Lakeside Wesleyan Church, in Lakeside, California was the first church I served as a part-time staff member. I also had a full-time job right out of college as a Private Investigator, but my heart was always with the church.
It was a small church with a big heart, and I learned much from Rich Lauby, who was the pastor at that time. The church had no margin in the budget to pay even a modest stipend. But that didn’t stop them. The members of the church board said: “We’ll make it happen.” They all pitched in and made it happen out of their own pockets. That was my first lesson in vision and generosity as a young emerging leader.
Under the coaching and guidance of Pastor Rich, I preached my first sermon, did my first hospital visit and led the student ministry. I learned how to recruit, train and encourage volunteers and how to do effective ministry with a modest budget. That experience was formative and life changing for me.
The pastor and leaders at Lakeside impacted so many lives with the love of God and the touched the surrounding community in meaningful ways.
My time at Lakeside taught me to never underestimate the potential impact of a small church.
If you’re the pastor in a smaller church, you are partnering with God to bring the good news of Jesus and make a positive impact in the community. That is a high calling!
The leaders determine the vision, shape the ministries, raise up the volunteers and pray for God’s favor.And if your vision is big, you’ll want to pour into young and hungry leaders.
Six Helpful Practices for Leaders of Smaller Churches:
1) Stay close to God to lead with courage.
Leadership requires courage, and courage doesn’t recognize the size of a church.
When you face a fear or take a risk, it doesn’t matter if you have 50 or 500 attending your church. Whether you are at the edge of your budget or need to have a tough conversation, it feels the same regardless of the size of your congregation. The difference is the size of the leader.
Leaders grow by practicing courage. It may sound strange, but you need to practice courage one step at a time. You can’t read about it and get it. You can listen to a talk or read something and become inspired to do what you need to do, but you demonstrate courage when you step up and take action.
What is before you today that requires courage?
2) Pour your heart into developing leaders.
Think of pouring into your leaders and potential leaders like consistently depositing money in a bank account. At first, it doesn’t seem like much, but in time the dividends are substantial. The compounding nature of consistently developing leaders produces much fruit over time.
That’s how leadership development works. Starting small is ok. In fact, that’s a good idea. Leadership development is not an event-oriented program in which you see how big a crowd you can draw.
Here’s how you start.
Gather your top 5-7 leaders. Pick a good leadership book, like John Maxwell’s Five Levels of Leadership. Meet monthly (for five months) and ask these two questions.
- What are you learning?
- How are you applying what you are learning?
That’s it! In time you’ll have other groups to multiply your efforts, but simplicity and consistency are essential to the process. Start slow, invest deep.
For more depth and detail, see this post.
3) Trust God to grow your faith.
Good leaders exercise great faith. This thought has humbled me over the years because I haven’t always demonstrated great faith, occasionally allowing doubt to creep into my soul. But God is kind and grants favor while we are still growing in our faith.
I’ve learned it’s not just how strong my faith is, though that matters, it’s more about the source of my faith. The fact that I trust God for my daily breath and bread, and for every moment of leadership favor, leads to my own increasing faith.
You have faith in God for your salvation. You’ve experienced His grace and love. That’s the foundation upon which you cultivate your faith to believe God will do great things through the ministry of your church!
When we step out and stretch our faith in the moment, that leads to greater faith for a lifetime.
4) Set the bar high for excellence in your work,
Never settle for less than your best.
God wants us to be good stewards of the gifts and talents He has given us.
- What are you good at?
- What are you getting better at?
- What is the strength of your leadership?
Are you a good communicator? Perhaps you’re more of a developer? Maybe you are strong in strategy, a great shepherd of people, or a visionary with great ideas.
No leader is good at everything. You are responsible to figure out what your strength is and lean into it. Improvement is always worthwhile, but don’t try to excel at something that’s not within your gifting.
Learn where you are most gifted, lean into that strength and continue to improve.
Surround yourself with others who can buttress your weaker areas. For example, if you don’t consider yourself to be a great communicator, how do you remedy that? You can start with these two things: deliver shorter messages, about 25 minutes is good. And develop a teaching team. (You likely have one or two volunteers with the gift of teaching.)
5) Learn to embrace patience
We all want our people to grow and mature in less time, we’d like our prayers to be answered now, we want the budget to increase quicker, and our church to grow faster.
But the Kingdom of God doesn’t advance based on our desire to go faster.
Allow me to state the obvious, you can’t make your church grow any more than you can make someone get saved. Yet we are tempted to lead as if we cause the growth.
“What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
I Corinthians 3:5-7
Growth is based on God’s favor, power and plan, not merely a result of mechanical systems.
Systems are valuable and necessary, and you can do the right things like pray, encourage, develop leaders, share your faith, invite people, and teach God’s Word. But God produces the fruit that lasts. Again, we see our divine partnership with God.
It’s important to remain consistent in those things, with passion, but also with patience, because ultimately the harvest is up to God.
6) Lead in such a way that reflects God’s love
It’s curious to me that we don’t often talk about leadership and love in the same context. Love is at the core of the gospel and the foundation of spiritual leadership. It’s the unlimited source of God’s power for your ministry.
God’s love for you is extraordinary, and the core of your leadership is based on that love.
In both discouraging times and fruitful seasons, God calls us to love people. Take time to reflect on God’s love for you. It’s surprising how easily we can lose sight of that on a personal level when constantly in the trenches of ministry. Let that love flow through your leadership to all those you serve.
My prayer is that will continue to bless you and your leadership!
Another outstanding post, Dan. Thank you for these tasty morsels of wisdom and encouragement. I’m about to forward it to a pastor friend.