. What is a leader fit for service for the Master in the local church that you serve? I have given three or four basic ideas here. Again you probably would add to the list, but surely we want spiritual maturity. That was the problem with John Mark on the first missionary journey when Paul said, I m sorry, he can t go with us a second time. He has no spiritual maturity. The kid runs home when you re least expecting him to do so. Obviously, leadership skills; that s a broad ballpark. Are we talking about teaching here? Possibly. Are we talking about the ability to lead a meeting? Possibly. Are we talking about the ability to speak in public? Possibly. Whatever leadership skills are needed, we need to determine the standards within the realm of leadership skills. Learning potential is a factor here. In other words, we re looking for people who can be trained in spiritual maturity. There s certainly a foundation there already. You don t draft leaders who are not spiritually mature or are at least maturing who have shown some basic leadership skills already, who have shown a potential for learning already, and who have shown a cooperative attitude: people who can work with other people, people who are willing to be trained as leaders, people who are willing to really put down in the work with us and give themselves to it and do the job well. 3 of 10

4 A colleague of mine, Dr. Richard Patterson, I should say a former colleague, used to say to his classes: Leaders often wonder where in the world would I find quality workers. Admittedly, being an ambassador for God is the most demanding ministry. However, God says He has given these people as gifts to our churches. Like gems of the earth, we have something to do in mining in order to realize their worth. And he goes on to talk in a lecture to his students about the whole development of leadership training. Now how do you recruit? How do we recruit the personnel to do the job? What s the significant factor in motivation to bring them into the task? Well, obviously we re concerned about recruiting on the basis of gifts and interest; what these people seem to have been gifted to do as Dr. Patterson indicates (Ephesians 4; 1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12; 1 Peter 4; and other passages). We are concerned about elevating the opportunity. Now I want to stay with that for just a moment. We must magnify the task and elevate the role of leadership in the local church. How often in our recruiting process, we go to people as though we are now down at the bottom of the barrel. We ve asked everybody else. Everybody s turned us down. Now we ve come to you. Won t you please do the job? And we wonder why people are not interested in that kind of thing. There seems to be no motivation in that kind of approach. Of course there s no motivation. We need to elevate the opportunity. I could tell you story after story after story of how churches which have decided to elevate, to raise the level of recognition and affirmation of the teaching ministry, have turned around their flagging efforts to recruit good teachers for the Sunday school. It becomes necessary to stress spiritual opportunities and really explain the responsibilities that are involved. We want to show people how they can multiply their spiritual potential through serving others in leadership. We want to be very thorough and detailed as to what is expected. I think a lot of later failure can be traced right back to our inadequacies up front in explaining what we really want from people. It s very important in the recruitment process to specify three very strategic elements. I emphasize this in all of my workshops, seminars, classes, and books. And it sort of comes at us in a simple sentence that is easy to remember: In recruitment, we want to ask specific people for specific ministries for a specific period of time as over against a general platform invitation. We have need for a new teacher in the primary department. 4 of 10

5 Anyone who is interested please see the superintendent after church. That s not going to get anywhere, friends. There is no possibility that that kind of invitation, that kind of weak-kneed recruitment over a period of time can really produce anything in terms of real leadership potential. It doesn t magnify the task. It doesn t stress the spiritual opportunities. It doesn t explain the responsibilities. What it does do oftentimes is try to put a headlock on the person while you ve got him listening to you and you develop almost a coercion technique. We ve got to have this done. We ve got to have you do it. Where will I go if you turn me down? You owe me a favor, Sam. When you were superintendent and you needed teachers, I told you I would teach. Now it s your turn. We really turn the whole motivational pattern of God s plan upside down. It becomes extremely important for us to do this and do it right. Let me talk about motive for just a little bit. Motive essentially is that which incites an individual to action, sustains, and gives direction to his action. There s a great deal of difference between motivation and manipulation. Manipulation almost always deals with some means that is subversive and has a bit of treachery to it. It almost always benefits the person who is doing the manipulating. It might also benefit the person who is being manipulated, but not necessarily. Otherwise, it might be pure motivation. I would say those are the two specific elements that separate manipulation from motivation. Manipulation is for the benefit of the person doing the manipulating, and it is done surreptitiously in some way. There is some kind of deceit involved. Motivation is for the benefit of the person who is being incited to take the action, and it is also done up front in openness without anything going on by way of hidden agenda. The Lord Jesus followed some very clear-cut principles of motivation in His recruitment of leadership, obviously the disciples. In selection, Jesus was concerned with people, not with programs. His plan was to select a number of people, not on the basis of educational qualifications or wealth or popularity, but on the basis of two basic characteristics. They had to be teachable. They had to earnestly yearn for God. You know the disciples are the classic demonstration that leadership is learned, namely that leaders are made, not born. I hear that question all the time. Are leaders born or made? To the extent that the Spirit of God produces in people a certain almost innate commitment of lifelong service, I m thinking about phrases like Paul s line: I was separated from my mother s womb unto the ministry of reaching the Gentiles. 5 of 10

6 Other than that, leadership is learned behavior. And the Lord knew that when He picked the Twelve. In association with them, Jesus communicated Himself as well as His doctrine. He took His disciples with Him on His visits to the masses. Throughout their ministry together, He became more and more involved with a select group. I recommend again the very important book, the title of which is The Training of the Twelve. And the whole thrust of what we re doing in reaching other people is significantly involved with how we are able to do what A. B. Bruce recommends in that particular book, namely, spend large blocks of time not necessarily with individuals. I heard somebody say the other day that the word discipleship really only applies to a one-on-one relationship. And when we re working in groups, we shouldn t use the word discipling as a process. As a matter of fact, that s not quite biblical, because Jesus seemingly did very little one-on-one. He did some. John 21 is a good example. But basically working with people in small groups is the discipling process of Jesus in the New Testament. In The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman talks about selection, association, consecration, giving, demonstration, delegation, supervision, reproduction as the whole process by which the Lord developed the disciples. I think that s a fine book, not nearly as extensive, of course, as Bruce s book. But both of them are worthy of your reading for further understanding of how leadership develops leadership in this whole significant process. Let me get down to number three, training recruits. First of all, we re talking about developing or determining standards, then recruiting people who meet those standards, and now training the recruits. There are basically four aspects to the program of training: the content, the time, the term (that is, how long it s going to be), and the results. The content will vary. There should be some doctrine. There should be obviously some things related to your local church constitution, various aspects of things which are unique to your ministry locally. Perhaps there s a denominational pattern to learn in the training program. Don t apologize for these. It s all very important to read people into the system if they re going to serve adequately. My own ministry has been largely within an interdenominational framework, and so I ve learned how to adapt very quickly to a Methodist pattern or a Presbyterian pattern or a Baptist pattern or a Lutheran pattern or a Congregational pattern in advising churches in a consulting role or speaking or carrying out different responsibilities. 6 of 10

7 But I make no apology within those frameworks to say, by all measures of any significance, if you are going to operate a Methodist church, people better learn the distinctives of that particular denomination and of your particular local church, especially if they re going to be leaders. Now that s the content side of the content. That is, the literary and literature side of the content. There s also the knowing side and the doing side. Maybe that s a better way of separating them. And the doing side is the focus on some of the things we ve talked about before: public speaking and ability to carry out leadership skills, which may be embryonic when we determine the standards and find people who meet those standards but then which develop significantly. No, I don t expect a twenty-five-year-old young man to move into an elder position. He probably should not move into it at all. But if he moves into an elder position, I don t expect him to be a clear-cut spiritual leader in that body early on. I don t expect him to give these great, insightful, wisdom-filled speeches in a meeting of the board of elders. I expect him to do a lot of listening and a lot of watching and a lot of learning and a lot of keeping his mouth shut in the whole process. There s a lot to be learned on the sheer factor of age. I know the Scripture says, Let no man despise thy youth. But I also know that the best scholars estimate Timothy to be somewhere in his middle-age period, possibly in his forties when he received that injunction from the apostle Paul. We re not talking about sixteen-year-olds leading the church. We re talking about a whole pattern in the Scripture, Old and New Testaments, in which age is revered because there has been a time for learning, a time for wisdom to develop, a time for maturation to take place Well, time is the next word in our outline. But of course here it means something totally different. When should this program if indeed we are now talking about a formal program, and we are, if indeed that is the place to begin and that is the kind of thing you want, certainly informal leadership development in the discipling process is very important. We dare not lose sight of that. But if we re going to have a formal program, I have struggled with its time. Some denominations like to have it before the evening service on Sunday. That s a good time. If you can get people to come, that s a marvelous time. I have no quarrel with that. The churches I ve served, we ve not done a good job of getting people to come at that time or, quite frankly, any other evening time. 7 of 10

8 What we finally settled upon was a compromise at first, and then later on we said, well why didn t we think of this right in the beginning? And that is that we built the leadership training program right into the Sunday school hour. We decided that people are going to be there anyhow, and potential leaders are going to be there. And we made our leadership development class by invitation only. And we invited, let us say, a half dozen people who were potential leaders. We determined the standards. These people met the standards. We had recruited them. Maybe they had made no commitment yet as to specific posts, but we were at least working with them. And now we say, why don t you come into this class? Now let me slip from time to term, this class which goes on for one quarter: thirteen Sunday mornings, one hour thirteen times on Sunday morning, a thirteen-hour training class. Now I know that when you compare it with college and seminary training, thirteen hours for lay leadership development in the local church does not look like much. But, friends, thirteen hours properly conceived and properly carried out is a great deal more than many church leaders are getting in many of our churches now. So the time was at 9:45, or whatever, on Sunday morning, and the term was for thirteen weeks. We always did it in the spring. You might not find that particularly helpful. But we do it in the spring so that we can follow up in using these people in the summer. We had one other option here, and that is any teacher at least once every three years any teacher who is currently teaching in the Sunday school, and obviously therefore would be teaching by normal schedules during that training-hour class, is free to ask for a substitute for the entire quarter, join the leadership training class for retooling and refreshment and ongoing continuing education. I had a lot of people who took advantage of that. You re also concerned about the result. Developing a kind of competency-based grasp for leadership development in the church rather than, You will be a leader in our church when you have done these thirteen weeks; presto chango, end of the thirteen weeks, leaders. Well I could wish that would be the case. If that would be a guaranteed measure, I d be tempted to pay people to attend that leadership session. But I think it s much better to identify in advance the kind of competencies we re trying to produce. You need to do more work on this probably. Go to any university, particularly a university which has a strong school of education, and begin to talk to them about the competency-based teacher education programs almost every university is beginning 8 of 10

9 to think about this now in which the preparation for teaching (we re talking now about credentialed, public school teaching; certification is the word) is based not only upon having a degree, which represents X number of hours and X number of courses, but also being able to produce, being able to do what teachers are supposed to do. That is competency-based education. We need to move more toward that in the local church. Now in the few minutes that remain, I must come to this business of studying models. In developing and designing teacher education, leadership education, any kind of leadership development programs, we want to provide biblical models. The ones that I have given are all positive. There are obviously negative models, but these are four positive models. We ve talked about Jesus and the Twelve. That one is obvious. Slipping in the Old Testament, however, you have this model. And why don t I work backwards now since I started with D and look at C, the model of Elijah and Elisha in which there is a clear selection. God says it is Elisha. Elijah comes at the hand of God, throws his mantle over Elisha, and leaves tremendously dramatic; both of these fellows were. They just had a great flair for drama in all of their ministry. And Elisha comes running after him and says, What is this? I want to go with you now. Let s get on with it. I want to be a prophet, at least associate prophet or vice prophet. And Elijah says, What do I have to do with you? Go back home and plow your land. Because he wants to really be sure that not only he senses God s leading for Elisha s ministry, but Elisha senses it. You don t have a sense in which one leader says to a subordinate, Listen, you re the man. Trust me. God has told me you re the one. Don t worry about it anymore. Stop praying about it. I am hereby making the selection. But it s rather a situation in which the leader says to the subordinate, I believe God would have you do this. What do you think? You think about it. You meditate on it. You pray about it. Respond in that way, and give him time to do so. Moving back up the scale, you come to Eli and Samuel. This is really sort of an interesting, mixed-emotions approach to leadership development, because Eli, at the time God sent him Samuel, was for all practical purposes washed up. He had totally blown it with his own sons, Hophni and Phinehas. The spiritual situation in Israel was as bad as it had ever been, not quite as bad as it would ever get, but it was as bad as it had ever been. We re talking about the twelth century BC. The tabernacle was pitched at Shiloh. The sons of Eli were openly fornicating with women in the tabernacle court. It was an abomination, absolutely terrible. 9 of 10

10 And in that situation, God sends this marvelous little boy to Shiloh. And Hannah brings him in and says, Look, Eli. I asked God for a son. God gave me a son. And when I asked, I told God that if He gave me a son I d give him back to Him to serve Jehovah at the tabernacle all the days of his life. And so here he is. I ll miss him a lot at home, but here he is. His father, Elkanah, and I have prayed about this. We believe this is the will of God. Here, you take him. You teach him. You train him. Make a leader out of him. And it s almost as though God is saying to Eli, Look, brother. You ve had all kinds of problems, and I understand your difficulties and your heartache with Hophni and Phinehas. But I m going to give you one more chance in your old age. Take Samuel. And he does; and he does a marvelous job of training Samuel, a marvelous job. Samuel, one of the great men of the Old Testament, a man who bridges the judges and the prophets, a man who is both judge and prophet, a man who led Israel and could have continued leading Israel without a king in the days when God operated a theocratic government through His representative, Samuel. Unfortunately, Samuel did not reproduce. Samuel did not churn out a new leader. You have the same problem as you have here in A, Moses and Joshua. A marvelous training program: For forty years Joshua was Moses s minister; read there, subordinate. And in the subordinate role, Moses taught Joshua how to function and how to lead. And so, when the book of Joshua opens, Jehovah can come to him and say, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now you arise. Take over the helm. You are the new administrator. You are the new leader. You are the new pastor. You re in charge now. Let s get on with it across the river and into the land. And of course there s timidity at the start. But Jehovah says, Take courage. Be strong, faithful, and courageous. Find your strength in My Word, and let s move forward. I have chosen you. Unfortunately at the end of Joshua s time, you don t have another leader. And so the book of Judges ensues in which every man does that which is right in his own eyes. Likewise, at the time of Samuel, there is no leader, so the people say, Give us a king. You are old, and your sons follow not in your ways. My friends, the lessons are very clear, not only how to do it but to do it. Where s your leader? Where s your Joshua? Where s your Samuel? Who are you training to follow your particular leadership role, the one God has given you but which someday needs to be filled by someone else? Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 10 of 10