A Life-or-Death Battle

Wayne Calloway, former Chairman of Pepsico, Inc., is quoted as saying, "I'll bet most of the companies that are in life-or-death battles got into that kind of trouble because they didn't pay enough attention to developing their leaders."  Whether its Pepsi or the local church, we do get into trouble if we don't give direct attention to how we identify, train, deploy, and support potential new leaders. Yet, I've been challenged this week to reflect on how I try to encourage churches to make this a priority. 

 I'm supposed to do the first of several leadership workshops on the role of the Nominations and Leadership Development Committee this Sunday.  Each year, I'm asked to lead this workshop in various districts.  People come and respond positively.  I feel like I'm giving them the tools they need. Yet, every year when Charge Conference time rolls around, I still hear people talk about trying to fill a slate of nominations so that the reports are filled out correctly and turned in on time.  We received one of those calls last week in our household. That same day, I visited a church where the lack of emerging leaders was a huge topic in our conversation, only to hear someone in the group say they only focused on leaders right before Charge Conference.  Just the day before I had been in a meeting where those gathered began to talk about how long some people in their local churches had served in the same leadership positions and the lack of gender and age diversity in important leadership roles.  It's times like this when I want to throw all my resources into the recycling bin and say, "God, I've tried long enough, and it's not making a bit of difference."  We are in a life-or-death battle, but in many cases, we're not doing much from a leadership standpoint about it.

Leadership directs the work of God in the faith community.  Thus, identifying and nurturing leaders is a huge task that cannot be done intentionally and well in 6 weeks prior to charge conference. We have to move away from thinking of leadership as just filling a required spot or attending meetings.  The first step toward a different view of leadership begins with asking how serving in leadership roles can help people grow spiritually. Ongoing leadership development provides special opportunities to grow in our knowledge, ministry skills, attitudes, and values as well as exploring options for service.  Our goal should always be to help those who are offering their service to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ and to experience the joy of serving, NOT to merely fill positions.  We are in a life-or-death battle. What are we going to do about it?