Empowering Leadership

A. FIT OF PASTOR AND CONGREGATION

• What are the pastor’s primary spiritual gifts, abilities and spiritual passion? Some
indicators:
o What ministry activities bring the pastor personal fulfillment?
o Does the pastor have unusual perception into special needs or problems in
any area?
o Where does the pastor have an extraordinary knack for certain ministry
situations or experience unusual effectiveness?
o What strengths do members of the congregation recognize in the pastor?
• How well do the pastor’s assignments in the church fit his/her spiritual gifts, life
situation, abilities, temperament, and spiritual passion?
• Does the pastor spend 75% or more of the time in areas of strength?
• The bottom line: How can the church take maximum advantage of the pastor’s
spiritual gifts, abilities, temperament and spiritual passion to accomplish its
mission?

B. DELEGATION AND SHARING OF AUTHORITY

• Church leadership isn’t about exercising power and authority. It’s about
empowering people to accomplish your church’s mission.
• Delegation frees up time for leaders to plan, evaluate and improve the efficiency
of the whole church.
• Common pastoral activities include preaching, teaching, sermon preparation,
vision-casting, planning, pastoral care, counseling, visitation, hospitality,
ministry mobilization, board meetings, facility maintenance and upgrade and staff
supervision.
• Which tasks should the pastor do? Which ones should you delegate to others to
develop, give personal meaning to and motivate them?
• Delegation should include transferring necessary authority, responsibility and
accountability to another person or group. It increases productivity, develops
leaders, prevents burnout, increases confidence and trust, stimulates creativity and
broadens ministry ownership.
• When delegating, communicate desired goals and guidelines (but not methods),
performance standards, available resources, and consequences of success or
failure.
• Give room to fail and recognition and praise for excellence.

C. LEADERSHIP THROUGH VISION

• If you don’t know where your church is going, any road will get you there.

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 • Your mission is to make more and better disciples—that’s a given. How you
express it could but doesn’t have to be unique. It could be something like, “To
turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.”
• Prayer is a prerequisite to discern your vision because God is its source.
• Your vision is a picture of God’s preferred future for your church. Leaders define
and paint a picture of what the church will look like three to five years down the
road as it pursues its mission.
• For example, “Our vision is to multiply evangelists, disciples, small groups,
leaders and churches within the Hispanic population in Lancaster, PA.”
• Remind people of the vision many times in different settings and through various
media and show how achieving it will positively impact their lives.
• Does your church have a written mission and vision that your people own?

Embraced Vision Empowers People

• People must clearly “see” your vision to embrace it. Use seeing words.
• Reduce the core of the vision down to a few sentences.

• People are committed to what they help develop, so involve them in the vision-
development process.

• Sell the vision repeatedly and enthusiastically in a variety of settings. Explain

why it’s best to embrace it now, but don’t pressure.
• Live the vision.
• Develop clear strategies to achieve your vision.
• Share practical ways people can be involved in making the vision a reality.

D. LEADERSHIP THROUGH MENTORING AND EQUIPPING

Healthy, effective churches use mentoring, coaching and apprenticeship to build leaders.

Mentoring

A mentor is a model with a serving, giving, encouraging attitude who develops the
leadership potential in others. Paul encouraged Timothy to mentor leaders in his ministry
(II Tim. 2:2)

One approach to mentoring is spending two hours a week with an individual

emphasizing five areas. The project consumes one of the two hours, and the other four
areas, the other hour.

1. Progress – Check whether assigned tasks are completed. Cease mentoring those
who won’t do assignments.

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 2. Principles – Communicate biblical principles.
3. Problems – Listen to and show how to glue God’s promises to problems. If you
want him/her to share problems, you have to share yours. Beware of fostering spiritual
dependence.

4. Prayer -- Prayer bonds persons together. You demonstrate how to pray by praying
together.

5. Practical Projects – Develop ministry skills by going together to witness, minister,

and encourage others.

Mentor one person at a time for about twelve months. Choose someone who is
faithful, available, teachable, spiritually hungry, accountable and open to change.
Men mentor males, and women mentor females.

Coaching

Coaching is less relationally intense and more task-oriented than mentoring.

Coaches empower leaders of whatever ability to achieve their potential. The gist of
coaching is helping persons define where they are, what they want to achieve, how to
achieve it, and how to overcome obstacles along the way. Coaches who ask a lot of
questions and give only a few answers are more effective than those who give all the
answers. In the long run it is better to allow those coached to come up with their own
answers.

Apprenticing

• An apprentice becomes like his/her trainer. “It is enough for the student to be like
his teacher, and the servant like his master” (Matthew 10:25).
• Use apprenticeship to multiply leaders in every ministry.
• Candidates should have strong character, positive attitude and self-discipline.
• Apprenticeship combines close personal relationship with a leader, on-the-job
training and classroom instruction to teach ministry skills.
• The leader tells the apprentice what to do, shows how to do it, and allows the
apprentice to ask questions, evaluate and make suggestions. Then the apprentice
tells what to do, shows how to do it, and the leader evaluates and makes
suggestions. After mastering the appropriate knowledge and skills, the apprentice
becomes a leader and trains another apprentice.

E. LEADING CHANGE

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 The Change Environment

Everyone involved in the change situation needs to be considered. This includes those
introducing the change, those who are for the change, those against and those who have
yet to decide.

Change Principles

1. The Prayer Principle – You need the wisdom, discernment, insights, courage and
power that come through prayer.
2. The Unbalance Principle – You have to unfreeze to get movement. You can only steer
a moving vehicle.
3. The Urgency Principle – You have to convince why it must be done now, or it
probably won’t be done at all.
4.The Vision Principle – If they can’t see it, they can’t be it, so you must
communicate an attractive, compelling picture of the potential new state of affairs often
and extensively.
5. The Enlistment Principle – First communicate the vision to and get buy-in from
influential persons in the organization.
6. The Involvement Principle –Involve people in the change who will be affected by the
change.
7. The Measurement Principle – You get what you expect and inspect.
8. The Hurdle Principle – Hurdle, but don’t knock down people that block the vision.
9. The Momentum Principle - Create short-term wins.
10. The Patience Principle – Change takes longer than you expect.
11. The Anchor Principle - Anchor changes firmly in the culture.
12. The Alignment Principle – Strategies, structures, systems and culture are
interdependent. Achievable strategies require support from structures, systems and
culture.
13. The Resistance Principle – The farther you depart from existing ways, the slower the
pace of change must be.
14. The Reward Principle – Recognize and reward behavior that promotes the change.

Understand change agent roles

1. Catalyst

A catalyst "upsets an apple cart" by pointing out problems and inconsistencies in

the present system which need change. This usually creates discontent in others as
well as a pressure for change. A catalyst is needed at the beginning of the change
process to get the ball rolling.

2. Solution giver

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An effective solution giver evaluates the present situation, understands the future
change and suggests more than one solution so that change participants can
choose and adapt a plan which fits their needs and abilities.

3. Process helper

A process helper guides and facilitates the process of change in acceptable ways
by linking the input given by catalysts, solution givers and resource linkers.

4. Resource linker

A resource linker matches needs and required resources for the change process to
continue. Resource linkers are often behind the scenes and unrecognized.

Inside and/or outside change agents

Change agents may be people who maintain a position within the organization or
people called in to help bring about change in an organization.

The best solution is a "change agent team" in which both insiders and outsiders
work together.

Present Situation

An accurate understanding of the current reality precedes effective change. You

have to know your starting point.

A “SWOT” (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis will

enable you to accurately describe your present situation.

Reflection Questions

• Which strengths can be used to take advantage of your opportunities and

shore up your weaknesses?

• How will you defuse your threats?

• Identify events in your history which will facilitate or hinder change.

• Which core values can be tapped into to motivate people toward change?

• What dissatisfactions with the present status will motivate people to

change?