Laws of Leadership

Detroit Piston basketball coach Flip Saunders was fired last week. This despite the fact that the Pistons have made the playoffs every year that he was the coach. But for some teams who have a history of success, mild success is not good enough. In times of trouble, organizations usually look for new leadership. When pro sports teams don't perform, they fire the coach. Most pro teams have about the same level of talent. It is just getting that talent to perform as a team to make them the best team that is the difficult task.

When a church is failing, they never look to the contentious people in the church and tell them to change or leave. They fire the pastor! A successful businessman who made gazillions buying out washed up hotel chains says when he takes over a chain, he always does two things:

1. Retrain all the workers concerning customer service &

2. Fire the man at the top

He was asked whether or not he has ever met with the leader to see if maybe he was a quality leader after all. The man said, "NEVER!, if he was a quality leader, the company wouldn't be in the shape that it's in."

I think there is a lot of truth here applicable to the church. But at the same time, there are differences when you are dealing with volunteers vs. paid employees. Can you imagine giving all the members in your church a performance evaluation?

But, bottom line, your church is only going to be successful as far as it has good leadership. In many churches, the pastoral staff is not in reality the leadership of the church. Leadership is not position, but influence. Which we will look at in another post.