Bill Easums Observations

I had a conversation today that caused me to think.  The pastor had a lot of balls in the air.  In fact too many.  So the the thought came to me about another rule of management (see previous post).

Rule Number Six:  Never be too Buy to Lead. Sounds like a no brainer but I challenge you to evaluate how many hours you are working and if you have a staff how much time do you spend leading them?  If you are working over 50 hours a week and little to none of it is on managing staff then you are too busy to lead.

Think about it.  Growing a church requires doing triage with your time.  You can’t be all things to all people and have the time to strategically hire the right staff and hold them accountable to the clearly defined goals. When you’re small (under 500) you have to take the time to learn how to hire and fire and set clear expectations.  When you grow you have to spend time evaluating staff and replacing those who don’t meet your expectations.  If you have never hired any or much staff you don’t know the countless hours are spent searching, interviewing, and vetting a new person.  It takes a lot of time.  And if you’re tired from being busy the odds are you will make the wrong choice.  Then the real fun begins- cleaning up a bad hire. It can get ugly.

Rule Number Seven:  Learn to Listen.Someone in the group suggested this practice and I agree. And it takes time to listen carefully enough to the hopes and dreams of staff to know how to help them succeed.  Remember, the basic rule of thumb in a church over 400 in worship is learning to measure your success by what others achieve under your leadership.

Bill Easum
www.effectivechurch.com
easum@aol.com

What ever happened to the guidance of the Holy Spirit when it comes to making decisions in the church? Do we really believe that voting on something is the way to go?  Shouldn’t we be trying to discern God’s will rather than the will of the congregation? Are academic credentials really more important than charismatic, Holy Spirit filled leadership?

These are just some of the questions I continually raise when I see the way most church structures have been high-jacked by Modernity, Democracy and Roberts Rules of Order. Our way of organizing and running the church is so far removed from what we see in the Acts of the Apostles that one wonders how we could have strayed so far from the path.  We seem more enamored by secular business practices than we are by God’s way of doing things.

In the Acts of the Apostles, which should be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, we see a very different form of church administration than we do today.  If we were to rely more on the Holy Spirit than on modern, democratic models we would:

1. Throw Robers Rules of Order out the door and never allow it back in.
2. We would place more emphasis on deciding God’s will rather than the will of the congregation.
3. We would be more like a charismatic organism where spontaneous response to what God is already up to if more important than voting on what the majority wants to do.
4. Our structures would be flexible and our job descriptions would be fluid enough to allow the Holy Spirit to redirect our actions like it did with Stephen when it shifted his job from waiting tables to preaching the Gospel.
5. Denominational structures would be replaced by church-to-church structures based on what is needed to transform each churches community.
6. Those in leadership would only be those who were demonstrating serious serventhood who lead by example rather than telling others what they can and can’t do.
7. Rather than being a democracy, administration would be invested in a few Godly people who were trusted by the congregation because of how they lived.
8. The most important tasks of the official leaders would be to explore how to interpret and deliver the message Jesus Christ is risen.
9. Decisions would be made communally rather than top down- discernment rather than voting.
10. Prayer, in the form of collective listening, and discernment based on Scripture would take the place of voting.
11. Ripened and disciplined leaders who have a loving relationship with the congregation would replace academically trained leaders.

Now if you think this is pie in the sky thinking, just read the Acts of the Apostles and you will see that not only is it possible, but it has happened.  It if happened once it can happen again.

If you want to read more about this type of administration, read the book, Foundations of Church Leadership, edited by Petersen, Thomas, and Whitesel

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com