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4 Common Mistakes That Will Cause Your Church To Struggle

common leadership mistakes

Let’s face it, leadership isn’t easy.

If leadership was easy, more people would lead and lead more successfully. But leadership is nuanced. It’s relational, situational and most of the complex stuff isn’t limited to one right answer.

Leadership is often the fine art of the right decision at the right moment for the right people.

The same decision in the same situation at a different time with different people could be disastrous.

We all make mistakes. That’s part of the territory if you are a leader.

Fortunately, there are a number of foundational principles and leadership values that if consistently followed will dramatically reduce the mistakes we make, or at least lessen the level of their impact.

In fact, we’ve learned so much from these principles that we know many of the common mistakes.

So why do we repeat these mistakes?

There are several reasons we repeat mistakes.

  • We are tempted to take an easier or shorter path.
  • We are under pressure that we want to avoid or escape.
  • We are convinced we can do it on our own.
  • We did not learn from past experience.

Sometimes we repeat mistakes because the church is larger, the stakes are higher and the pressure is greater. The remedy is to never stop growing. Don’t allow all the demands on your time to crowd out time for you to invest in your continued growth as a leader.

Sometimes we lack the faith that we can ever truly be a better leader. But I’m writing today to tell you that you can.

You can become a better leader.

If we could have a cup of coffee together, I’d share some of my leadership mistakes and we could talk about how you can avoid some of your own. But for today, let me share four of the more common mistakes that if you put your mind to it, you can avoid.

4 Common Mistakes

1. Choosing Performance Over Reliance

Performance mode is a great temptation. It comes from a good place, the gifts, talent, energy and drive God gave you. But when that replaces reliance upon God as the source it’s always a mistake.

Performance rather than reliance is essentially doing things God isn’t asking you to do and carrying a load He doesn’t need you to carry. It’s when we take ministry into our own hands and out of His.

I describe it like trying to “muscle” things forward. If it’s not working, you just push harder. (I’ve done this way too often.) Don’t misunderstand, working hard is necessary, but that’s different than performing so you look good or gain a certain amount of success.