You gave so much of your life to everyone this week, but who gave to you?
You led your team through a staff meeting they will be better for. You prepared a sermon that the whole church learned from but can’t believe how much went into it. You counseled someone through their dark night of the soul and helped facilitate a board meeting that began to cast vision for the local church body. By Sunday evening, you have poured into your deacons, volunteers, youth, and families that you may never see again. Yet, no one has stopped to ask,
Who poured into you?
This is the situation in too many churches that invest in small group curriculum, greeters, and volunteers but not the leader who holds the potential to shape the leadership potential of every other leader in the church.
The Math Doesn’t Add Up
“Everything is dependent upon leadership,” is a phrase that is both accurate and true, especially when it comes to the local church. The success of the church is largely, if not completely, dependent upon the success of the leader. Which is why, when a pastor reaches a point of plateau in their personal and leadership development, the local church plateaus right along with them. The reality is, in most local churches, the development of pastoral leadership is abandoned at the end of seminary.
Trips to the annual church conference in the fall, podcasts on the way to visit a homebound church member, and books read on the beach during summer vacation are all appropriate and necessary ways to gain knowledge and insight.
However, this type of ad hoc learning is not strategic, systematic, or appropriate to a leader’s own development
Pastoral leadership is so frequently given lip service in favor of practical ministry that few church leaders could describe a vision for it. This isn’t because they are being dismissive; they simply have never had leaders who helped them understand how important it is.
Isolation Is The First Symptom
Ask a group of pastors when the last time was that another pastor had given them pastoral leadership advice, and you will likely get some pretty uncomfortable silence.
Ministry is a people business. We lead people and pour into people. We are constantly surrounding ourselves with people we are trying to lead or influence. This is appropriate and necessary, but we are far less likely to surround ourselves with people who know how to lead and influence us.
Moses learned this lesson the hard way when he was leading Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness. After several days, the people were coming to his tent from sunrise until sunset, and his father-in-law Jethro confronted him. “What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out,” Jethro said (Exodus 18:17-18). Jethro pointed out to him that Moses was going to burn out trying to carry this responsibility alone. He advised him to delegate some responsibility to others who could carry this load with him (verses 21-23). Without strategic leadership development, we quickly become like Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Plateau Looks Like Competence
Most leaders reach a plateau without really thinking about it. It’s rare that we choose to stop growing; instead, circumstances often combine to make it so that we are barely able to continue going. We continue to lead people, but we are no longer able to lead people to go further than we have gone before. Our ministries become stagnant, our leadership pipelines constrict, and our visions for the church begin to dwindle because the only way to move forward is to find someone who is operating on a higher level than us and allow them to inspire and influence us.
The potential for ministry that is locked away in our local congregations may well be limited by the leadership plateau of our pastor. This is the ultimate reason why so many churches struggle with succession planning, because the people who are able to move forward and multiply must be found above those who are trying to move forward and multiply.
Burnout Is The Byproduct Of Isolation And Plateau
Isolation and the burnout that comes with it are the forces most responsible for the stories we hear so often about pastors walking away from the ministry. It was Paul, who understood the burden that was placed upon the shoulders of those who lead God’s people, that charged Timothy with the responsibility of investing in people who would invest in others. “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2, NIV). The antidote to isolation and the resulting burnout is to invest in other leaders so that no leader is carrying a burden beyond what they are able to bear.
You Can Name The Problem Without Feeling Ashamed
If any of this resonates with you on a personal level, or if this feels like an unfair judgment, know that it is not meant to be. This is not a criticism of the local church’s unwillingness to invest in leadership development. It is instead a recognition that the problem has always been that leadership development, on the part of those in leadership positions, has not been seen as something that is necessary to the work of the church. God has called you to a certain type of ministry, but He has also called you to be well and take care of yourself so that you can serve those He has entrusted to your care.
Seeing The Problem Is The First Step Toward Solving It
Now that we see the problem, we can begin to look at practical ways to solve it. We can invest in systems and structures that recognize and respect the reality of the people we lead and serve. EQUIP exists to serve those who serve within the local church, both here and abroad. We have walked alongside churches in more than 170 countries to help them see the value in developing those who lead in order to better serve those who are being led. If you feel this is a burden that you need to release, learn how EQUIP walks alongside church leaders in their development at iequip.org.
