What do you do in your free time? If you are anything like the other church leaders (or leaders in general), you are probably rolling your eyes, chuckling, or rolling on the floor in a fit of hysteric laughter because to you, free time happens when you die. After all, isn’t that what we are taught, either in word or in action? A survey done by the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development (www.churchleadership.org) tells us that 802 pastors surveyed (71%) report that they are burned out and battle depression beyond fatigue on a weekly and daily basis. Forget that most pastors believe that depression is a sign of weakness and can only mean that Satan is attacking them or that they are unqualified and not good enough for the task at hand. Forget that most pastors who experience depression lead terrific spiritual lives based on Scripture and that they rely on God for their solutions. We have been taught that depression is something to be cast out like a demonic spirit, instead of being dealt with like any other physical ailment.
Before we go too far down the depression rabbit trail, let’s talk about the subject of this post, and that is delegating. If you feel that you have way too much on your plate and that you are being pulled in untold multiple directions at the speed of light and that you are heading straight for burnout and failure in ministry, then I have one word that will radically change your life. Delegate. Have you ever heard of this before? For me, a Type-A personality who desires perfection and organization above health, this is a difficult thing to swallow because it requires that we sacrifice doing things “our way” and allow others to take the reigns of leadership and do it their way as God directs them. I have just a few reasons that we often fail to delegate:
1. We want things done our own way
Whether or not it’s a good or healthy thing, leaders most often want things done the way they would do them if they were the ones doing it. In other words, we can ask someone else to do something but we are very likely to either be very upset and negative about the results or even possibly go behind them and “fix” what they have done. Delegating means trusting people and equipping them to do a task; to do it right, but not necessarily the way you would do it yourself.
2. We are lazy
Delegating takes training; if we are going to ask people to help run the sound board on Sunday morning, we have to make sure they know what they are doing, which takes time – time that many in ministry simply do not have. I know it’s far easier for me to simply run the sound board during worship practice the way I know it should be run, as opposed to taking the time to train others to do it and running the risk of them not being us and not doing it the way we think it should be done. If we want people to take the reigns of ministry within the church and begin to do ministry themselves, not relying on us to keep the church running, we must help teach and instruct them on how to do that, and that takes time. It may take cutting back on programming for the time being in order to train a few folks on how to run a program that, once up and running can be done without much effort on our part as the leader and as a result, others take the ball and run with it, doing more than we ever could by ourselves. But it takes time!
3. We want the credit
In our denomination, we have yearly reports that each pastor in a certain geographical area submits to regional leadership in the denomination. In those reports are numbers, facts, and figures to help gauge the effectiveness of a church’s ministry within that year. In the last 6 years of going to these annual meetings, I almost always hear pastors take the credit for things that went well, and leave out the things that did not do so well in the last year. Why do we feel the need to take the credit for everything positive that takes place in our church and yet we don’t feel responsible when negative things happen? Delegating is allowing folks to take on the reigns of ministry and although we are responsible for overseeing and taking charge in what God has given us, we need to allow others to grab hold of what God is doing in their life and be instrumental in moving the kingdom forward. I don’t care if my church has to “fail” in the world’s eyes, a million times in an attempt to accomplish what God is leading us to do – I want to make sure that we are always moving and growing. If it means working hard to get God’s work done and never getting the credit by man, then so be it.
4. We feel responsible and guilty
God does not lay guilt trips on us; He inspires us and directs us to do things. If we feel guilty because we are equipping others to do the work of the ministry, then it is most likely because we are control freaks. I speak from experience here; often I feel “guilty” about not taking on a responsibility because I want people to see me as top gun in ministry but that should never be our goal. Instead, we need to be about equipping the saints to do the work of the church. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here; I am not saying that we should look for people to pass off our responsibilities onto or to do the things that we don’t want to do. We have a call and a responsibility to that call and we must be diligent in the execution of ministry, but we have to realize that ultimately when it is all said and done, that we have been successful not at getting a church from 5 members to 1,000 members, or from bringing a church’s budget from $50,000 to over a million, but rather that the church is equipped for and is equipping others for ministry when we move on. Because membership rises and falls and finance is never a certainty, but whenever the people are motivated and excited about doing ministry and training others to do ministry, the Kingdom will move forward!
Filed under: Leadership
