Your Church Leadership Team is a crucial part of your overall church. It shares the vision and mission with you; like Aaron with Moses. It takes some of the load off your shoulders. As you know, pastors are not meant to bear all the weight of ministry on their shoulders. A good church leadership team will be active and proactive in making sure the execution of ministries is on track. With great efficiency, it will provide great leadership opportunities to many people while offering balance and care to leaders. But how do you know when it’s time to expand your church leadership team?
Time is such a simple yet complex concept. It is simple in essence, you can count, invest, spend, boost, and make it count. Complex as well because a good moment can be terrible timing, which could bring a catastrophe! Imagine having the right conversation (asking a staff member to join your leadership team) at the wrong time (after a big Sunday service when the same tired staff has 2 crying kids that want to go home). You might not get the results you want!
Being aware of the numerous scandals that have plagued the Church in the last few years, having a committed and God-loving church leadership team will diminish the possibilities of leadership failures.
JESUS AND HIS CHURCH LEADERSHIP TEAM
I know the Church did not yet exist in Jesus’ time, but bear with me for a few seconds. Jesus had thousands of followers (like your church) and had hundreds of disciples. Then at one point, with good timing, he decided he needed 12 apostles who would share the load of ministry (like your church leadership team).
In the directness and brevity of his Gospel, Mark tells us of that specific moment. He even mentions Jesus’ foundational reasons for expanding his leadership team, “(Jesus) went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. And He appointed twelve so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out the demons. And He appointed the twelve….” Mark 3:13-16 (NASB)
It is often believed that Jesus appointed the Twelve for the mission of preaching, healing, and casting out demons. Though this is true, the text mentions twice that the main reason he wanted a church leadership team, the Twelve apostles, is because He wanted them with Him.
There are two other reasons for building the first church leadership team: to allow them to preach and give them authority.
These would be your first three reasons to know it’s time to have a church leadership team if you do not have one yet. You want a few people to be with you on the challenging ministry journey, allow them to preach or teach, and give them authority.
If you already have built a church leadership team, the same reasons apply with the added nuance of timing of the expansion.
WHAT IS A CHURCH LEADERSHIP TEAM
Even if the terms are self-explanatory, you can understand that a church leadership team is composed of leaders from your congregation, comprised of staff members, elders, deacons, and/or overseers that lead and supervise the various ministries of your church.
TIMING OF EXPANSION
If you are reading this article, you probably don’t need to be convinced of the importance of a gifted and godly church leadership team. Still, you may be looking at the when and how to grow it numerically, logistically, and spiritually.
As you know, expansion is not only a numerical figure like adding two new members to the team. It may be time to add people to your church leadership team, but it could also be time to expand the depth of the vision and broadening of its mission.
The timing of that expansion is vital. As John Maxwell puts it, “the timing of your decision is as just as important as the decision you make” in other words, for our purpose, when you decide to expand your church leadership team is what determines its success.
BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF TIMING
It may be a good time of expansion for you and your team, which is a biblical concept. It is called a season.
Seasons are something northerners totally dig, as they know they’ll have to shovel snow in one season, rake up leaves in another, see dead-like trees start to bloom, and then enjoy a short but joyful summer. If you live in the South, you may have two seasons: hot and hotter! Jokes aside, seasons exist for rhythm, renewal, refreshing, and rest.
Jesus talks about this when he mentions the seasons of a seed in John 12:24 (CEB) “I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” There is a season of “dying” to bear more fruit. You may have to “die” to some responsibilities that you handle for your church to grow.
In the Old Testament, Jacob demonstrates this concept when Esau, his older brother, asks him to start traveling with him right there. Jacob declines, with the concept of life’s timing, by declaring, “You know traveling is hard on children, and I have to look after the sheep and goats that are nursing their young. If my animals travel too much in one day, they will all die.” (Genesis 33:13 CEV). So if the timing is important to expand your church leadership team, ensure it is a good season for the person you’re asking to join.
Lastly, Jesus illustrates this concept with his disciples when he compares ministry with agriculture. He says “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest?” (John 4:35 ESV). Farmers learn to estimate the timing of harvests. In the same way, you learn to differentiate a season of harvest from a season of sowing, a time of working hard, and one of reaping the results of it.
While you keep reading, think of this article as reading the signs of the seasons to help you discover if it’s time to expand your church leadership team. See it as a series of 16 words that will allow you to make a logically sound, emotionally sensitive, and spiritually mature decision to expand your church leadership team.
BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY KNOW IT’S TIME TO EXPAND
1. COGITATE
Many leaders, no matter their personality type, start thinking about change, cogitate, reflect upon a subject, and then start acting upon it.
When you start to think about expanding your team, you may be in that season of saying, “I see the harvest season coming soon,” to use biblical wording. Thinking about a project like expanding your church leadership team needs to originate from somewhere. Often, it’s that genesis, that beginning. The origin is when you, the leader, start to think about it.
The thought process is almost always the first step to expansion. Proverbs 4:23 (NCV) states “Be careful what you think because your thoughts run your life.”
When you start thinking of …
- your actual team
- how they’re doing
- what is not happening as of now ministry wise
- how you could grow your team
- that staff who has so much untapped potential
- The books you need or want to read on growth, leadership, change, and transformation
- How things could be better for the church, your team, and yourself
- And the list is almost infinite
It is not a sign that you need to expand yet. But it is the first stage of an expansion. You’re not there yet, but you have started walking on the path of growing your church leadership team.
2. EVALUATE
The next season of your church leadership team might be found in the fact that after you did all that cogitating, you take the first step of expansion: you evaluate.
Evaluation is about assessing and rendering a judgment on a situation, numbers, or people. Judgment is a loaded word for many, but it isn’t always negative. It is neutral by design.
You take account of facts, feelings, and impressions and line all those up against the data you found. There’s nothing negative about that. If you were charged with speeding, went to court, and won your case, the judgment would be positive. The same goes for your evaluation. All you’re trying to obtain is a clear picture of your church’s situation, the efficiency of your church leadership team, or why it’s functioning so well or not.
You evaluate …
- the number of church leadership team members
- Your ministries’ goals and how well they’re led
- The necessity of a breath of fresh air and vision
- What God is showing you
- What is going well, and what is not so good
- The depth of your ministerial bench
- The health of your church leadership team, staff, leaders, and teammates
You’re basically making a state-of-the-union evaluation, and this is very healthy. This doesn’t mean you need to expand your church leadership team yet, but it will give you an idea of its level of urgency.
3. TERMINATE
Such a harsh word here. You’ve been thinking and evaluating; you’ve been investing time in prayer and Bible reading. That’s when you read John 15:1-2 (NLT) and discover this “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and He prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.”
In your evaluation phase, you should undoubtedly conclude that some ministries, some leaders, some processes, and perhaps some church leadership team members need to be pruned or terminated. Yes, I know. Not fun.
Dead branches or even unhealthy ones still draw some life to themselves. If it doesn’t bear fruit, God terminates it. If it is bearing fruit, He prunes it so it’ll produce more fruit. That is your guideline.
To terminate projects, ministries, or even people is no fun task. There is nothing easy about it. The best way to look at it is to look for the organization or church’s best interest. If a lot of your team’s time, which is nonrenewable, and energy, which can be either spent or invested, goes to initiatives with little or no return, it is time to terminate those projects, even if they’ve been staples for such a long time. I know it’s hard, but as Mark Twain humorously said, “Sacred cows make the best burgers.”
You now know you may need to start moving towards broadening your church leadership team.
YOU’RE GETTING PRETTY SURE IT’S TIME TO EXPAND
The above discoveries are simply to prove to you the necessity of expansion.
4. AGGRAVATE
It’s time to add people to your team when you discover that things could aggravate if left unattended.
Burnout is a real thing. For people, this happens when you spend more energy than the intake of replenishment. They use emotional, physical, or even spiritual energy at a credit. They borrow that vitality and vigor in hopes of a better tomorrow, finally living out Isaiah 49:4 (NASB) “I have labored in vain, I have spent My strength for nothing and futility.” A high credit score may be good when buying a house or a car, but it is of no use in the case of ministry.
When you start hearing your best people mention how tired they are, how busy they’ve been, or they lack time, those are signs of tiredness. Worse is when you don’t hear your most vocal ones anymore. You know that you know it’s time to expand your church leadership team. By not doing so, you risk aggravating an already grave situation.
5. ELEVATE
On the flip side, when your church is on the upside, growing, energized, and healthier, and you sense your team bending without breaking, you have a pretty good indication it’s time to elevate your church leadership team. Notice I did not say add new members yet.
Newcomers are getting connected and plugged into groups, serving teams, involvement is on the rise, and steadfast commitments are all signs of expansion. In this sense, growth needs to be the deepening of leadership development.
Many churches do not have a systemized way to have new leaders creating new opportunities for others. So this might be your next step of expansion.
6. ACTIVATE
Activating people to the call of ministry is your calling. Look at Ephesians 4:12 (NLT) “Their (pastors, teachers, evangelists, apostles, and prophets) responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ.”
It is your privilege, responsibility, and ultimate calling to expand your congregants’ capacity to build up the church, not only your team’s capabilities!
The numerical expansion would be wise to include each of your churchgoers. This may lead to adding people to your church leadership team, but what it will do most is create buy-in, ownership, and caring of each of the church’s ministries and initiatives. You’ll be expanding by inspiring hearts, enlightening heads, and activating hands for the work of ministry.
7. CALIBRATE
After igniting a holy fire for making a difference in the house and community, you may observe that your church leadership team is getting a little winded yet inspired and excited by the expansion of servanthood in the church. Some details might slip. Nothing major yet, but enough to admit it’s time to calibrate your church leadership team. Since you do not want to go back to aggravating situations and concerns, you will want to calibrate your team.
Calibrating is adjusting to external factors you’re taking into account. Those factors may be growth, deepening, more ministries or activities, or many other things. Your necessity and ability to adjust to the situation will force you to change roles, morph responsibilities and again, evaluate.
When you get to this point, you are close to the tipping point of needing to expand by adding people to your church leadership team. You have one more stair to climb.
8. EQUILIBRATE
One of the final stages of the “you’re getting sure it’s time to expand” and jump to the “it’s now time to expand your church leadership team” moment is equilibrating your team’s responsibilities.
With all the previous homework, evaluations, and thought processes, you can now ensure that each team member bears the right weight and fulfills its mission and purpose.
Note that it’s not the number of responsibilities that need balance, meaning each church leadership team member has 5 obligations, for example. Some charges are heavier and more demanding than others. Overseeing the worship or children’s ministry leaders and teams may demand more time and energy commitments than supervising the admin volunteer team, for example.
You also equilibrate to transfer some tasks from an overloaded teammate to one that can take some more because of his abilities, capacities or responsibilities.
Balancing weights is more important than numbers. Imagine yourself weightlifting 100 pounds (you can do it!). The bar has one 50-pound weight on one side and 5 10-pound on the other. You would have equalized the weight, not the number of pieces. The same goes for responsibilities.
9. DELEGATE
You know it’s time when you start needing to delegate more obligations and responsibilities that fall on your plate. When you must hand off not only things you dislike doing, which is many leaders’ first reflex of delegating, but also things you enjoy, you should realize that now is the moment.
Bonus, if you conclude that even delegating to your church leadership team will overload them, you don’t need another sign for the expansion season to come!
After these 9 first stages, you are unquestionably on the path of the right timing for expansion.
IT’S NOW TIME TO EXPAND YOUR CHURCH LEADERSHIP TEAM
10. INITIATE
That verb has many connotations. From setting up or establishing new processes and systems to getting someone acquainted with your purpose, you will need to be the initiator of expansion in both previous meanings.
You know it’s time to start establishing your expansion in the number of people on your team, deepening their responsibilities and broadening their scope of ministry.
11. ACCELERATE
It is impossible to make growth go faster. Development takes the time it needs. Plus, God is not in the business of accelerating the speed of the enlargement of ministries. He’s in the planning of character growth, which takes time.
You can’t force a horse to drink water from the well. That is partly true. If you give it some salt and make it thirsty on your way to the well, it will drink once you get there! Though you can’t force a plant to grow by pulling on it, you can enrich the soil by giving it nutrients, which will make the plant grow faster and healthier.
So then, it is possible to accelerate the processes that lead to growth. You “provoke” growth. You know the timing to expand is right when you feel the need to speed up growth and build up that church leadership team.
12. INNOVATE
As the Lord speaks to you, you may remember Isaiah’s words “Enlarge the site of your tent, and stretch out the drapes of your dwellings; don’t hold back. Lengthen your tent ropes and strengthen your stakes.” (Isaiah 54:2 CEB). God is talking about stretching, innovating, and making more space.
It is perfect timing to expand your leadership team when you want to innovate by creating new initiatives or ministries that will either branch out of the church or solidify the internal structure.
Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean you’re producing from scratch new ministries, but it does convey the idea that those programs will be new for your church.
Innovation demands a great deal of work upstream in the planning stages, writing policies, and even discussions with possible volunteers to lead the ministry. The time requirements are challenging and taxes even the best calendar planner. Energy is sucked into huge chunks even if it will all be worth it in the end.
13. ACCLIMATE
To acclimate to all this newness of expansion is a task in itself. Your team will need some leeway to adapt to new challenges, rewards, and demands. Anything that imposes new juggling acts on your church leadership team proves the necessity to expand your team.
If you sense the need or see it fit to reshuffle workloads, responsibilities, authorities, and territories to supervise, you better believe it is time for expansion. When your team is in a season of changes, the new pressures of innovation and creation may out reach their level of capacity. Which brings us to your next sign: collaboration.
14. COLLABORATE
As mentioned earlier, expansion is also about depth and width in ministry. You know it’s time to augment your church leadership team’s capacities when they reach their limit. Like one mentor told me, people and teams reach their ceiling of competencies when tools are no longer added to their toolbox.
Collaboration is: bringing new tools, adding skill sets, and providing new water to the mill. It is an eye-opener dispensing new perspectives and building a fresh outlook on processes and people.
You want to collaborate with a solid inner circle that will go to war with you, duke it out with hardships and win, and face challenges head-on with you. Your team should be that every member has your back, and you’ve got theirs.
Collaboration is also a unique way to bring into an outer circle. Expanding your church leadership team to ad hoc committee members who willingly bring fresh thoughts and new angles to challenges or even provide training and coaching may be needed.
If these last few lines ring a bell to you, it is proof that it is time to push your team to new heights.
KEEPING THE CULTURE OF EXPANSION ALIVE
You have read many logical, organizational, emotional, and spiritual reasons to expand your church leadership team. You’ve decided to grow it numerically by adding new church leadership team members, expanding the depth of the vision, and you provided the tools to allow for progress to continue.
You will certainly think about changing it up again in the future. As a good leader, you will monitor constant evaluation. Your next step is cultivating expansion and growth as a natural part of ministry.
15. CULTIVATE
Culture is not what you write on nice posters in your office or on plasterboards in your church’s foyer. Culture isn’t the beautifully crafted quotes noted in your employee workbook. Though those words are necessary and must be seen by all, they don’t make culture.
Culture is what you live out and what you allow. Cultivating a growth mindset, a refusal of the status quo, is a daily thing expressed with your words and your actions.
You build culture and cultivate it by providing ongoing training, evaluation, and feedback and allowing initiatives to be brought to the table. Simply said, you live out all the above statements regularly.
16. DUPLICATE
You know it’s time for growth when you have concluded that your leadership bench is short and the depth of your team is shallow. When it’s time to duplicate new leaders for your church leadership team, you know you’re behind the curve a little.
When a church leadership team operates with Kingdom-Minded purposes, it will mentor and duplicate upcoming leaders like Paul has charged pastors to “share the things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses with faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2 MEV). This is an ongoing, never-ending, always growing process. Why? Because ministry is about people. It’s all about people. And people change, whether they like it or not.
So is it time to expand your church leadership team? The answer lies with the signs noted above.
