How To Create A Culture Of Leadership In Your Church

We’ve written before about the reasons why pastors need to “give ministry away”. It’s our job to do ministry through people, not to people. Every believer should be on mission as part of their local church body; they shouldn’t just be sitting passively in the pews and letting paid staff have all the fun.

If your church is not discipling and empowering Members to utilize their leadership gifts, you need to start. However, making such a change may require a major shift in your church’s culture. Staff and Members will have different roles, and both mindset and processes will have to change.

So how do you go about creating a culture of leadership in your church?

Start with Prayer

Prayer may seem like a given, but think of how much work and effort we often do before we pray. We make announcements, beg people from the stage, or try to network more to find that hidden leader. In all of this, we are ignoring the primary command of Christ when it comes to raising up fellow shepherds. When Jesus saw the crowds in Matthew 9, He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Why pray? Because it’s not your harvest. It is God’s harvest, and He is the one most interested in raising up laborers. It is God who stirs the hearts of people. So yes, there is more to do after you pray, but make it a regular practice to pray that the Lord of the harvest would raise up the right people at the right time.

Communicate Clearly What Your Job Is

Pastors and teachers are called “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-12). That is your biblical job description. The saints—all of the saints in your church—should be doing the work of ministry; your job is to equip them for that work.

If your church is accustomed to a “show up, pay up, and shut up” model, where Members’ involvement is mostly limited to filling the offering plate, you will have to communicate this change in culture. You may need to publicly repent and ask forgiveness for how you’ve been doing things. You’re not helping people by doing all the work for them; you are cheating them out of getting to experience God working through them and using their God-given talents to build up the kingdom.

If you are on staff at a church but not in charge, this may require confronting senior leadership and “leading up” to encourage necessary change. Start creating a culture of leadership by demonstrating it yourself in the way that you speak up and challenge the status quo.

Create First-Serve Opportunities

We’re not suggesting that you turn over the leadership of an important ministry to someone that you don’t know and trust. Instead, you need places that you can deploy people to let them get their feet wet and start serving. We call these “first-serve opportunities,” because they are usually the first place that new people serve. The qualifications for first-serve opportunities are minimal; people don’t necessarily have to be mature in the faith. Examples include the parking team, greeters, and (after a background check) helping take care of kids in the nursery.

First-serve opportunities are not just busy work that you make up to give people something to do; they are things that are actually helpful and need to be done. But they are also not critical roles. We wouldn’t let a stranger off the street lead a class, lead worship, or really “lead” anything. 1 Timothy 3:10 tells us to test individuals before putting them in leadership. So you should observe people in the first-serve volunteer pool in order to identify potential leaders who can be trained to take on more advanced roles.

Develop a Training Process

Once you have identified faithful volunteers whom you can trust, you should equip them for leadership.

Don’t think that you need to have a complicated leadership development program, especially at first. Although our staff has developed specific training classes over time, we started with just “bring your Bible and we’ll figure it out.” We brought together small groups of people and spent time discipling them. Discipleship is really what it’s all about. Take what you have learned and teach it to others, so that they can then do the same (2 Timothy 2:2).

Give Feedback

Part of discipling and developing people is giving feedback—letting them know what they have done right, and where they could still improve.

We have a high-feedback culture at Watermark. We provide feedback immediately after each event to both staff and volunteer leaders. It is not because we are critical; it’s because we are loving. Loving someone means selflessly doing what is in their long-term best interests. So, if you see something that is holding someone back from being the kind of leader God would have them be, the loving thing to do is to make them aware of the problem and help them improve. As our friend and co-laborer Rob Barry often says, “When you admonish me, you tell me that you love me.” (To learn more about how to effectively handle feedback, check out our podcast episodes on Giving and Receiving Feedback, Speaking With Candor, and Responding to Criticism.)

Throw People in the Deep End—But Have Lifeguards

On-the-job training is the most effective and efficient way to teach leadership. Adults learn things on a need-to-know basis, and by having them do the task, they suddenly have a strong need to know.

Because of this, part of our training process is to throw our new leaders in the deep end. Instead of spending years taking them through every conceivable discipleship class, we teach them leadership basics and then let them start putting them into practice. We have them facilitate a small group or co-lead a session, and then give feedback to help them learn from the experience.

However, we also have “lifeguards” nearby—experienced leaders who are on hand to jump in and help out if needed. For example, we often have co-leaders, and we intentionally pair up a stronger or more experienced leader with someone who has less experience. After going through that process and gaining experience, the novice becomes an expert who can then help train a new co-leader.

Get Started

Creating these changes can be hard, but it is worth it. Doing so will result in a healthier church, where disciples are made and Members get to discover, develop, and deploy their gifts. Start empowering and unleashing your church to make a difference and live on mission together.