John Maxwell was and is a Wesleyan minister who has pastored several churches in Indiana, Ohio, California and Florida. He has written many books on the subject of leadership, and held conferences on leadership all over the country. He has written and said many good and helpful things on leadership, but as far as I’m concerned, the best and most helpful thing he ever said was in an interview with Dr. James Dobson back in the mid-nineties.
Dr. Dobson’s organization, Focus On The Family, had begun issuing a series of cassette tapes specifically aimed at pastors. Each tape contained an interview with various people on some aspects of ministry. During the course of the interview with John Maxwell, Maxwell said this: “Leadership is influence.” That’s a direct quote,and it was an epiphany to me. I have long since given away that cassette tape to another minister…and if I still had it, I’m not sure I have a working tape machine to play it on anymore. But what he said on that tape has stuck with me.
Maxwell said (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘When a young minister becomes the pastor of a church, he might think that he’s the leader because he has a title: pastor. But he isn’t the leader yet. Leadership is influence. And influence is only gained by faithfulness and time. As you are faithful in fulfilling your ministry, and as people watch you over time, they will come to trust you. You can’t influence others if they don’t trust you. They won’t trust you until they come to know you. And that takes time.’
That is incredibly wise advice. Let me repeat the part that rings in my soul: Leadership is influence. And influence is only gained by faithfulness and time. A title does not automatically give you leadership. Leadership is influence, and influence cannot be demanded. It has to be earned. This applies no matter what your title might be: pastor, CEO, supervisor, group leader, foreman, employee, volunteer…even church member.
Many people come to a church with their own set of expectations about what a church should be. In this respect, it’s like a marriage: the bride and the groom both come to the marriage with their own expectations. Their expectations will overlap somewhat (hopefully), but they won’t be the same. Part of having a successful marriage is negotiating the inevitable conflicts that result from those differing, often assumed and unspoken, expectations. The illustration breaks down, because when it comes to the church, the Lord Jesus is the Bridegroom, and the church is His Bride. But the application is still valid.
People come to a church, too, with their own set of expectations. Often, not always, those expectations are unspoken. Then when the pastor or the church doesn’t meet their expectations, they are unhappy.
Some come into a church and begin to demand right away that the church meet their expectations. When that doesn’t happen right away, they often cause conflict and division. They don’t understand that leadership is influence, and it takes time to influence others, even in a church.
My friend Pastor Steve Goens told me once, “Brother David, it’s like getting married. Don’t look for a church you can change into what you want. Look for a church you’re already compatible with.” I think that’s good advice for people seeking a church home, too.
It’s not that you shouldn’t try to make your marriage, or your church, better. Of course you should. Martin Luther said that the church should be in a continual process of reformation, i.e., continually looking to the Bible and making course corrections. But that process always starts with you. You work at being the best husband, or the best wife—or the best church member—you can be. And let God work on the heart of your spouse. Or the congregation.
It is unwise for a pastor, or a church member, to come to a church and immediately demand that things start conforming to your vision of how things should be. Let me share a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his classic book Life Together. Brace yourself; it’s powerful. Here’s what he said:
“God hates visionary dreaming. It makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”
Well, that wipes out most of the contemporary advice given to pastors and churches. But there’s more. Bonhoeffer continued:
“Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship … we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.”
Here is how one pastor responded to Bonhoeffer’s words: “The pastor’s first call is not to envision a church but to receive one. We lead by discerning how Christ is forming a community and by being one of the first to accept that fellowship with gratitude. The pastor is not an entrepreneur. We are called to a project already underway. So, I would like to offer a dramatically reinterpreted concept of pastoral vision: True visionary leadership is being first to recognize what God has already formed.” (from Pastor Chase Replogle, Bent Oak Church, Springfield, Missouri)
This applies to church members, too.
A church is a living organism, a body, with Christ as its head. (Ephesians 1:22-23) And we must never forget that the church is His. He purchased it with His blood. (Acts 20:28) The church belongs to Jesus. Our church belongs to Jesus. If we believe in Him, then we belong to Him. If we have united with this church, then we belong to this church, too. The church “ours” only in the sense that we belong to it, not the other way around.
A church will change. It is inevitable. Growth and change are part of being alive, indeed, they are signs of life. Our church is different now than it was a generation ago. That can’t be helped. And that is as it should be.
The Bible is our roadmap, as one old song put it. And church history is full of examples of this fact: God’s people will look at the Bible and come to different conclusions about how the church is to function. We can be united on the truths of the Gospel—indeed, we must be—but still come to different conclusions on other important, but lesser, matters…such as, what a church is supposed to look like.
But a church is changed by influence. And influence is only gained by time and trust.
As Steve Brown would say: “You think about that! Amen!”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David