I'm not a pastor, but this is a great reminder to encourage our pastors, and some great examples of ways to do that.

I was just having a conversation on this last night, particularly with regard to having a "deep bench" in the church or even having music in a worship service that was too good. Some pastors, I know, feel threatened by other preachers. One pastor I heard about even felt threatened by the music fearing to follow music that people responded well to such they he feared the congregation wouldn't pay attention to his sermon.

So I have a couple of observations:

First, raising up leaders in the church attracts good leaders to the church. If a pastor, deacon or elder board, limits the church to their own abilities, the church will remain small and ineffective. Leadership must grow beyond the central leadership. A person with a gift of leadership looking for a church to attend won't stay long in a church where his or her gifts are shut out. They will gravitate toward a church where they can apply their leadership skills to needs within the church or to outreach efforts of the church. The senior pastor of my church has a policy of letting the other pastors preach on a regular basis to build them up so the church will never be without good preaching. At no time does attendance slide when other preachers preach because these pastors have been built up. It's a treat to see them become great preachers and teachers among the church. Our church is bigger than the senior pastor. He guides, directs, and characterizes our corporate identity in Christ. But people often come to the church and stay active because there is so much going on because of the wealth of leadership in the pews that they will always have a place where they can contribute positively to the mission of the church.

Therefore, second, it behooves pastors and core leadership of a church to see to the spiritual development of these leaders with an eye to letting them lead things in the church. We know that bad leaders can come among us, disrupt the positive direction of the church, and cause division and strife in their lack of spiritual maturity. That's why leaders in the church must be cultivated spiritually. There must be a theological structure and personal conviction thereof to the practical application of their gift. That is to say that their knowledge of God and who they are in him must drive the principles by which they lead in his name.

This is a great list! Here's a couple more from my experiences:

* If you are still married to their other parent, let them know that their other parent is more important to you than they are. If that seems counterintuitive, you have to understand that it gives the child a sense of security to know that Mom and Dad are ultimately unified for their best good.

* Wherever possible, include your kids. That is to say that unless you need to get away with their other parent for some "away time," you kids want to know what it means to be you so that they can be like you (unless you are a terrible person and won't admit it). If you want your kids to trust you when they get older, show them that you are trustworthy by conducting your private lives transparently in front of them in real world situations. If you are a terrible person and know it, then admit it to your kids so they at least know you want something better for them and that you aren't worth imitating. If you are a terrible person and don't know it, then you probably aren't reading this anyway.

Regarding that last point, my daughter's boyfriend came to visit again this weekend. He's in college studying to be a youth pastor. My wife and I had been away to celebrate our anniversary and knew he was coming. He beat us to the house at which point my oldest son was supposed to play chaperone. We went in to hugs from our kids and to find our three with my daughter's boyfriend and my oldest son's girlfriend all happily playing a table-top game together. Why weren't they at odds with each other for any reason, much less being required to hold each other accountable? Because they saw that we do the same thing with each other and have participated in that kind of family life from the beginning. So take your kids along with you and include them. Show them by word and deed how a family is supposed to behave with each other.

* Bonus tip: Learn from them. Many of the items in this article require learning something from them. As they grow, they will learn things you don't know. So just as you must learn about them, have them teach you what they know that you don't. This shows them that what they have learned has value to you and that they are valuable in general.

I feel for pastors who get into this situation. This is a great list of things to do! Ideally, you don't want to wait until you are already feeling burned out. Rather, head it off at the pass. If you are running out of ideas, look for ideas both from your church members and from outside sources. Don't just copy programs from another church, but glean the kinds of goals or methods and reformulate them for your church.

Also, get your church involved. If you need a vision, think about the kinds of things a church should be doing that your church isn't doing and get some committees to investigate and hammer out the details for vision-casting. This way they can take ownership with you. Also, the last thing you want to do is "arrive" and let the church fall into a rut of doing the same thing week in and week out. If that happens, people will become complacent and comfortable and the church will start to die a slow, painful death.

This article goes great with an article from yesterday at Desiring God that takes a lesson learned from the mission field and applies it to Christians in general. Our witness of Christ to others involves showing others how valuable they are in allowing them to minister to us as we minister to them. In Africa our teams often accept small gifts from people who have very little to give. It lets them know they are valued. In India, it show honor to your host to accept refreshments of some kind from them when you visit people you seek to minister to. We always leave gifts as well. In Venezuela, I always let our brothers and sisters know how much we learn from their ministry as we serve side-by-side with them. They are therefore encouraged to press on with the work. Letting people know how valuable they are to you, especially in practical ways, is extremely important.

All the more reason to develop contingency plans. God doesn't need contingency plans because he doesn't have any of these problems. Since we aren't God, we need contingency plans. Plan for change. Plan for anything you do to fail. Build enough flexibility into your system so that it doesn't fail altogether when someone or something bucks it. Because of the political situation, I was about ready to hang up our plans to go to Venezuela, especially when we got our passports back and our visas had been denied. But we had a remote contingency that someone could still go if last year's visas were still valid. We got the passports back with a week left on the old visas and were on a plane virtually overnight. So develop contingencies for these things.

Great points as usual!

I like seven points. They seem more biblical. That's why I hate to add one. Something I learned in the Marines from a new platoon Sergeant was to go in and immediately check the discipline of the platoon. So he came off hard at first, but he told me that it's easier to back off from that than it was to come in too light and try to work up to a stronger position of discipline. The way I have translated this into the civilian world is to immediately check and assert disciplinary policies. (For a church, this would be for the church staff - not necessarily for the whole congregation.) People learn intuitively which rules you are serious about and which ones you aren't. If you come off light in the beginning, you can expect your new team to take advantage of the rules until they know which ones you're serious about. If you come in on the strong side, they will assume self-discipline on all of them for a while. This gives you the opportunity to back off the ones that are less important for the function of your team. You don't want to be mean or grumpy about it, just firm and fair.

Gossip is done quietly, in the dark, off-stage. A gossip doesn't generally want the person they are talking about to know it. On the other hand, what Paul did was out in the open and in no way controverted Jesus' teaching on stages of discretion regarding church discipline from Matthew 18.

Fabulous list!

The first thing that comes to mind is that there are sometimes legitimate problems with leaders or other coworkers. Also, I know there are sometimes simply completely dysfunctional teams. There is a wise way to handle these situations rather than falling into some of these behaviors.

First, if you are a Christian, you should be praying for your supervisor, peers, and subordinates. You shouldn’t complain without praying first, and if you pray, then you tend to be more constructive when criticism needs to be verbalized.

Second, the golden rule works just as well vertically as it does horizontally in work relationships. If you have a beef with your boss, then lead up in the way that you wish your boss would lead down. I doubt you want your boss to put you down, be unreasonable, or talk ill about you behind your back. So don’t do that to him or her. If you want your subordinates to be loyal to you, then be loyal to them.

Third, try to compensate for your teams weaknesses for the sake of the purpose of the team. Does that mean that you could end up pulling other people’s load? Yes. But if you are successful, then you will shine brightly when it comes to moving up. It may seem like people don’t notice the effort you are making, but typically your efforts will not go unnoticed.

Fourth, there is a legitimate tension between being a budding leader and also serving as a subordinate when it comes to vision. If you are a subordinate and yet have a different vision from your boss, then you must subordinate your vision to his/hers. Present your ideas and see if they are something that the boss wants to do. Otherwise, use your ability to vision in your area of responsibility in such as way that you serve the boss’ vision. In this way, you will be identified as desirable leadership material.

This is a great list even for team members to consider. The one regarding hiring would be the exception for team members who aren't involved in hiring. And it would be easy to think of the empowerment issue being only the prerogative of the leader, but I know many situations where team members vie for power over other team members. It's better for team members to empower each other rather than try to dominate each other. Empowering is a far greater leadership tool than mere dominance. Firm authority with empowerment requires wisdom, courage and trust, and humility.

The one of these that is closest to me in my non-Church work is the area of commitment. I'm in the position to make commitments for the whole team, but not always in the position to enforce those commitments within the team. I have developed a relationship with those who are in that position such that I generally know what their priorities will be. If I'm in doubt, I simply ask. Otherwise, I set standard goals for the purpose of meeting commitments. That is, if I'm asked for a commitment on something - usually a date for completing a task - I can say that the team has a goal to complete by a certain date. That's usually sufficient. If someone asks if we can meet a different goal, then I address it with the team and get back with either a commitment or a "best possible" solution.

I guess the lesson here is that if you have a regular kind of request for commitment, make a principle or policy for setting goals that you can default to, like in the hiring point. People tend to be more understanding when you can't commit if you are consistent with this kind of a policy. Also, this kind of principled practice will give you an objective benchmark for detecting opportunities for growth and improvement in your team, like reorganizing, redirecting, creating new vision, identifying the need for a new position, etc. For example, preaching every Sunday morning is a commitment. Seeing people in your office is a goal, but seeing 30 people in one day isn't going to happen. Set office hours and schedule visits. If 30 people is the rule rather than the exception, you should probably hire an associate pastor or few to help with the pastoral counseling. So you want to take your team's ability to make commitments seriously.