Chances are you’re likely struggling with the same issue almost every church leader is—a lack of truly great leaders for ministry.
Whether I talk to megachurch leaders or leaders of churches of 50 people, they say the same thing: They just can’t find enough capable, gifted leaders who want to serve in a church staff role.
In fact, many have told me they would have more campuses and be able to reach far more people if they just had qualified leaders to lead them.
The leadership crisis is true to some extent of volunteers, although many churches I know have figured out how to get capable leaders into key volunteer roles (if you want more on that,
read this).
The deepest crisis is in
staffing. The number of people who want to be pastors, ministry directors or serve in other church staff roles may be at an all time low.
In past generations, the best and the brightest young Christians often went into ministry.
Today, they go into law, medicine, business and into startups. They never even think of ministry.
Three questions.
What if we changed that?
How would we change that?
What would happen if we changed that?
The Best and the Brightest?
I realize some of you are already chafing at the idea of ‘best and brightest’ and ‘ministry’ being used in the same sentence.
And for sure, I’ve read
what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians about not many of us Christians being wise in the eyes of the world, or well-born or well-educated. But he was talking about being called to
salvation in that passage, not about being called to
ministry.
And a little later on in the scriptures, Paul gave us his resume. It’s
pretty impressive.
Sure, Paul was arguing that human skill is nothing compared to the tremendous grace he’s experienced in Jesus Christ. But you could make a strong argument that God used Paul’s training and background in law and theology to spread Christianity rapidly under Paul’s leadership.
For every Paul there’s a Moses with a less impressive resume (shepherd guy on a hill). But—wait for it—Moses spent time in a royal court. As did Joseph. As did Daniel.
I’m sure some of the lessons learned in those courts rubbed off. And reading the stories of leaders like Moses, Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament is, in places, like reading a leadership textbook.
I think when you study the weight of scripture through that lens, you’ll realize God uses a person’s skill and talent for his higher purposes.
After all, if we believe a person’s gifting is from God, then it only makes sense God uses a person’s gifting to work out his plans.
Does God equip the called? For sure. He specializes in doing extraordinary things through ordinary people.
But maybe he also calls the equipped.
Having skills and gifts doesn’t disqualify you from ministry any more than not having them (initially) does.
The Problem With a Subjective Call
Onto the subject of calling.
The way most people talk about calling these days is almost entirely
subjective.
We say things like:
How do you know you’re called?
Have you heard from God?
Has God spoken to you?
If the answer is no, many take that as immediate disqualification from ministry.
There are many problems with boiling calling down to a subjective sense of calling. The first is that it’s …
subjective.
If you say you’re called—that you’ve heard from God—who can really argue with that? You just played the God card.
Second, it assumes that every person who is called to work in a church full-time has to have a subjective, personal experience of God telling them that’s exactly what they are to do.
What if that’s not true?
I don’t want to get into Bible wars. (You know, where people throw scripture verses at each other.) But I don’t want you to think I’m just making this argument up or that it’s entirely unbiblical.
There may be another perspective that might be far more scriptural than our current view of
subjective calling.
Read through
Romans 12.
Paul does not say if you
feel you have the gift of apostleship, then you are an apostle. Nor does he say if God told you you are an evangelist, that you are evangelist.
He simply says God made some people to be apostles and evangelists. And others to be pastors.
Your feelings don’t enter into it much. Your gifting does.
Similarly, I know people who
think they are called to ministry who are actually not very good pastors.
Think about it.
You might
feel called. You might be
sincere. But you might also be sincerely wrong.
Because our sense of calling has become so entirely subjective, we have perhaps allowed people who shouldn’t be in ministry into ministry.
Otherwise, why do some leaders who feel called to ministry struggle so much with being effective at ministry?
I realize this might seem far too harsh, but the subject is too important to ignore.
Now consider the opposite.
Why are people who are great at leadership not in ministry?
There are many reasons, but here are two:
Because their peers rarely think of ministry as a great option, they don’t (like breeds like).
Perhaps they didn’t experience a subjective sense of call into ministry.
But consider this. Paul does not say if you have the gift of leadership and
feel a subjective sense of calling to lead, then lead.
He says if you have the gift of leadership, then LEAD WITH ALL DILIGENCE. No conditions.
Translation: If you have the gift of leadership …
lead. It’s that simple.
So What Qualifies You for Church Leadership Then?
What if we looked at calling a different way?
First, every Christian is
called to ministry, whether that’s in a volunteer role or a full-time role, we all have a contribution to make in ministry.
But for church staff (which is the subject of this article), I wonder if we’d be ahead if we paid more attention to these three factors that I’ve selectively borrowed from
Bill Hybels:
Character
Competency
Conviction
Character
Character is such a major factor.
You just can’t lead in Christian leadership with out it.
The character of church leaders should be of the highest caliber. I’ve written
extensively on character and believe that ultimately,
your character, not your competency, determines your capacity as a leader.
If you want to see how your character is doing,
you can try this revealing little test.
Competency
This is the factor that has been routinely ignored.
Your competency is a direct expression of your gifting. And the church has often ignored those with the gift of leadership. They have fled to the marketplace and avoided the church.
As a result, in the church:
We hire nice people over truly gifted people.
We hire people in need of work rather than people who can fulfill a mission.
We leave the marketplace to claim some of the best Christian leaders out there.
At Connexus, where I serve, we use gifting assessment tools like
Right Path,
StrengthFinders and others to determine where a person’s gifting lies.
Objective metrics are so helpful because, ultimately, today’s
changing church needs exceptionally skilled leadership.
But even a gut check can tell you the kind of leader the church needs.
The simplest way to tell if a person’s a leader? Look over their shoulder and see who’s following.
If high capacity people are following the person you’re looking at, they’re definitely a leader. If nobody’s following or the type of person who follows is questionable, well, at least you know what you’re getting.
And one hugely under-represented skill set in the church today is entrepreneurship. As I
outlined here, I think the church today has more than enough shepherds. It’s time we found
some entrepreneurs. Sure, entrepreneurial leaders are not the
only leaders the church needs, but it is an exceptionally under-represented group in the church.
Today’s church demands today’s best leadership.
Conviction
The third characteristic I think a church leader needs is conviction: conviction that the church is worth the full investment of a leader’s best time, best energy and even entire life.
What if there are thousands of leaders who are convicted that the church is supremely important, but they’ve just never thought their gifts could be put to use in it?
I won’t name them here, but I know personally of three leaders whose names you would likely know who are leading major ministries who never experienced a subjective ‘call.’ They would all say they simply volunteered.
And God has unmistakably used them powerfully. Their character, competency and conviction are second to none.
If they had waited for a subjective call, they might still be waiting.
And about 60,000 people might not be in church or have a relationship with Christ as a result.
What if there are thousands of leaders who would go into full-time ministry if they knew that character, competency and conviction were enough?
What if?
Maybe You’re Called
Listen, to be fair, I had a very subjective call to ministry.
I am not a “God spoke to me this morning” kind of Christian, but I promise you God spoke to me.
My call to ministry in the middle of law school when I was in my 20s was entirely supernatural.
Honestly, I think it’s the only way God would have gotten my attention. I’ll tell you about it over coffee some day if we have a half hour.
But what if that’s not
required?
See, if you’re:
—a
leader who has the character, competency and conviction to do church leadership, maybe you just should. Maybe that’s why you’re reading this.
—a
student or
young leader or
entrepreneur who has never thought about leadership in the church, but have the character, competency and conviction, rethink that.
—responsible for hiring for your church, maybe ask candidates if they experienced and sense of calling, but don’t let the lack of calling be fatal. Look for character, competency and conviction. Maybe that’s enough.
Please hear this.
Some of you have never felt the call to ministry, but you have the conviction that the local church is the hope of the world. You also have the competency and the character.
Maybe that’s enough. Clearly, you’d need to pray deeply about it and seek wise counsel that would affirm that you have the character, competency and conviction for ministry.
But maybe you don’t need the subjective call. Maybe the affirmation of your character, competency and conviction is your call.
Maybe you can volunteer.
So if you’ve got what it takes, step up.
