If you have been a member of a church leadership team, whether a staff team, a governing board, or a ministry leadership team, you know that it is not untypical for these leadership groups to have a different "feel" than your mid-week small group. The type of Biblical relational community that is emphasized in your mid-week small group may or may not be present in your leadership group.
One thing I have noticed about leadership teams is that relationships tend to be "messier" and generally less connected than in small groups. There are a lot of reasons for this. Many times, there is more pressure and more expectations put upon leadership groups. Leadership group members typically have a large span of care that does not always include their leadership team members. They may have other groups they lead besides the primary leadership team. Also, small groups generally form by invitation and commonly involve pre-existing relationships, whereas church leadership teams generally form by appointment, election, or employment. You do not often get to pick and choose whom you want to be on a leadership team like you get to pick who is in your small group! Finally, and perhaps most sadly, some vocational ministry leaders are coached by mentors not to form close relationships with fellow leaders in the church to minimize the pain of having to sever those ties when the next "ministry calling" comes along.
With that said, should the relational dynamics in a leadership team be any different from those in a small group? Sometimes church leaders do not make the best small group leaders, but that does not mean they are exempt from living in Christian community.
It may depend on the purpose of the team, but the question I come back to is: Should my expectations of relationships guided by Christian community be any different in a Monday morning church staff meeting than those of my Wednesday evening small group? An even more probing question: Can I truly see members of the leadership team as my Christian friends, ready to love me for who I am, spend unscheduled time with me, pray for me, and care deeply for me as a member of the family of God? Is that an unfair expectation given the nature of leadership groups?
In past years, I have been part of leadership teams that did not always function like my mid-week small group. Truthfully, that has not been the goal of many leadership teams of which I have been a part. Not that we did not acknowledge our need for unity and caring for one another, but generally, our focus was on the "job" we had to do, whether it was as a board of elders, staff team, or an administrative task group. Any conflict or relational issue that arose within the leadership group was seen as secondary to the task. If you are on a leadership team, my suspicion is that you have experienced this too.
Not that my mid-week small group has always been smooth sailing relationally! I have had plenty of conflicts and tensions surrounding relationships in my small groups. However, it seems when those situations happen in small groups, we, as church leaders, encourage groups to work through the conflict, even if it means taking a break from the "mission" of the group in order to resolve it. We like to quote Jesus’ words in Matt. 5:23-24 to our small group members, "…if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift." However, when it comes to relational conflict and tension in leadership groups, the tendency I have seen is to emphasize the task at hand over spending time resolving relational issues within the leadership team. In these situations, we like to quote Jesus’ words in Luke 9:62, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back (for any reason—relational or otherwise) is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Obviously, there needs to be a balance between the Biblical principles of mission and relationship. We need to spend some time considering why we tend to go toward one end of the spectrum or the other, depending on what type of group we are in.
In recent years, I have had the experience of being a member of a church leadership team that has taken a different approach. This leadership team started as a small group and evolved into a leadership team as part of a church plant. As we transitioned from a small group to a leadership team, I was compelled to discover what factors made leadership teams continue to work as Christian communities over time. How do you keep a sense of Christian community while still keeping a focus on the task at hand?
I researched several authors and practitioners who live and write about team leadership:
Ken Blanchard, President of The Ken Blanchard Companies,
George Cladis, author of Leading the Team-Based Church,
Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, Troy Mcmahon, and Eric Bramlett, leadership Team of Community Christian Church in the West and Southwest suburbs of Chicago,
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,
Dan Reeves, author of Life-giving Systems: How to Energize Your Church for Robust Ministry, and
Bill Thrall, Bruce McNichol, and Ken McElrath, authors of The Ascent of a Leader.
I tried to distill from books, articles, and emails by these individuals, commonalties that each emphasized as being essential for effective leadership teams to also function as Christian Communities. What keeps a healthy balance between mission and relationship, between "we have a job to do," and "we are friends growing together in our relationship to Christ?" Here were the key factors that came up repeatedly from these sources:
- Trust - specifically vulnerability with one another; confess sins to one another
- Performance/Sacrifice - have measurable expectations of what people are willing to give up to meet the goal, not for status or competition, but for mission
- Purpose/Mission/Vision - commitment to common values and methods that are fully owned by everyone
- Empowerment/Collaboration/Accountability - freedom to make decisions in areas of giftedness to accomplish goals, but be accountable for those decisions
- Welcome Conflict/Engage Spiritual Battle - See conflict as useful to grow; welcome it and spend time reconciling, but see our common enemy and not each other as the enemy.
Our church leadership group spent hours over several gatherings talking and praying about what all of this meant to our group and to our ministry situation. We took some of what we learned and developed a leadership team covenant for our leadership group, much like a small group covenant. Below is the opening statement of that covenant.
Leadership Team Covenant
"We exist as a leadership team for Christ and by Christ. Our first bond contract
is with God, and it is because of Him that we share a common bond. With that perspective, we will each first commit and pursue our Heavenly Father’s connections and responsibilities. In addition to that, we will consider the leadership team as a high priority. We will sacrifice our time, finances, spiritual gifts, and talents for the good of the group. We will defend each other and our core values to the death. We will free each other to be honest, open, loving, and unified. We will commit to each other’s growth, and when conflicts or failures of any kind arise, we will bring it to the attention of the group. We will encourage each other to practice what we preach, live what we love, and model what we hope to make, mature, mobilize, and multiply within the larger group."
We also made a list of very specific expectations that helped solidify what trust, performance, purpose, and accountability look like in our specific ministry situation.
We constantly have to work at making our leadership team a small group community. With the Lord’s Spirit and an intentional framework for community, we know it is possible and that it will ultimately be what the Lord will use to make us more effective for His Kingdom!
