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The Leadership Authority Bind

Mike Bonem — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:15:00 +0000

“We want a strong leader.” I’ve heard this statement countless times from churches as they describe the characteristics they want in their next pastor. (The same is true for other ministries.) I believe this statement is well-intentioned and often misleading.

Many pastors and ministry leader, as they step into the role, hear this statement as a call for bold direction and action. They make significant changes or launch new initiatives or reorganize staff responsibilities, because they believe these are the right steps. But they often run into problems. Why? Weren’t they fulfilling their mandate?

When churches ask for a “strong leader,” the underlying request often means:

We want someone to right the ship without rocking the boat. This call for leadership is really a call for a savior to reverse a decline or address a crisis. It assumes the pastor can produce a silver bullet solution that doesn’t require painful changes.
We’re jealous of the “successful” church down the street. Every community has at least one church that seems to be thriving. That church has a great reputation and is growing rapidly, and is often led by a high profile, charismatic pastor. They are attracting unchurched people and people from your church. Like the ancient Israelites, your church may be saying, “We want a king like our neighboring countries.”
We want someone who will support our priorities. This version is most common in a divided church where different groups have competing ideas on how to move forward. Each faction is looking for a leader who is a combination of a puppet that they can manipulate and a military commander who charges into battle on their behalf.

So how should you respond if your church says they want a “strong leader”? Forging ahead with reckless abandon is clearly not the answer. Nor should you abdicate leadership or assume those making the request are not trustworthy. A better approach is to:

Ask what “strong leader” means to them. A thoughtful conversation may unearth one of the three meanings described above or a different one altogether. It may also give you insights into the constraints you are likely to face.
Build a strong leadership team. Even if the church genuinely desires someone to provide bold direction, you’ll make better decisions and accomplish more if you share the leadership mantle with a team.
Listen for the congregation’s hurts and hopes. The three unspoken requests listed above have a common denominator: pain. Digging deeper than the initial request for strong leadership will uncover the real issues that can inform your leadership approach.
Deepen your spiritual disciplines. Another common thread in the three requests is the emphasis on a single person solving all the church’s problems. This poses a threat to a leader’s soul. Positive outcomes can inflate your ego, and negative ones can cause despair. In either case, a vibrant spiritual life is the best protection against these risks.

A church may want a “strong leader,” but they need one whose wise discernment gets beneath these words to help them discover a path toward God’s preferred future.

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Planning for the Future: Avoid These 4 Obstacles

Mike Bonem — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 09:52:00 +0000

When I help churches and ministries discern plans for the future, I often say, “The answer is in the room.” What I mean is that the people on the planning team – the ones who are “in the room” – know their church’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. They are highly committed leaders who have hopes and dreams for the ministry. So the “answer” should emerge from their conversations around these topics.

And yet, leadership teams sometimes struggle to develop plans that will truly move a church forward. I still believe that the answer should be in the room, but I also recognize several obstacles that get in the way:

Not listening to the Spirit. God’s presence, which is promised when 2 or 3 are gathered (Matthew 18:20), is essential to discerning the best path forward. But teams must be intentional about listening for the Spirit’s guidance. Ministry planning that is indistinguishable from corporate planning will miss the answer.
Inviting the wrong people. Discernment processes can easily be derailed by a few people. Individuals who are not spiritually mature, too tied to the past, or afraid of change can squelch a team’s dreaming. The best teams have a wide representation of perspectives and gifts. They don’t automatically include the person who has “always” been in leadership unless that person can make a genuine contribution.
Deferring too much to the pastor. A pastor (or the leader of a ministry) has a unique role in discerning future direction for the church. Unique, but not exclusive. Important decisions on how to move forward require the collective wisdom of a leadership team that is prayerfully seeking God’s will. Allowing the pastor to unilaterally set priorities ignores the gifts and insights of others in the room.
Lacking outside perspective. It’s wonderful to have highly engaged people on a discernment team, but they can also be a constraint. They often spend so much time inside the ministry that they’re unaware of the external context. The best teams include people with fresh eyes and engage in learning experiences that expand their understanding of their mission field.

Whether you are planning are for a specific event or for your entire church, today’s ministry context demands boldness, not minor tweaks to the status quo. None of these obstacles will prevent you from planning. But when the work only produces incremental changes, these factors are often to blame.

The four obstacles are not trivial, but the good news is that they are not insurmountable. You can create space in a discernment process to listen to God. You can be intentional about who is on the team and how they learn together. You can resist the temptation to offer an answer when someone asks, “Pastor, what do you think?” And as you do so, you may discover that the answer does emerge from within the room.

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Leading High Capacity Leaders

Mike Bonem — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 16:54:30 +0000

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. (Mark 10:17-22, NIV)

You have undoubtedly preached on, studied, or heard sermons about this passage many times. I wonder, however, if you’ve considered the story of the “rich young man” through a leadership development lens.

The membership of most churches includes people whose leadership abilities or wealth greatly exceed that of their pastor. These women and men have the potential to make substantial contributions, and not just financial, to the well-being of a church. But pastors are often unsure how to relate to them.

This familiar story offers four important insights:

The man “ran up to [Jesus] and fell on his knees before him.” We often think that “successful” people have it all together and don’t have any needs. This couldn’t be further from the truth – they just have different needs and may have learned to keep them hidden. The man in the story reveals a desperation and hunger, something that lies just beneath the surface for many of the successful people in our congregations.
“Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Some ministry leaders have an unconscious (or conscious) resentment or even disdain toward successful people. They may be seen as not giving enough to the church, being out of touch with the plight of normal people, or making fame and fortune their gods. Jesus saw a struggling human being, a child of his Father, and loved him. The rest of Jesus’s response flowed out of that love.
Jesus spoke truth to him. The man said that he had kept the commandments since he was a boy. Today’s equivalent would be someone who said, “I tithe, come to worship whenever I’m in town, live a clean life, and volunteer in a ministry.” So how would you respond? Many pastors today, not wanting to offend a high-capacity leader, would say, “That’s great. Keep it up. Maybe you can add a spiritual discipline as a next step.” Jesus went straight to the heart and spoke the hard truth to the man.
Jesus didn’t run after him. After sharing the truth in love, Jesus allowed the man to make his decision. Jesus didn’t seem concerned about being “rejected” or losing the potential support of a wealthy follower. He trusted that God would send the right people at the right time with the right resources for the work that needed to be done. Sometimes a high-capacity person is God’s gift to your church; at other times you need to let them leave.

How might your ministry change if you related to successful individuals like Jesus did in this story?

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7 Questions for Healthy Oversight

Mike Bonem — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 03:59:54 +0000

Every church has some form of governance (at least on paper), but the practices of “oversight” vary widely. Oversight has existed in various forms since the beginning of the church. But in many cases today, the oversight function is dysfunctional. It can be non-existent or heavy-handed or just confusing.

Having meaningful performance conversations is a central oversight responsibility of the “board” (elders, governance team, personnel committee, etc.) It is also a vital task for the senior pastor and/or executive pastor in a multi-staff church. Rather than treating this as a dreaded assignment, those providing oversight should view the work as an opportunity to partner with the pastor and other leaders for their support and growth.

How can oversight be done as a healthy partnership? These seven questions can create a rich dialogue that moves well beyond a typical “performance review”:

How is your walk with God? This is the most important question for a ministry leader. If their spiritual life is not vibrant, they cannot lead effectively.
How is your marriage, family, and personal life? Ministry leaders should not be expected to sacrifice their families and their well-being for the church.
What is your self-assessment of your leadership over the last year – positives and areas for growth? Leaders usually have a good idea of where they have and haven’t performed well. In fact, they are often too critical. Self-assessment is a starting point, after which overseers can add other observations as needed.
What is one way in which you want to grow as a leader in the coming year? This is a natural follow-up to the previous question. It starts with the leader and leaves room for input from overseers.
What do you believe the church most needs in the coming year? The church’s priorities for the coming year should ultimately be a major conversation with the entire board. But in the context of oversight, this question leads to an important discussion about individual priorities.
What is your role in addressing these needs? Not all organizational priorities require hands-on involvement from the senior leader(s). Individual priorities or goals should be clear for each leader.
How can we best support you? If the goal is a healthy ministry partnership, then asking this question, and following through on the resulting commitments, is essential.

Pause for a minute to reflect on these seven questions. What difference would this approach make in your oversight conversations? How would the last four, forward-looking questions set the stage for fruitful ministry and meaningful oversight in the future?

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Leading from the Second Chair … with a New First Chair

Mike Bonem — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 22:01:57 +0000

You probably played musical chairs as a child. You may still have flashbacks to those anxious moments before the music stopped, wondering whether you’d be able to find a chair. But at least you knew the rules of the game.

When a transition of first chair leaders takes place, the rest of the team knows that the game will change, but they’re uncertain what the new rules will be. Leadership transitions can be particularly difficult for second chair leaders as they try to understand and adapt to these new rules.

For executive pastors and many others on a team, leadership transitions may create one of four confusing scenarios:

Diminished responsibility. A high-capacity leader may have had significant responsibility and autonomy under the previous senior pastor. But the new senior pastor either wants to be more involved in decisions or takes on some of the tasks directly. The second chair experiences this as a lack of trust, but the reality may be that the first chair has never worked with an executive pastor or wants to understand how the church functions.
Actions and words don’t match. Second chairs who have worked with the same first chair for years can almost anticipate what their boss thinks or wants. When a new first chair arrives, the learning process starts over, and wise second chairs pay attention to everything they say. So it’s confusing if the first chair’s actions don’t match their words. This may seem like hypocrisy, but the new leader may just be processing their uncertainty out loud.
New direction. Some new senior pastors arrive with a clear sense of direction and priorities, either as a result of their own prayerful assessment or a mandate they received when they were hired. If the second chair was not part of these initial conversations about direction, they may feel like they’re playing catch-up, especially if they believed the church or ministry had been moving in a positive direction.
Relational shifts. Obviously, relationships will change with a transition in first chairs. But second chairs often don’t think about the many different dimensions of change: communication styles, meeting frequency, speed of decision-making, and much more. The new leader may be more private or more open about their feelings, may be more or less encouraging, and will have different hot buttons. These differences are not good or bad – they’re just a change from previous norms.

None of the characteristics and behaviors described in these scenarios are indicators that the first chair is wrong for the role or that the second chair should develop an exit strategy. But they can be significant stress points in the early weeks and months of a leadership transition.

In these moments, adaptability and relationship building are essential. Second chair leaders need to hold loosely to their old play books. The phrase “this is how we used to do things” should be said far less often than “help me understand” or ”tell me more.” Time spent getting to know each other should be given equal footing to time for making decisions. The simple guidance in James 1:19 – “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” – should be top of mind. And throughout a season of transition, every leader should take advantage of their greatest resource, the wisdom and peace that is promised to all God’s children.

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Concerned About Fractures?

Mike Bonem — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 09:57:00 +0000

Michelangelo’s David

What is the treatment for a fractured ankle? Immobilize it in a cast and stay off of it for several weeks, right? What if the ankle in question is part of one of the most famous statues in the world?

My wife and I had the amazing privilege of going to Italy for our 40th anniversary. One of the highlights was seeing Michelangelo’s David, which is a truly magnificent statue. During our tour, we learned that there are internal microfractures in the statue at the ankles. David is not about to topple over, but the statue is examined periodically by experts.

“Microfractures” are inevitable in ministry leadership. A volunteer leader thinks the church isn’t doing enough to support a missions partner. A small group of people is unhappy with the decision to consolidate from three to two worship services. A staff person is frustrated that they didn’t get the budget increase they requested. None of these examples are cause for immediate alarm, but any of them could become serious.

So how should a pastor or ministry leader respond to a microfracture?

Assess the severity. Think about the examples above or in your experience. It isn’t always obvious how serious the fracture is. Before making any decisions about how to respond, it is essential to determine whether the concern is minor or much bigger.
Enlist help. You may not be the best person to assess the severity of an issue. The people closest to a disagreement often have a distorted view. It took engineers, not art experts, to determine that Michelangelo’s David was not at immediate risk of falling. Who can help with your assessment?
Heal (or deal) when appropriate. No immediate solutions were feasible for the statue, but relational issues can often be healed. Even if a fracture is minor, it is usually wise to work toward reconciliation. This doesn’t mean reversing a decision, but it often means taking the time to listen to someone’s concerns and apologizing where appropriate. Occasionally you may need to deal with a fracture, holding someone accountable if their behavior is harming the church.
Monitor. Fractures are not static – even when they are in marble. Once a leader is aware that people are frustrated or unhappy, it is important to keep an eye on the situation. It may quietly dissipate over time. But it can spread, gaining a life of its own and becoming more than micro.
Move forward. It would have been a tragedy if Italian officials had put the David statue into storage just because the fractures might get worse in the future. They didn’t, and we (along with thousands of others) were able to admire this masterpiece. Leaders shouldn’t let a microfracture paralyze them. They should take the appropriate measures, and then move forward.

Jesus prayed for believers “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21). Unity, a body without microfractures, is certainly the biblical ideal. But we should remember that Paul’s letters often dealt with fractures large and small. Don’t be surprised when microfractures appear, and don’t let them stop you from the mission to which God has called you and your church.

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Treat It as a Gift

Mike Bonem — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 19:52:09 +0000

In the final episode of the popular series “Ted Lasso,” Ted reflects on what he has learned during his time in England. In his typical folksy way, he observes, “Air conditioning is a gift, not a given.”

Having grown up in a middle-class home in Texas, I don’t remember a time without air conditioning. (Apparently my parents’ car didn’t have it when I was a baby.) Because of this, I tend to think of air conditioning as a given, something to which I am entitled. And it’s not just air conditioning. If I’m honest, the list of things that I treat as givens, rather than gifts, is embarrassingly long.

Mistaking gifts for givens has many implications for me, and perhaps for you as well. I am grateful for gifts, but the givens (like air conditioning) are taken for granted. I am less likely to find joy in the simple things and the small moments in life when I fail to see them as gifts. A life full of givens can create a constant sense of dissatisfaction and wanting more.

What are some of the gifts that you’ve overlooked or treated as givens in your role as a ministry leader? Maybe it’s a few people that love you deeply, just as you are, with whom you don’t have put on a façade of having it all together. It could be a staff person or volunteer who regularly lightens your load. Or the people who genuinely seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Or enough money in the bank to pay your salary and the church’s bills this month. Or just the flexibility to set your own schedule.

Outside of our professional lives, there are also many gifts that we tend to overlook. Family, close friends, and mentors. A roof over our heads, and food to eat. Freedom in what we say, think, and do. The beauty of nature, whether that’s a single flower or a panoramic view of the mountains.

The last several years have been difficult for pastors and other ministry leaders. A global pandemic, national polarization that spilled into the pews, declining participation in the church, a growing mental health crisis, and uncertainty about the future are just some of the burdens that leaders carry. I don’t want to suggest that we should put on rose-colored glasses or ignore these serious issues. But I do think that remembering our gifts can give us a different perspective as we go about the work that God has called us to.

I’ll close with Paul’s reminder of the most important gift: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Eph. 1:18-19a). Treat this as a gift.

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“Eyes Up” Leadership

Mike Bonem — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 07:01:00 +0000

The primary job of a point guard in basketball is to bring the ball up the court, read the defense, and set up a play to give their team the best chance of scoring. One phrase that highlights this vital skill is “eyes up.” Even as they are dribbling and preventing the opposing defender from stealing the ball, the point guard needs to look up, scanning the court to find an opportunity for a pinpoint pass. The tendency is to look down at the ball rather than at the horizon. Great players make this look effortless, but it’s much more difficult than it appears.

Does this sound like your role as a pastor or ministry leader? It takes a great deal of time and effort to keep the ball(s) bouncing – all of the regular tasks and activities that must be done well in your church or ministry. You also need to keep an eye on the opposition – whoever or whatever that threatens to keep your church or ministry from moving toward its mission. But to do your job well, you must keep your eyes up – looking beyond the bouncing balls of routine tasks to see new and exciting opportunities.

This may sound impossible, but so does the job of a basketball point guard. Here are four lessons that bounce directly from basketball to ministry leadership:

Practice. Knowing that a skill is important is not the same as developing the skill. Great point guards have learned through hours of practice to dribble with their eyes up. “Eyes up” leadership might be developed through intentional balcony time or interactions with forward-thinking, creative people. How are you expanding your “eyes up” capacity?
Know your role. The best point guards understand their roles. They know what they must do well, and what they don’t need to do. In a sport that celebrates points scored, it can be difficult to focus on making good passes and letting others take the shot. But that is the role of the guard. Do you have the same clarity about your role?
Build a great team. The point guard’s abilities are useless if they are not surrounded by teammates with complementary skills. This requires both assembling the team and building the chemistry where team members trust each other to play their respective roles. Do you have the right team? Does your team have the chemistry that leads to great results?
Learn from a coach. Great point guards are developed by coaches who see their potential and help them take the right steps to reach that potential. A coach notices things that the guard will have difficulty seeing. Who do you trust to both encourage and challenge you?

The point guards that receive the most attention during March Madness have incredible skills, in the top 1% or better. That level of expertise may be unattainable for most other basketball players, but that shouldn’t keep them from improving their skills. The same is true for your leadership – you may not become a top 1% leader (whatever that means), but you should always be eager to learn and grow. Eyes up!

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When Leadership Is Puzzling

Mike Bonem — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 08:58:00 +0000

We had the joy of keeping our two grandsons overnight during the Christmas break. One of our activities was working puzzles. Our 4-year old grandson was quite adept at the 60-piece puzzle we had, but we didn’t have anything age appropriate for the 2-year old. Nevertheless, he told us, “I do puzzle.” So I dutifully removed another 60-piece puzzle from the box, intending to give him lots of help. It turned out that he had different ideas. For him, “I do puzzle” simply meant taking the lid off the box and putting it back on.

You may not be working with toddlers, but this story has applications for every leader. It is a vivid reminder of how something can be crystal clear to two people and yet have completely different meanings. For example:

A leadership team may agree that new initiatives are needed to help a church reach young adults. One leader thinks this is a green light for widespread changes in worship and other ministries. Another leader’s understanding is that the church will spend more money on a marketing campaign to attract young adults to existing ministry offerings.
A missions committee discusses the benefits of developing partnerships with local ministries in which church members can be directly involved. At the next meeting, one of the committee members asks how quickly they can shift their funding away from international missions. His question is met with confusion and anger from people who never intended to “shortchange our long-standing commitments.”
An associate pastor says she would be more productive if she had administrative help, and the senior pastor mentions his administrative assistant can provide some support. But he is shocked when the admin is overloaded with tasks from the associate .

Each of these situations, and countless others, could be avoided by asking rather than assuming. The individuals in these stories assumed that “everyone” knows reaching young adults requires significant programming changes or that money needs to follow mission priorities. But rather than assuming, we’d be better off asking, “What does this mean to you?” What does an emphasis on reaching young adults mean to you? What does focusing on local hands-on mission partnerships mean to you? What does “some” administrative support mean to you?

We’d also be better off sharing what it means to us, not to insist that our interpretation is right, but to simply dispel incorrect assumptions that others might be making. I thought “I do puzzle” was universally understood to mean putting all 60 pieces together correctly. It turns out I was wrong. What puzzles might you solve with a simple question and some additional explanations?

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Did You Really Mean It?

Mike Bonem — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 12:09:18 +0000

Miscommunication is a major source of problems and conflict in churches and ministries. I am not talking about cases where someone blatantly lies or misleads. These are troubling, but relatively uncommon. Instead, I’m referring to those instances when a person’s sincere words don’t seem to match their later actions. These moments cause listeners to wonder, “Did you really mean it?”

Specific examples include:

The search committee for a new pastor lists “strong leader” as their highest priority. But when the pastor arrives and starts exhibiting leadership, the resistance is immediate and intense. Did they really mean it?
A church’s leadership council agrees that “it’s time to make some changes to reach our community.” But when the time comes to implement the first new program, none of them pitch in. Did they really mean it?
A pastor proclaims “building a vibrant children’s ministry will be our top priority this year.” But neither the budget proposed by the pastor nor the investment of the pastor’s time indicates that anything has changed. Did the pastor really mean it?

These situations, and many others, create a variety of problems. People begin making plans based on what they heard. The new pastor launches an initiative to revitalize the church. A gifted volunteer agrees to lead the community outreach effort, assuming there will be plenty of support. When reality doesn’t match these expectations, people end up disappointed, hurt, and angry.

The mismatch between words and actions also creates credibility problems. You probably know the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Once someone has been “fooled” by a lack of support or follow-through, they are less likely to believe, much less follow, that leader in the future.

A simplistic response is to divide people into two groups: those who are trustworthy and those who are not. But the reality is that no one perfectly aligns their words and actions. Does this mean no one is trustworthy? A better response is to seek to understand why words and actions are often disconnected. Why would you commit to something and then not do it? Why would others do the same? How can understanding these dynamics grow your capacity to lead? These are the questions we’ll explore in several future blogs. For now, be mindful of what you say, especially any “we shall …” pronouncements. Do you really mean it?

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