Three Thoughts on Leadership

What does ministerial leadership look like? Pastors, ministers, elders, and other folk who are called to tend to the well-being of congregations have a charge to care for and to nurture people. Yet how might one describe that calling? Oversimplification is an easy thing to achieve here; however, I want to take a shot at offering three basic frames, or moves, comprising good leadership practice for congregational leaders. Try this out and see if it rings true to you.

1. Leadership begins with listening. Scott Cormode presents this claim well in his new book, The Innovative Church. [1] Leaders listen to God and to the people who are entrusted to their care. Importantly, leaders do not listen passively – they are not there to simply receive whatever people want to say. Cormode declares that leaders listen for the answers to deep questions.

Questions such as, “How are people experiencing the longing and loss that makes up the human condition?” or, “What are the ‘Big Lies’ that people believe that keep them from fully embracing the gospel?” are critical to understanding what shapes and forms the people who are entrusted to our care. [2] When someone speaks to a minister and offers a “presenting issue,” the capable leader notices not only what the person says but also what lies behind and beneath. When done well, such listening provides empathy and insight for a constructive, pastoral response.

I mention empathy – the capacity to be with, to feel, and to see from another person’s perspective – because empathy forms the foundation of a pastoral response. Real empathy resists judgment, seeking instead to walk alongside another without becoming fused with them. The practice of empathy creates the catalytic space for transformation to occur, and it all begins with strong, active listening.

2. I feel keenly the danger of oversimplification. Astute readers may have noticed that I mentioned listening to God earlier but didn’t actually address what I believe to be an important claim.

Listening humbly to God reinforces our attention to the gospel narrative. It is the gospel narrative that must come into play as we receive and reflect on the answers that arise in response to the questions we ask the people who are entrusted to our care. When leaders begin to hear human longing and loss, when the echoes of the “Big Lies” emerge in our engagements with people, our second task is to make spiritual sense of what we are hearing and learning. [3] In essence, the answers leaders receive from good listening then are brought into engagement with the witness of the gospel, Scripture, and the Christian tradition. And although human experience is vast and diverse, the church leader who is listening well to God and who is open and vulnerable to the claims of the gospel for herself, will begin to see a way to make sense of the dilemma within a congregation or a person.

I say this with confidence – not in the ability of church leaders but in the promise and power of the Holy Spirit.

3. One more thing. The ability to make spiritual sense of what is happening in a church or in someone’s life is hard and demanding work. Realistically though, there is more work to do. The third mode of leadership is actualizing the transforming work of the gospel in response to the lies and distortions in an individual’s or a congregation’s life. And actually, I have misspoken here (do you see it?). Congregational leaders don’t really do the actualizing! That’s God’s work.

What I am attempting to say is that the third movement of leadership finds its footing in asking how to partner with God to foster insight, wisdom, transformation, growth, or renewal. That may require from us a host of practices and skills that I don’t have time to chase down in this short essay.

So let me offer this observation. As leaders in congregations, we do a lot of things. We may teach, preach, pray, and plan. We may develop programs, host events, and call on people. Such a list goes on and on. I have observed that whatever we do, we should make sure that we do all of it with the recognition that it is God who loves, restores, renews, and redeems. Let’s step away from control, and let’s really step away from trying to hold things back. God wants to do new things, and God is gracious enough to let those of us who provide leadership in congregations, to help out!

Blessings on your listening, your gospel discerning, and your partnership with God!

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[1] Scott Cormode, The Innovative Church: How Leaders and Their Congregations Can Adapt in an Ever-Changing World (Baker, 2020), 39-64.

[2] This language comes from Cormode, and I find it to be immensely useful. Cormode argues that the only leader who has followers is Jesus; church leaders have persons entrusted to their care. The emphasis on stewardship and care is an important reminder to those of us in congregational life!

[3] Cormode introduces this idea in another chapter of The Innovative Church, 65-92.

See also my recent conversation with Scott Cormode and Randy Harris through our webinar series, Intersection: Where Theology and Practice Meet.