Why Are Leaders Leaving Your Church

This is an excellent post sent to me by my friend David: Why The "Leadership Movement" is Leaving Your Church Leaderless. It answers a question I had asked: Does your church raise Christ-centered leaders of Church-centered followers?

There are two kinds of leaders:

1. Those who raise leaders.
2. Those who raise followers.

What type of leader are you?

All Christian leaders say #1. But sadly, in actual practical reality many are doing #2. Why??

At the risk of oversimplification, it is because they want to be the head honcho who calls the shots, so that it will always be either their way or the highway. By always wanting or needing to be the head guy, they kill the spirit, creativity, initiative and vision of those they claim to be raising as leaders.

Instead of living out a priesthood of all believers (that they insist they are doing), they are instead communicating the papacy of a few elite, elitist and exclusive pastors (paraphrased from John Stott), who regard themselves as being "above the rest."

They hold and bind people to themselves, instead of releasing them for the sake of the kingdom. They use people to build themselves up, rather than truly bless people to build up the kingdom.

They centralize the power to themselves so that their people serve them, rather than truly empowering their people to serve others. It is like having a young apostle Paul in your church and assigning him to be the lead usher for your church, because he is too young to be a leader in his own right. In that way you always keep him "under you."

Such "top-down" leaders work hard themselves and work others hard as well. But are they not simply "re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic." So much frantic energy is used to accomplish so little. All of this tremendous and frenetic energy and hard work is done primarily to carry out the bidding of an elite and elitist few.

What can you do?

Give them the gospel primarily and repeatedly (instead of "must," "need," "do," "don't"). Release your people. Do not bind them to yourselves. Let them creatively take the initiative (without asking for your permission). Let them boldly fail, instead of always trying to correct and control them.