Leadership lessons from this year - Visits in season

Another major way for me to learn is to visit other churches and meet other leaders from outside Newfrontiers, seeing what they do, asking why they do things and how it all works! This year, in one trip, I visited churches in Seattle, New York, Chicago (Steve Nicholson’s church – Vineyard) and Baltimore (David Anderson’s church).

On this visit I also attended a conference at Willow Creek where I heard Gordon MacDonald speak. He proposes that we look at life in terms of seasons. In each of these stages different questions tend to be asked by those going through them.

20s – Who am I?
30s – How do I balance all this together?
40s – There must be something more than this!
50s – Can I hold on?
60s – Am I redundant?
70s – Was it all worth it?

I have asked these questions of myself, of the King’s team, pastorally, and in the wider Newfrontiers movement!

Leadership lessons from this year - Diligence and learning

It’s not all struggle and gloom – we were able to successfully launch our third meeting, we are seeing people saved every week and our total Sunday attendances have grown by 25%. Such growth gives us other problems!

Romans 12:3 says ‘For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.’ And later, in verse 8 it says, ‘…if leadership, let him govern diligently.’

Diligence can be defined as persistent effort at work. Industrious in character! Steady application! Attentive to duties!

How do you learn? How can you increase your leadership capacity? By being diligent!

How do I learn? One way is that I read. The main titles I have read over the last year would be:

Surprised by Hope – Tom Wright
Wild at Heart – John Eldridge
Crossing the Divide – Owen Hylton
Church Unique – Will Mancini
For Men Only; For Women Only – two books by the wife and husband team of Shaunti & Jeff Feldhahn

Leadership lessons from this year - Enforced changes

Last September (‘08) I spoke to some local leaders on 2 Corinthians 4 ‘We do not lose heart…’ and about leading in a time of crisis. These words turned out to be prophetic in nature! That week went like this:

Monday – day off!
Tuesday – all fine on the western front!
Wednesday – I meet with a local leader who is emotionally unwell following the death of his father.
Thursday – while I’m speaking at London Leaders we get a message that the wife of one of our Trustees - a valued member of our worship team - has collapsed at the Grand Canyon while on holiday in the US. By 6pm that day it is confirmed that she had died. Sue was in her 40s.
Sunday – I announce this tragic news to the church at our Vision Sunday, where I also cast the vision for the coming year and launch not only our week of mission but our third meeting.

These two events (Sue’s death and launch of the third meeting) shaped the year.
Romans 12:15 says, ‘rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.’ That’s what we were doing and this verse described that time.

Following on from this, within a few weeks we were discussing the possibility of Owen Hylton leaving us to lead Beacon Church – which was great for Beacon but at a cost to King’s! Owen started there in January 09 taking a small team – 10 of our members went with him at that stage (more have gone since!).

The impact of this on Kings meant that we had to totally re-engineer our staff team. We needed to strengthen our eldership at this point and look at the issue of diversity within our leadership. We are still working through this process. One of the recent developments in staffing has been that Malcolm Kyte (presently at Wimbledon) will be joining the team here at King’s to provide additional pastoral support in our growing church. His experience will be invaluable – we look forward to his arrival next spring!

Teams and Your Youth Development Policy

It’s not just wise football managers who invest in youth training. As a church leader spotting gifts and potential in young people and providing them with opportunities to grow in serving is a good investment. Give them input and on occasions give them their head! I have good reason to advocate this approach as I benefited from it myself.

The pastor of my home church began to invest in me when I was 20. By the age of 21 I was sitting in Elder’s meetings and was arrogant and opinionated. But all I learned then bore fruit in later situations as I had been exposed to the practice of leadership in previous years.

My plea is that leaders give responsibility at an early age. If you have young people that show potential then encourage them to aspire to the next level of leadership and provide learning and training opportunities that will stretch but not overwhelm them.


Book recommendations on leadership and team building

Developing the Leader Within You : John Maxwell

Developing the Leaders Around You : John Maxwell

Making a Team Work : Steve Chalke with Penny Relph

Effective Keys to Successful Leadership : Frank Damazio

Winning teams!

I have already recommended the Belbin test for you and your teams – it is a well-researched secular team test which shows the contribution each type of individual makes to a team. Belbin enables you to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your team. On any team there needs to be:

- A trusted chairperson who uses people’s abilities. Trust is key – the team won’t function without it.
- A creative person, preferably clever as well. What Belbin calls a ‘plant’. This person will often bring a new angle on an issue. I have come to value contributions from our creative people at critical times in decision making.
- A fair spread of mental abilities.
- A good spread of team roles
- A matching of team roles and responsibilities
- A shared consciousness of the weaknesses of the team. At an early stage I realised that we were missing an implementer on our team. I’m a shaper, with implementer as my secondary role. As a result everything was bouncing back to me – not ideal. So, we staffed an implementer! (All senior staff appointments at King’s will undertake Belbin testing – that way we know where we are!)

The ability to recognise gifts – is a gift! We are learning about this all the time – the important thing is that you need to understand yourself as you go to recruit. Bringing a new team member on board - especially a senior team member – could destabilise the team. The personality of the newcomer is vital, so it’s not just about gifting. They have to ‘fit’.

Appreciating those on the team who are different from me means that I recognise that we need ALL their gifts and abilities, otherwise you will end up recruiting only people like yourself which will weaken the team.

It’s important to play to your strengths as a leader – and discover and then cover your weaknesses.

Defining your unique role in the team

1. Define the role of the leader!
Doing this will prevent responsibilities falling into that area where everyone presumes that someone else is taking care of it! And because you are a self-aware, self-reflecting leader you will be aware of your own areas of limitation and will staff your weaknesses!

2. Have clear job descriptions for team members.
Let others with expertise in this area sort the details of these documents as well as staff contracts. Though it seems tedious at the time, good documentation in this area can save a great deal of trouble in the future.

3. Areas to be aware of when building a team.
- Age distribution. If all your elders are the same age, they will continue to age together and you will need to introduce a rank of younger elders to add youth and vigour to wisdom and stability!
- Individual training. Variety in skills and gifting. Different experience histories.
- Varied personalities
- Ethnic mix. Diversity is an increasingly important and visible issue in our churches.

And more on building your dream team...

- Team members know exactly where the team stands on any issue

Some years back we were going into a major building project and the small group system began to fall apart. I came under immense pressure to radically restructure this part of church life but I felt that it was not the time for a big policy change in this area. ‘Cell’ church was the big thing at the time but we decided to wait for 2 to 3 years. Our priority was the building – I felt we would only get one chance to design and erect a good building – once that was done we could recreate our small group system on an annual basis if we chose to! As it was, the delay gave us time to reflect on this important area of church life.

In more recent days we have moved to multiple Sunday meetings. We worked out that an attendance of 180 was ‘critical mass’ for a new meeting in our auditorium. At this point I spoke to all the ministry leaders and told them that I wanted them in that meeting! This was a change of philosophy.

- Team members are willing to pay the price

There has to be a personal counting the cost which may well have financial and career development consequences with implications for wider family members.