Why Churches Need to Invest in Their Church Leadership
Churches young and old are beginning to realize the importance of investing in their leadership. While it may seem like a low priority on your grand list of funding goals and missions, investing in your church’s leadership is critical to sustaining faith in your community and ensuring that your church is able to thrive far into the future.
Investing in church leadership should be seen as a crucial task, especially if you want to be known as a faith planter and church builder. If you want to spread the news throughout your community, and beyond, you need to have the right leaders in place who can spearhead that mission and help you fulfill your church’s long-term goals.
1. You Can’t Do It Alone
You can’t do everything all by yourself. Just as raising a child takes a village, your church is the bride of Christ and, through her, you hope to birth faith in the hearts of Jesus’ children. In order to touch your community at large, you have to get help from the right people.
Running a church is now a multi-channel job. It requires time and resources to be invested in digital channels, in the physical upkeep of your building, and into countless programs that help your community. You can’t do it all, and you probably know that full and well, so why pass up the opportunity to recruit those around you who you know have incredible gifts to offer the church?
Be it for pride, pennies, or another reason, too many pastors end up exhausted, robbing themselves and the community of talented people who could certainly become church leaders with the right avenues and motivations. Instead of getting caught up in what your church needs to do each and every day, remember that — from the beginning — God’s mission has required a delegation of power. Coaching, training, and utilizing those around you are critical to your church’s growth.
2. Delegate What You Can
No one is perfect and there’s no way that your church is going to be able to fill every position with an “expert.” Still, realizing the power of delegation will help you see that having a helping hand to do a job at 80% is better than 100% of it not getting done at all because you’re already juggling too many things.
For example, if you try to preach and play guitar and take the offerings, you’re practically running a one-man show. You might be an excellent guitar player, yet delegating to someone who’s a little bit less experienced will still prove better for your church because it means you’re accepting help and you’re not doing everything yourself.
Now, all those hours spent planning to perform each week gives you the time and power to focus on other important tasks. Additionally, by having someone else perform, you’re giving them the opportunity to show their gift to the community. You’re giving them a safe place to learn and improve, and to get excited about employing their gift to spread God’s love. Every time you do something like this, remember that you are helping to train the next generation of church leaders.
3. Train Tomorrow’s Leaders
If you’ve ever spent time in a traditional work environment, you know that training people to do your job better than you isn’t a scary thing — it’s necessary to the company’s success and to your progression through the ranks. When a boss sees an employee training others to do their job well, they elevate that person. This is not dissimilar to church life.
When someone gets involved at something at church, you want to train them to do it as well as or better than you can. This by no means takes away from your abilities, and there’s no job security to worry about. Instead, it helps you broaden the load, sharing the burden together, as you continue to work toward a common goal. This is key to focusing on the things you need to do, all while priming the church for accepting tomorrow’s leaders.
4. Consider Yourself a Coach
If you’ve never been in a position of mentoring or coaching before, taking on the role can be tough. You may feel more comfortable with handling a myriad of responsibilities all on your own than accepting the thought of recruiting and coaching others who will look to you for guidance. However, the fact is that God’s mission desperately needs people like you to actively identify and train others who can actively lead the church.
The more you do it, the more comfortable you will become with training and coaching others. It starts with having the mindset that your life lessons have value. You must also acknowledge that those around you want involvement in the church. You’re actually already coaching people all the time, and when it comes to developing new leaders, you just need to move your focus to dedicated meetings and individuals.
As a coach, you hold extreme power to uplift those around you. Restraints exist that limit people in their lives. These include where they live, their education, their income, and their color. Ministry dedicates itself to breaking down these barriers and the limits people put onto themselves. Your church can make an incredible difference in someone’s life, even if you just dedicate a year to coaching someone who shows promise.
5. Recognize Your Impact
If you’ve ever coached someone before and they ultimately let you down, that can be tough to overcome. Putting your time and energy into coaching someone is a commitment. So when you find they lack commitment, it can hurt your soul. The fact is, we all let people down at some point in our lives. That shouldn’t stop you from continuing to believe in people.
The fact is, your church has a limited number of team members and leaders, and failing to coach leadership into others will in no way support the growth of your church. In reality, it will put limitations on what you can accomplish. By letting those around you know that God’s work needs their gifts, you can guide them in leading a fulfilled, faith-driven life.
