How to tell you’re no leader

Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. (Luke 6:26)

Let’s just come right out and say it up front:

Unless someone is not constantly on your case, mad at you, irritated, and upset with you all the time, you are no leader.

The would-be leader who fails to recognize this will be constantly bewildered by the reactions of the people he has been sent to serve.

He comes into a church with a divine mandate. (This is not pious talk. He has been called by the Heavenly Father into this ministry and sent by Him to this church. If that’s not a divine mandate, nothing is.) He proceeds to take the reins and lead out. To his utter amazement, the very people he expected to welcome his ministry, to support his vision, to affirm his godliness, to volunteer their service–those very people–stand back and carp and criticize and find fault.

This was the last thing he expected.

Because he’s human, he begins to wonder: Did I make a mistake in coming here? Am I doing something wrong? Are these people not God’s children? Should I stay? Should I leave?

My answer: You’re doing just fine, preacher. Stay the course.

Salt is an irritant. We have been sent into this world as its salt (Matthew 5:13).

Light hurts the eyes. We were sent as the light of the world (Matthew 5:14). The brighter it shines, the more darkness resists it, resents it, runs from it.

This is as good a place as any to state the obvious: Many people occupying places of leadership inside our churches are not leaders. I’m talking about pastors, staffers, deacons, and other so-called leaders.

They may qualify as counselors, program directors, consensus builders, negotiators, mediators, affirmers, or even teachers. But they are not leaders.

A leader by the very definition stands apart from the crowd, pointing and pushing and urging them onward to a destination that many cannot understand, do not see, and are not sure they want. The more forcibly he or she leads, the greater some will react against his message and his methods.

Thankfully, not all. But there will always be some who oppose any challenge to the status quo.

Perfectionism is one of the leader’s greatest enemies. If he waits until 100 percent of the team is on board, they will still be sitting there when Jesus returns.

When a leader insists on the enthusiastic support and complete approval of every last member of the team, the work grinds to a halt and all forward progress ends at that point.

The ramifications of this for leaders is enormous.

1. We must jettison our need for and insistence on pleasing everyone.

A pastor was called to a church by a vote of 98 ‘for’ to 2 ‘against.’ It bothered him so much that two people had opposed him, he spent the first six months in the church finding out who they were, and the next six months winning them over. At the end of his first year, that pastor was fired. The vote was 98 against and 2 for.

Our Lord Jesus said, I always do the things that please the Father (John 8:29). Paul said, If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10).

If I serve well and my congregation is happy and supportive, good. We’re not suggesting otherwise.

However, if a segment of the membership is upset, that does not necessarily mean I’m doing something wrong.

But either way, it’s a matter between them and the Lord. I must work not to take their criticism or rejection personally. God said to Samuel, “It’s not you they have rejected, but me” (I Samuel 8:7).

2. We must accept that some are always going to be unhappy with us, no matter what we do.

When some members of my congregation were working to end my ministry, I learned that the ringleaders had decided before I ever arrived that they did not like me and would need to replace me. It provided scant comfort to know there was nothing personal about it, that it was all made up of whole cloth. I was given no chance at all to do the work God sent me there to do. Everything about that was sad.

However, that said, had I let their opposition rob me of my joy in the Lord and divert me from the assignment the Lord had given, it would have been sinful toward God, suicidal toward my calling, and self-defeating toward the work of the church.

3. We must choose whether God’s will or the pleasure of the people is more valuable to us.

Most pastors are by nature people pleasers, I imagine. When members of the congregation rave about his sermons and are excitedly telling the community how well the church is prospering, he feels affirmed. Likewise, when they criticize his sermons and spread their disaffection throughout the community, he tends to lose heart and grow discouraged.  It’s human nature.

The remedy? A pastor should be such a man of prayer that he knows beyond a doubt the direction he is plotting for the church is from God. Without that, he will not be able to stand up under the onslaught of the naysayers.

4. In any church that moves forward, some people are always going to be dropping by the wayside, upset that they are not getting their way.

I asked a ministry leader whom I know well and respect highly to comment on my thesis here, that “Unless someone is not constantly mad at you all the time, you are no leader.” He said, You will hack off people if you are NOT leading or if you are. Either way, you are going to upset some. So, just choose which group you want on your team, the winners or the whiners.

5. Some of those who are the angriest and leave the soonest may be your best workers.

That is one of the hardest truths for a new pastor to absorb. He comes in to a church with the enthusiastic endorsement of the pastor search committee and counts on those leaders for their full support and involvement. A year later, if he has been a visionary leader, some of them cannot be found.

Over lunch with a friend who had invited me to speak to his congregation, I said, “You came to this church three years ago. How is it different now?”

The first words out of his mouth told of members who had grown disaffected with him and had pulled out. Not all of those hurt the church when they left. One woman told him, “I know I got in the flesh there toward the end, but tough!”

The one that hurt the most, my friend said, was a man who had been a member of the search committee that found him and brought him to this church. As he made his exit from the church, the fellow told the pastor, “I know that we told you the church needs to change or it’s going to die. And I know we told you we would support you in making the changes.” He paused and said thoughtfully, “But I never thought those changes would affect me personally.”

6. The pastor who exercises true leadership will find out quickly whether the Lord is sufficient for his needs.

Not every leader of a church, not every staffer or deacon or pastor, is a complete human with great mental health. Some of us are incomplete people, with gaping holes inside which we seek to fill with significant people who will complete us and affirm us and help us be all we should be for the Lord.

That’s not all bad. In a perfect world, a church would supply those needs and fill those potholes in our psyches and all would be well.

But this is a fallen world.

Every member of every church is completely human. He Himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. (Psalm 103:14) All have sinned, none are righteous. Okay, we’re clear on that?

This means therefore that the spiritual leader will be standing in front of a group of needy people asking them to follow him in accomplishing God’s purpose on earth. That may mean 25 people forming a church in a poverty-stricken part of town. It may mean 2500 moving out to reach the world for Jesus. Or something in between.

By its very nature, spiritual leadership requires that the “man in front” of the crowd get his bearings from the Lord God. It requires that he know the way and conveys that way to other key leaders. And it requires that he not be dissuaded by those who have their own concept of what the way is or how best to reach it.

Either God calls pastors as leaders or He doesn’t.

How we decide that determines a thousand things about how we will follow his leadership.

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