Give Your Church Away

by Dan Reiland

A few weeks ago I spoke at the Harvest Point Conference in Columbus, Ohio. My good friend Rev. Paul Cook, pastor of TurnPoint Apostolic Church, hosts this great training event every year. After I finished speaking on my assigned topic, 'Leading by Sight or Leading by System,' my mind began to drift to airports, airplanes, and going home. Then the next speaker stepped up to the plate, and I was hooked in seconds. Bishop Timothy Clarke, pastor of the First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, was the speaker. Not only is he a man of God and a motivator, Bishop Clarke is a great leader who has grown his church from 12 to 5,000 in attendance.

The topic and content were so intriguing and relevant that I asked Bishop Clarke if I could share his outline with you. He quickly agreed. The three big thoughts in the main outline are from his message and reflect his personal leadership journey. I have taken the liberty to toss in a few thoughts of my own. Thanks Bishop, and keep on leading!

I had to release the church from myself and give it back to God.

Breaking though the 100 barrier is the toughest of all barriers. Churches ranging from a handful of people to 70-80 people know how true this is. It is a place where resources and energy are never equal to the vision. The good news is that for the leaders that are able to tough it out, vision and good leadership will eventually prevail. When this happens, there is always the possibility that perspective can become distorted and your thinking might become faulty. Even though the church is still considered a small church, the success is so strong that it is easy to begin to believe that you actually pulled it off yourself.

This doesn't mean that ego is out of control (it can be-- but that isn't the assumption). Hard work and accomplishment deserve recognition. That's a good thing. However, it's still all too easy to become impressed with yourself. The variable to manage is the fine line between being grateful for your gifts and abilities and forgetting where they came from.

Moses (Exodus 18) was not a young leader, but a relatively new leader. You remember how he sat to judge all the issues from morning 'til night. He continued this until his father-in-law, Jethro, explained the folly of attempting to do it all himself. Jethro said that Moses would literally wear himself out if he continued in this manner. Moses needed to give the leadership away into the hands of capable leaders if he wanted to serve the people well and with wisdom.

This is the principle behind giving your church away. It is the only way to ensure that you serve the people well and keep moving forward. Intellectually, we all know that the church doesn't belong to us. You are the leader, but it isn't your church - that is easy to embrace emotionally. But it is more difficult to embrace in terms of our actions. When you attempt to control what you cannot control as a leader and thereby hold the church 'captive' to yourself and your limitations, you can unintentionally lead as if the church belongs to you.

If you do not intentionally give the church back to God, you will greatly limit its future health and growth.

"If you want to keep it together, you must give it away!" --Bishop Clarke

I had to release the church from my style and give it to my staff.

Call it 1,000 but somewhere between 800 and 1,200 you must give your church to your staff. I've personally seen this 'give it away' point as early as 400-600 in attendance and as late as 1,800. So the point is not to be hung up on a particular number like a formula, but rather to know what it means to give your church to your staff and how to do it.

When you have grown your church through major growth levels, it is natural to want things to be done according to your style and preferences. After all, your way is what got the church where it is. However, you will not make the next big jump without releasing the church from your style and allowing other staff members to rise up, take major areas of responsibility, and do it their way.

It's tough when we genuinely empower the staff and they do it better than us! Then to add insult to injury, they get all the attention! But you know that's the price tag of continued growth. It's the right thing.

I remember when John Maxwell and I served at Skyline Church in San Diego and the time came for John to once again 'give it away.' John said that the last two things that he gave away were the most difficult because they were his favorites. They were the Membership Class and the New Christians Class, and John liked how he did them (of course, he did them extremely well.). When the church was around 1,800 in attendance he gave me the Membership Class, and he gave Sheryl Fleisher the New Christians Class. This allowed John to focus on his priorities. Sheryl and I led and taught the classes, respectively, with our own styles - differently from John's - and we did well. All of this resulted in the church continuing to grow.

This can be tough on the senior pastor. It's like giving your kid away. You raised him and now give him away, like when your son or daughter goes off to college. Now you must trust his professors and friends to continue to make a positive impact.

You can feel like a stranger in the church you built, and many (if not most) of the people are closer to staff members than to you. This is hard on any pastor, but necessary to continue to grow your church.

I had to release the church from my staff and give it back to the saints.

Bishop Clarke shared that at the time his church was averaging approximately 3,000 in attendance, he had to take the church back from his staff and give it to the congregation. He didn't fire his staff! But Bishop Clarke began to reshape their approach to ministry and leadership.

Again, this is a natural phase of church and staff development. Frankly, it is a key insight that I'm wrestling down in my own leadership for Crossroads, where I serve. A staff that can lead a church of 3,000-plus in attendance is a top notch staff. They are part of team-leading one of the largest churches in the country. They are good at what they do. And because they are good at what they do, they can tend to lean into doing much of it themselves.

One of the interesting issues related to staff is that due to a number of factors - from the need for quality to daily demands and pressures of ministry - the staff members of large churches want to solve many of their problems by hiring more staff rather than raising up more leaders. Sometimes hiring is the right answer. But isn't always the first or only answer. It takes massive energy (and leadership talent) to raise up volunteer leaders who can get the job done in a church of that size. We must all be willing to rise to that challenge.

Lay ministry and lay leadership are not new concepts. But I do believe that we must take them to new levels to achieve all that God has for us in each of our churches. There are people sitting in your 'pews' who can and will lead more (and better) than you think! For us at Crossroads, it means less doing and more equipping and developing. How about you?

So now that you've finished these thoughts, in what way might you need to give your church away?

"This article is used by permission from Dr. Dan Reiland's free monthly e-newsletter 'The Pastor's Coach' available at www.INJOY.com."