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Moving from the Bible to Business Best Practices…
While the Bible lays a foundation for effective leadership, it is not a comprehensive guide for every leadership need. This is where it’s helpful for Out of This World Leaders to also look to the arena of business leadership practices.
Bill Hybels is the founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois—the most influential church in America for the last several years, according to a national poll of pastors. Hybels grew up around his father’s business and has always been a student of leadership best practices. He points out, “What you have to understand is that some of us church leaders believe to the core of our beings that the local church is the hope of the world. . . . That’s why we are so determined to get our visions right and live out our values and come up with effective strategies. We truly believe that it matters that we attain our goals. It matters that we align our staffs and leverage our resources. We believe that the success or failure of our churches directly affects people’s lives here today and for eternity. . . . That’s why we make no apology for learning and applying best practice principles as God leads us in our churches.”
Advice for Leaders
God wants our very best and desires for churches to be “successful,” but there is a point at which our pursuit of success is not a pursuit of God. In fact, the drive for ministry success can ultimately run counter to God’s desires.
It could be argued that improved effectiveness may cause leaders to become more self-reliant and less dependent on God. The more a leader experiences success, the more he or she must guard against this danger.
So, how can we do that? In their leadership best-seller The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner recommend: “Perhaps the very best advice we can give all aspiring leaders is to remain humble and unassuming—to always remain open and full of wonder.”
The importance of humility and putting others first is a recurring biblical theme. Paul teaches “in humility consider others better than yourselves” and “look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.”
Additionally, we must keep in mind that effective leadership is grounded in healthy relationships. Relationships are the currency of leadership, especially in the church; and the Bible has plenty of instruction on relationships that every leader should heed!
Helping Your Team Succeed
Kouzes and Posner (pictured above) state, “You can avoid excessive pride only if you recognize that you’re human and need the help of others. . . . Exemplary leaders know that ‘you can’t do it alone,’ and they act accordingly.” Even the secular experts know that effective leadership cannot be practiced in isolation, and the Bible clearly teaches the importance of community. You need to be surrounded and supported by a team to be successful.
Houston Baptist University’s Robert Sloan has been around Christian leaders—in academia, denominational bodies, and local churches—for his entire career and has observed their struggles in dealing with difficult personnel decisions (both hiring & firing of staff). He notes, “Christian leaders have a very difficult time with personnel decisions. There’s a pretty soft view among Christian leaders as to what constitutes redemption or grace or love or forgiveness because our thinking is so muddled on those issues. Christian leaders have a hard time making personnel decisions and dealing forthrightly with personnel problems.”
Bonem contends that it is possible to practice grace and stewardship simultaneously. Dave Ferguson of Community Christian Church says, “On a scale of 1 to 10, God created everybody to be a 10. If [certain people] are not a 10, they’re in the wrong spot or we’ve not given them the tools they need.” When true grace and stewardship are combined, leaders do not say, “It’s OK to be a 5.” Instead they say, “Your job is not in jeopardy because you’re a 5 today, but we are committed to helping you become a 10, and you need to have the same commitment.”
Just as God is displeased if a church operates exactly like a business, He must be displeased if we are poor managers of the valuable resources we have in our employees. Don’t let the differences between church and business become handcuffs that hinder you from accomplishing what God wants you to do for and through the people you manage.
Going beyond the church context, Patrick Lencioni writes to leaders and managers in The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, “I have come to the realization that all managers can—and really should—view their work as a ministry. A service to others. By helping people find fulfillment in their work, and helping them succeed in whatever they’re doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families.”
Strategic Planning or Sprit-Led Planning?
Planning is a key to successful organizations. Churches strive to strike a balance between traditional organization strategic planning and Spirit-led planning. As one pastor put it, “You want to do everything that best practices say to do. Have your facts—about the environment, about your organization’s strengths and weaknesses—and do fact-based analysis. Understand your story. But you’re praying through all of that and asking the central question, ‘God, what do you want us to do?’ So it’s more a process of discernment than strategic planning.”
Reggie McNeal echoes that sentiment in his book The Present Future, “Typical approaches to the future involve prediction and planning. . . . The better (and Biblical) approach to the future involves prayer and preparation.” He goes on to say, “God is the one with the vision for our lives and the church. It is our job to discover what He has in mind, not to invent something He can get excited about.”
Jeff Wells, Senior Pastor of WoodsEdge Community Church in The Woodlands, Texas, provides this caution: “Because we [the church in the West] have so much money and education, it’s easy to not depend on God. We tend to ask God to lead us, then we work real hard to decide on our own, then we ask God to bless the decision we’ve made.”
It’s important for churches and organizations to have “reserve” in their schedules and in their budgets, so they have resources to pursue the things God leads them to. As Todd Mullins of Christ Fellowship says, “For us to walk in those God-given opportunities, there has to be margin.” So church leaders are building margin into their budget “for the purpose of being ready and prepared” to act when God leads. Financial margin can be a strategic way to fund new initiatives, but another legitimate use is to create a reserve account as a “rainy-day fund.” Some people might argue that this kind of preparation for a downturn lacks faith, but Bonem contends that it is good stewardship.
For churches and para-church organizations that are successful, it is easy to cross the invisible line from pursuing success as directed by God and for His glory alone to pursuing things that appear godly but in reality are self-directed and self-glorifying. Even the most biblical-sounding principles from business—Level 5 leadership, caring for employees, pursuing a noble vision, making deep personal change—can have an underlying, self-serving drive.
Bonem (pictured below) likes to ask leaders two key questions: “How do you define success?” and “What do you do to care for your own soul and keep it refreshed?”
He then points out that leaders can guard their hearts only by defining success, first, as living in the presence of God and, second, as accomplishing the task God calls them to do.
When we reach the day that Christian organizations become the standard setters for excellent leadership, we will know that we are truly practicing Great AND Godly Leadership.
