Better Leaders Lead Better Church Choices

by Reba Collins and Bill Cowles

For the past three years, we – along with thousands of other church leaders – have attended the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit (GLS), a turbo-charged download of timeless best-practices, cutting-edge thinking and research, and new skill development for church, business, and not-for-profit organization leaders.

The mantra of the GLS is: “When a leader gets better, everyone wins.”  We believe that “everyone” includes church searchers as well. Through training conferences such as the GLS, more churches are being led by better leaders, and these churches will be better church choices as a result. 

So we’re putting the GLS highlight reel up against our own “searcher” experiences to help you, the church searcher, recognize better leadership because we believe good church choices are a result of good church leadership.

What better leaders know…

From Bill Hybels, Founder and Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church:

·         Visions are holy commodities.

·         There is a time to move from casting vision to establishing an inviolable value in a culture. Establishing an inviolable value require something to flip over in the leaders heart first.

·         Staff cultures will only ever be as healthy as the CEO or senior pastor wants it to be. People will only take culture stuff as seriously as the senior leader.  

From Colin Powell, Former U.S. Secretary of State

·         Trust is the glue that holds an organization together and the lubricant that keeps it moving forward.

·         When someone isn't working, people are waiting for you, the leader, to solve the problem of firing them.

·         You have to challenge people, or they will just sit there watching.

From Patrick Lencioni, Founder and President, The Table Group; Best-selling Author:

·         Good people don't leave jobs [or churches] where they are known, where what they do matters, and where they have a way of measuring their progress.

From Joseph Grenny, Co-Founder, VitalSmarts; Best-selling Business Author:

·         Leadership is intentional influence.

·         If our faith isn't leading to differences in our behavior, then we aren’t leaders.

From Vijay Govindarajan, Top 50 Management Thinker; Professor, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business:

·         Innovation is commercializing and executing creativity. Innovation is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

From Oscar Muriu, Senior Pastor of Nairobi Chapel, Kenya:

·         The only way vision will live beyond you is to instill it and invest it in the next generation.

From Dr. Brene Brown, Research Professor, University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work

·         The space between how we behave and our aspirational values is where we lose people.

·         You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort; but you can't have both.

Dr. Henry Cloud, Acclaimed Leadership Expert, Best-selling Author

·         The biggest factor to get from here to there is the belief that it can happen.

What good church leaders practice… 

Courage:  

·         Every significant vision that God births in you will require you to be courageous. Every vision tests the mettle of the leader. (Bill Hybels)

·         Enormous courage is required to make significant gains in the health of your culture. (Bill Hybels)

Intentionality:

·         It is senior leader’s job to drive the improvements in a culture. (Bill Hybels)

Equipping:

·         Put followers in the best environment to get the job done. (Colin Powell) 

Accountability:

·         When you can't get a subordinate to work on your purpose as the leader, then you have to help them get on down the road. (Colin Powell)

Purpose:

·         We have to help people find their relevance. (Patrick Lencioni)

Empowerment:

·         People need an inherent measure that they are doing a good job. (Patrick Lencioni)

·         Always empower. Empowering requires taking risks.  (Colin Powell)

Leadership Development:

·         The size of the harvest depends on how many leaders you have. (Oscar Muriu)

·         Never do ministry alone. (Oscar Muriu)

·         Promote people on future potential not on present performance. (Colin Powell)

Transformation:

·         If you lead an organization long enough you will have to totally reinvent the organization and yourself, and probably more than once. (Bill Hybels)

Integrity:

·         Always trust and act in a way so that followers can trust you. (Colin Powell)

Affirmation:

·         When someone's job is to help us we have to celebrate that. (Patrick Lencioni)

From our experiences, we know that church leaders are human beings first and leaders second. They are no more perfect than any of us. They, too, can drift off course, and they can always improve in their leadership abilities. Leaders only become better when they lead themselves first.

One great question a church searcher should always ask of a potential church’s Lead Pastor or leader is, “What professional development conferences have you attended recently?” The worst answer – “I haven’t had time lately.” Your response? Look for another church – this one isn’t going anywhere and won’t be able to help you make much progress on your spiritual journey, either.