Brian Dodridge

When You're an Inadequate Leader

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

There are some days you’ll feel like an inadequate leader. Some days, it’s just something you feel – and other days, it’s a reality.

In my library, I have just shy of 100 books on leadership. So, I know (or at least have read about) what it means to be an effective leader. I know what an effective leader looks like.

And I also know when I don’t measure up.

On days when you’re not as good of a leader as your job requires, responding to that well is, in fact, a leadership opportunity. So how does this play out?

In a recent work day, I acquiesced. I wasn’t trying to be a great leader anymore, but was simply trying to control the rate at which I was disappointing people. It was clear I couldn’t be all I needed to be for others, so I was trying to regulate the disappointment factor.

I’ve been doing the church-leader role for 18 years, and I know when the issues pressing me are beyond my ministry intelligence or my capacity as a leader. This happens enough that I’ve developed some responses for when I experience those situations.

When you’re not the leader everyone needs you to be or your job requires, consider the following:

Take a deep breath. You’ll likely be better tomorrow.
Vent to an appropriate person. (I don’t recommend venting on a blog, as I’m doing.)
Call for help. Just because it’s beyond your capability doesn’t mean it’s beyond another’s.
Look to Scripture. There are numerous leaders in the Bible who were overwhelmed, and yet God saw them through.
Realize not everyone noticed your leadership shortfall.
Realize most people will give you grace.
Think gray – you don’t have to solve all your leadership issues in one day.
Pray, and be reminded that your identity comes from God – not how well you perform your leadership tasks.
Evaluate. If your shortcomings seem to be consistent in one area, determine what that is, and work on a self-development plan.
Show up the next day, and strive to be the best you can.

Designing Church Intern Programs

A ministry intern’s effectiveness is usually correlated to the effectiveness of the internship plan and supervisor.

There’s been a lot written about how to properly use an intern to be both helpful to the intern and to your church. Without going into those pros and cons, let’s start at the foundation: designing an internship plan that will attract the best interns for your church’s situation.

Not only for what an intern will provide for your church, but also what your church can provide them. If the program is not designed well, those don’t always line up.

Being a good steward of an intern requires you to know what you’re looking for on the front end. If you need someone to clean out the camp lost and found closet, design the internship that way. If you want someone to delegate ministry tasks to, great. If you want to develop someone called into ministry, design the internship for that.

Our church has long used interns, and used them effectively. But this last year we decided to streamline our approach with all of our ministry departments. We documented core philosophies, expectations, and compensation for our internships. Then we allowed space for each ministry area to contextualize their internships for their ministry area.

As a resource for you to review, I’ve provided our church’s internship application and ministry plan. Choose from a PDF form or an abridged web version.

Our plan won’t match all of your needs, but perhaps parts will spur you on to be thoughtful and proactive at designing an internship program which has Kingdom impact for all those involved.

A Critical Step in Hiring A Minister

The pause.

The pause is relevant no matter how many ministers you hire.

The pause is critical no matter your church’s governance model.

The pause is a ‘must have’ no matter how long you’ve been hiring ministers.

The pause is, in fact, a pause.

After each step in your selection process with a minister candidate, you as a church leader need to ensure the decision maker or makers (hiring manager, elders, personnel team, whomever) pause.

Once we as church leaders get excited about a candidate and can see how they fit into our church’s future, we sometimes move things forward quickly and don’t stop.

We perpetuate urgency.

When you’re working urgently, you miss things.

A pause in the hiring process accomplishes several things:

It makes sure we’re in an Acts 15 moment “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”
It slows it down for things below the surface to literally rise to the top (some things are only uncovered in time)
It allows people to catch up. This is really important for search processes that include multiple people. Most “multiple people” have lives that aren’t solely focused on hiring ministers. So pauses give literal time for people to catch up on the process
A pause at each step tells the candidate that this is a process, it includes due diligence, and they too, should be pausing
And related to an Acts 15 mindset, pauses allow us to be still enough to hear from God. We want to always be a part of God’s “good, pleasing, and perfect will,” and that may not always match our desired candidate

There are some negatives to pauses. But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

One pause is not enough, I suggest a pause at every significant step (see link at bottom for examples of steps). I’m not suggesting how long a “pause” should be, that’s circumstantial and usually clear to the leader who’s involving others, wants the best, and seeking divine wisdom.

Completing a step doesn’t have to beget another step. In hiring a minster, the paradigm should be: complete a step, pause, and then make decision about whether to take next step.

Pausing could mean you delay having a minister on site by a week or a month. Pausing could also mean you never hire the minister. And in that case, the pause did its job…allowing time for the process to disqualify candidates, or changed the desires of a candidate or the search team, or for the Spirit to provide clarity that only comes from God.

As a practical takeaway, here is an Abridged Version of BBC Selection With Pauses that shows pauses throughout.

p.s. Lifeway President Thom Rainer has written some excellent blog posts recently about what ministers want search teams to know and what search teams want minister candidates to know.

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When You're an Inadequate Leader

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto®

Designing Church Intern Programs

A Critical Step in Hiring A Minister

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