Some Common Delays: Problems in Developing Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini

One of the problems in building a home is construction delays. It seems as if construction has no sooner begun than it comes to a screeching halt. Bad weather, a shortage of materials, inspection failures, and problem workers can lead to delays that cause the homeowner stress and anguish. When my wife and I (Aubrey) were having a house built, I can remember many days asking my wife why the builders weren't working on our house.

In the process of building your leadership-development process, you should be aware of some of the delays you're likely to encounter. An awareness of these potential hazards can save much time, anguish, and discouragement. We've encountered these while working with churches as they have designed their unique leadership-development models. Following are six common delays.

Existing Leaders' Inability

Leader inability is a primary cause for delays in the leadership-development process. This means that the existing leadership doesn't have the training to equip other leaders. The simple truth is that most churches want to develop leaders but don't know how. As previously mentioned, many seminaries do a tremendous job at equipping pastors to teach Scripture but have not adequately emphasized and taught godly organizational leadership. The purpose of this book is to provide the blueprints, tools, and construction guidelines to increase leaders' ability to develop spiritual leaders at every level of their church.

To clarify this first delay, by way of analogy, imagine that you have been given a new job assignment: One hundred people have been entrusted to your care as a sports league manager. Your job is to assemble, out of the hundred people, a football, basketball, and volleyball team for competitive purposes. It is important to select and train team players as well as team captains and coaches. You are given the freedom to play any role in the development of these teams that you want.

It so happens that you, the league manager, have no strategic or athletic know-how for selecting team coaches and captains. Although you have the best training in understanding the rule book, which is obviously a very valuable skill, it is not enough. You need to be equipped to manage. Your inability becomes a major obstacle to the development of the teams.

Existing Leaders' Need for Ministry Control

The second delay is the problem of leader unwillingness. This problem occurs when existing leadership values its control of the ministry over the growth of the ministry. When leaders fear that they will lose power in the ministry and are reluctant to develop new leaders, they must ask if such fear is from God. The cost of such a desire to control is huge both for individuals and the church at large. It costs individuals, because they are being robbed of the opportunity to have their gifts, skills, and abilities nurtured and developed. It costs the church at large, because ministry expansion is limited to the resources of a few, rather than released to the resources of the many. Ultimately this means fewer people coming to Christ and growing in Christ.

Recently I (Will) encountered this attitude while consulting with two different churches. Both churches are trying to develop a greater sense of community in their adult Sunday school. When I introduced the idea of small groups meeting off-campus on a different day of the week, one pastor told me, "I just don't feel comfortable giving away that much control." Then in jest he added' 'Not that I have that much control anyway; I'm just not ready to go there." The issue touched him at a deep emotional level, and by his own admission, the issue centered on his desire for control. In the next chapter, on the challenge of empowerment, we will work through this obstacle.

Before moving to the next delay, we want to answer a potential objection. Pastors should view their role of shepherd as one of providing protection for their sheep. The Pastoral Epistles are loaded with concepts and language, such as entrusted and guard, that relate to the pastoral role of providing protection (1 Tim. 1:2-4; 4:6; 6:20-21; 2 Tim. 1:14; 4:1-4, 15; Titus 1:3, 9; 2:1). These passages teach that the pastor has been given the unique responsibility of guarding and "controlling" the integrity of the gospel message to protect the sheep.

The key point of clarification is that the pastor is entrusted with the communication of a pure gospel, not with the doing of the ministry. On the one hand, the pastor is called to protect the sheep by guarding the gospel against false teaching and doctrinal impurity. When it comes to the doing of the ministry, on the other hand, the pastor is called not to guard but to give away. Paul highlights this in Ephesians 4:11-13, when he clarifies that pastors are to equip the saints for the works of service.

In the sports league illustration, the problem of leader unwillingness resembles a sad parody. Imagine a community of a hundred people, many of whom have athletic and leadership abilities; some even have significant experience in football, basketball, and volleyball. Yet when it comes time to compete, the league manager takes the role of team captain in each sport. In the football game he takes off his manager's hat and puts on the quarterback's jersey. On the basketball court he plays point guard, and on the volleyball court he steps up as captain. Every once in a while players on the bench wonder if the teams would be stronger if the league manager would give someone else a chance, but the thought quickly vanishes because, after all, he is the league manager. Besides, he knows the rule book better than anyone else.

No Distinction between Leadership and Discipleship

Leader misperception can cause another delay. When leadership does not discern the difference between building leaders and making disciples, it lives with a blind spot. Leader-developers must distinguish between making disciples, developing mature disciples, and making leaders.

Discipleship development is a much broader concept than leadership development, because it targets everyone. Leadership is for a limited number of maturing disciples.

Everyone Should Become Jesus' Disciple

Discipleship targets everyone. The church's mission, according to the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20), is to "go and make disciples of all nations." This is evangelism. Jesus isn't instructing the church merely to find believers and mature them. Instead, the goal is to win lost people to Christ — to make disciples. However, the process must not end there. In addition, in verses 19 and 20, Jesus tells the church to baptize and teach these disciples, that is, to lead them to maturity. Therefore, the church's mission or commission is to win lost people (make disciples) and help them become mature disciples (make and mature disciples).

Not all disciples, even mature ones, will become leaders, at least in the narrow sense defined in chapter 1. The problems come when we confuse the two. A good disciple may become but doesn't automatically make a good leader. Some disciples will make good leaders, and some will make even better followers. The church of the twenty-first century desperately needs good followers as well as leaders.

Not Everyone Is a Leader

Leadership is a narrow concept. It targets a limited number of maturing disciples. Early in the process, as disciples grow and mature, experienced leaders should assess them to determine their gifts and abilities. In this way leaders will emerge. They may display natural and spiritual gifts of leadership or they may develop leadership skills. Thus leadership builds on discipleship. It's not only foundational but also imperative that a ministry develop its potential leaders as disciples; otherwise, they will find it most difficult to function well as leaders in the church. Leaders must be growing disciples. However, as disciples are developed, they must receive training in leadership so they can be good leaders.

The sports league illustration shows the problem of leader misperception clearly. Simply stated, the league manager has failed to discern the need for team captains or team coaches as distinct roles from the players themselves. The manager has done a great job of making athletes out of his community. He has even eloquently conveyed the content of the rule book each week. But the teams consistently seem to underperform. The manager puts the best athletes in charge of the teams, but the players never really grow as a team unit. The manager has not discovered that while some are better athletes than others (disciples), there are some who are better team captains (leaders) than others. Within the process of developing athletes, the manager has never devised a separate process for developing team captains.

Inadequate Church Mobilization

Another delay is caused by church inactivity. That is, there is a lack of ministry context from which to find leaders and in which to develop leaders. A mobilized congregation is rich soil for the sprouting and nurturing of leaders. Even if you have other essential aspects like seeds, water, and sunlight, without the soil, there will be no plant life. Likewise, a leadership-development process requires the essential elements of ability and willingness, but without the context — clusters of people engaged in ministry — leaders won't grow.

I (Will) see this dynamic played out in two primary ways when I consult with some churches. The first relates to the sheer age of members who have borne the load of ministry over the course of twenty or thirty years. I call this the weary church. If a young leader comes along, they allow him to do as much ministry as he wants, but there is no one for him to lead into ministry.

There are also church structures that inhibit mobilized ministry. I call this the shackled church. For example, a committee selects a young leader as committee chairman. The committee, however, does not function as an actual ministry team. The committee members may make decisions about "ministry," but they are not doing ministry. While committees may be important and necessary, and while leadership is about decision making, a church with too much decision-making structure inhibits leader development because there is more "talk" than "walk." Leaders must be more than talkers. I have seen scores of potential leaders leave both wearied and shackled churches because of the deep-seated, undermobilized church culture.

In the sports league scenario, the problem of mobilization looks like the coach leading all of the teams (football, basketball, and volleyball) with the same fifteen people. The other eighty-five in the community are spectators. They may talk about what plays they like, and they may even cheer for their team, but they are reluctant to get out of the stands and into the game. The coach makes a constant attempt to recruit more players but to no avail. The result is a desertlike environment that limits the opportunity to grow leaders. In chapter 9 the topic of mobilization is considered further as an important component when designing the leadership-development process.

Task-Oriented Church Culture

Another delay is caused by the problem of church overactivity — the opposite of the previous delay of inactivity. To some pastors the thought that there are churches in which a majority of the people are struggling with too much activity may be surprising. It can happen in a core group of fifty people who are preparing to launch a church or in an extremely fast-growing congregation of one thousand passionately working to touch its community with the gospel message.

I (Will) served on a staff for which this was a major concern. The seeker service ministry had grown by one thousand people in four years. At the same time more than 85 percent of those committed to church membership were involved in significant ministry. Several other pastors and I agreed that we had pushed our people too hard. Our efforts to offset the tendency toward a task-dominated ministry included the selection of "sanity" as one of our five core values early in the life of the church.

The task-dominated approach, unknowingly, tends to use and ultimately abuse leaders. This is what happens when people spend most of their time leading and ministering without taking time for training and personal development, especially in the area of character. For example, the people in one church that I (Aubrey) worked with told me they weren't interested in becoming or even being called leaders because, in that context, it meant taking on more responsibility when they were already loaded down with work. To be a leader in this church meant being overworked.

One key diagnostic question to ask yourself and your current leaders is How much time do you spend working on the ministry versus working in the ministry? Working in the ministry is doing the ministry work. Working on the ministry includes anything that improves how the ministry work is done. All uses of time can be placed in one of these two categories.1

The difficulty with working on the ministry is that it limits the time to work in the ministry — a tension that every leader feels. If your leaders are never working on the ministry, you are working in a task-dominated church culture. If this is the case, leadership development is a huge challenge because it means working on the ministry and not in the ministry.

The task-oriented delay can be illustrated by the sports league situation. In the previous scenario the majority of players were sitting in the stands. Now large numbers are overworked on the playing field. The worst art is not that the players get tired-that is natural for any athlete. The challenge is that the teams never get better, and the teams never keep layers for the long haul. As crazy as it sounds, the players can never practice or run drills because they have too many games. The coaches ever review games on film, spend time with their team captain, or allow layers to attend training camps. The teams spend so much time playing 'n the game that they have no time left to work on their game.

No Vision for Ministry

The sixth delay is the problem of church misalignment. A vision for ministry refers to the stated mission, values, and strategy of the church.

These vision statement components are like the DNA of the church; every leader, ministry, program, and process should begin with a clear understanding of them. The vision serves as a compass, keeping leaders aligned, that is, pointed in the same direction and motivated toward a common picture of what the future looks like. The vision path is critical to the leadership-development process and should be a part of the core content that is repeated and retold so that leaders can share and own the vision. If there is no clear vision path, the misalignment of direction and motivations will make the development of leaders difficult if not impossible. You cannot develop leaders without being crystal clear on the questions Why are we here? and Where are we going?

I (Aubrey) have devoted much of my previous writing to helping pastors and leaders in the areas of ministry vision and strategic planning. If you are ready to pursue further reading on these subjects, start with Advanced Strategic Planning (Baker, 1999).

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Does your ministry have a disciple-making (evangelism) and maturing (edification) process? If yes, how would you distinguish it from a potential leadership-training process?

2. What are the top two or three delays in leadership development that you're currently facing? What factors contribute to these delays?

3. Starting with the most problematic delay, list some action steps you could take to overcome it. Who else needs to be aware of the delay? Who else may be a resource to help in developing and implementing the action steps?

4. What church ministries, groups, or committees are structured in a way that inhibits lay mobilization and the doing of ministry?

5. Does vour church have a clear statement of mission, vision, values, and strategy that serve to clarify and align the direction and identity of the church? If yes, how can you place this at the center of the leadership-development process? If no, list the action steps to begin developing these statements.

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Excerpted from Building Leaders: Blueprints for Developing Leadership at Every Level of Your Church by Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright © 2004, All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. (www.bakerbooks.com)

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Notes

1. The original idea of this distinction of how time is spent came from Steve Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 54. He states that time is spent either in production or in production capacity improvement.

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Aubrey Malphurs is professor of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary and president of the Malphurs Group, a training and consulting organization.

Will Mancini is a consultant with John Manlove Church Marketing.