Leadership is important in every situation.
When the general yells, “Charge!” the soldiers had better run forward ready for battle.
When the CEO says, “We need a software update.” the engineers will begin brainstorming ideas for the next version.
When the Pastor says, “We need to add more Bible study classes.” the church can expect to discuss and may or may not decide what to do about a deficiency in the Bible study hour.
All three of these are leadership, but did you notice how different they are? One is dictatorial, barking orders that will be followed instantly and without question. Another recognizes a need but unleashes others to work out all the details only maintaining loose oversight. The last one points out a problem, allows others to discuss and decide what do even if the decision is not what he was hoping for.
The point of this exercise is to help remind us that different styles of leadership are appropriate in different situations. If a surgeon ever wants to operate on you and promises to handle the surgical staff democratically, find a new doctor. Why? Because if a vein is nicked you don’t want him calling for discussion or forming a committee to study it. You want him to fix it. Immediately, before you bleed to death. You want your surgeon to be dictator.
On the other side of the coin if you are in a volunteer position and someone in the group, leader or one of the other volunteers, is ordering everyone around and refuses to discuss anything, you can expect the volunteers to thin out. Quickly. Volunteers almost always want to have a voice in their work, and not just have orders barked at them. In other words, volunteers want their leaders to be teambuilders.
When it comes to the church, you are working with volunteers. In a Baptist church it probably has a member empowering, congregational method of carrying out decision making. Leadership in a situation like that requires learning a different skill set than leadership in business, in the military, or in academia.
In church leadership, the goal should not be getting the church to do what you want. Instead in some cases it will be, helping the church see what the Lord wants and enabling them to follow Him. In other cases, it isn’t obvious what best serves the Lord. For example, maintenance and upgrade issues of the buildings, equipment and even the programs will likely not be addressed by Scripture. In these cases, the church leader should help the church see what it wants and enable them to accomplish it.
It is more important to have unity in the group than to have things done any certain way. In fact, it more important to have unity in the group than to have things done the best way. It is better to be unified with problems than to be broken apart and ‘perfect’. It is better to be thriving and chaotic than to be well oiled machine that is losing membership left and right.
This makes church leadership frustrating for people who have lead in other arenas successfully. Nevertheless, if they can adjust their style of leadership sufficiently, a person with the gift of leadership can be one of the greatest assets a church has.
Charles W. Short 