Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Leadership in the Context of Church Planting

The following is a portion of a statement drafted at Calvin Theological Seminary in a recent consultation with church planters. For more, see “Leadership: A Working Definition,” a document prepared by the Leadership Development Team of the Christian Reformed Church, available at the CRC’s Resources page. Also see CICW’s Leadership page.

Characteristics. Leaders are leaders, but the context of church planting evokes leaders with particular gifts/passions/dispositions such as:
- Strong interest in outreach/evangelism, care for the outsider, love for the lost
- Live on the adventure end of a continuum between security and adventure
- Creative, entrepreneurial, architects/builders (build something out of nothing), problem solvers
- Self-starters
- Relational orientation, are pragmatists, and evangelists at heart.
- Ability to deal with anxiety, failure, time management, self care is required

Leader vs. Leadership. The emphasis on leaders and leadership sometimes is in tension with pastoral identity. These are not antithetical or mutually exclusive, but pastoral identity is deeper than leadership functions.
-  The challenge of leadership is not so much a technical challenge as a spiritual one - being attentive to God, what God is doing, where God’s power is being made manifest. People long not for strong leaders, but for the power of God.
-  Church Planters learn to make failure their friend - if not, they fail.
-  Tend to value team ministry and are eager to ‘equip the saints’ in the work of building God’s church.

Vision.  Leadership in church planting settings requires deep conviction, passion, vision, but church planting leaders today put less emphasis on bringing a finely worked out vision and more time identifying the gifts and ministry opportunities and directions that arise out of the people God has gathered at a particular place at a particular time. Identifying the vision is not the challenge as much as identifying the convergence of this vision, with this pastor, with this group, in this community, at this time.
-  When it comes to vision, a church planter needs to have the flexibility to hold on to that vision loosely, because it will likely morph as the church develops.

Posted by Nathan Bierma on 09/28 at 09:44 AM
Leadership • Worshipping Communities • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

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