I survived my first year in a full-time pastoral leadership position.
This position has been completely different from teaching and other project management roles I’ve had. Training in a theological seminary made everything look so easy from the outside. Those hypothetical, classroom-controlled scenarios where you developed ground breaking answers to case studies made you believe that you could conquer anything. Many buy into the notion that stellar grades on research papers or group assignments qualifies one to be an effective ministry leader.
Reality eventually will catch up with them too.
I did not enter into thing this with blinders on. The privilege of serving as a student pastor and traveled guest speaker gave me a glimpse of what I was going to be up against.
Only a glimpse—after the talk, sermon or workshop is over, people smile when the guest does well. There’s a pat on the back, sometimes an honorarium, and a passing request for you to return. This is often misleading. Great oratory is never a replacement for great leadership. You can fake it in the pulpit for 30 minutes. Not so easy to fake leadership outside of speaking moments.
So my churches endured one year of leadership from someone who has never led in this capacity before. I took everything that I’d learned about leadership over the years and looked to apply it in this context. A little over a year later, I still have the position and there haven’t been any requests from the congregation for my removal (at least to my knowledge).
Here are some of the mistakes I made in my first year of pastoral leadership.
1. Expecting movement before relationship.
I was excited about my first teaching series. I took weeks to research, plan and outline the direction for the talks. There were graphics, slides, flyers and YouTube videos. Six sermons later, I was a bit discouraged. Why haven’t we grown? Why haven’t we changed? I was giving good stuff, or so I thought. After each service, people made positive comments about the messages, but we hadn’t started moving toward the objectives that the messages were about. I’m talking about growth and change. I’m making this really easy to understand. What’s the problem.
Then it hit me. I didn’t know them.
I was merely operating from positional leadership. Had I really believed that just because I was the pastor that people would listen and be motivated to change? I needed to visit more. I needed to call more. I needed to meet people outside of the space of the church. The language needed to change. My desire was for people not to say that I was “the pastor.” I wanted them to say I was “their pastor.”
Eventually, for some, I became “their pastor,” but only after I was intentional about developing relationships with them.
Are you still operating from positional leadership? Do you expect people to listen and follow just because you’re the leader, or have you been intentional about developing relationships? Do people refer to you as “the leader” or “their leader”? What difference does it make?
