5 Leadership Mistakes I’ve Made (That You Don’t Need To)

January 14, 2013                

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I love it when leaders share their success stories. It’s great to pick up transferable principles and try to work them into your life.
But there’s a part of me that likes it even more when leaders share their mistakes.
When someone shares their mistakes, I feel like I can relate to them. It reminds me I’m not alone. And it shows me we’re really all in this together.
The best part is once you’ve noticed the mistakes you naturally make, you can learn new skills to manoeuvre around them.
For all five mistakes listed below, I’ve had to adjust the sails and learn new behaviours that make me more effective at what I’m called to do.

Hopefully what’s taken me years won’t need to take you nearly as long.
Here are five leadership mistakes I’ve made:

1. Pointing out what’s wrong – not what’s right. Many leaders share a trait: they immediately notice what’s right and wrong, and gravitate toward fixing what’s wrong. I’m king of this. And ironically, it motivates me to get better. But it can end up being de-motivating to the people around you. I’ve had to learn to celebrate the wins (there are a ton of them when you look), point out what’s right and high five the team. Only then should you move to what’s wrong. Otherwise you knock the wind out of people. Honestly, this is still a daily discipline with me.

2. Thinking a leader needs to have all the answers. As a young leader, I was afraid people would notice that I was young and didn’t know as much as I should. It took me a few years to become comfortable with saying “I don’t know”. Wish I’d learned that right off the bat. Ironically, people already know that you don’t know. And when you say you don’t know, it actually creates empathy and a better sense of team.  Now more than ever, I fully realize how much I have left to learn.

3. Trying to be too original. This characterized my first 7 or 8 years of leadership. I didn’t know you could take what others have done and simply implement it (I’m not talking about plagiarizing sermons or stealing proprietary ideas here – but about ministry models and strategies that you’re free to use). I’d go to a conference and feel I’d need to change something enough to put ‘my spin’ or ‘our spin’ on it. Well, sometimes your spin makes it worse. If you really have an original idea that’s going to change things – use it. But there are smarter people who are further along than you who you can borrow from. And sometimes you just need to give yourself permission to borrow.

4.  Using people to accomplish tasks. I’m a task guy. Early on, sometimes I saw people as a means to an end, not an end in themselves. It’s a goal of mine to do what great managers do – not use people to get tasks done, but to get ‘people done’ through tasks.

5. Depending too much on my own strength. Being an A-type personality has strengths and weaknesses. Looking back, I wish I had developed a better sense of team earlier and I wished I had sought out mentors earlier. I’m still also trying to figure out the balance between Jesus’ teaching that human effort accomplishes nothing and that we need to serve and lead with all diligence. I’ll get back to you on that one. Maybe in heaven.

Those are five leadership mistakes I’ve made. How about you?
What are you struggling with? How are you overcoming?
What are you stuck on?

About Carey Nieuwhof: Carey Nieuwhof is the lead pastor of Connexus Community Church. He is the author of the best selling book, Leading Change Without Losing It and co-author of Parenting Beyond Your Capacity. Carey speaks to North American and global church leaders about change, leadership, and parenting.

Church Planter Spotlight: Marcus Toussaint on Lessons Learned in Church Planting

Lindy Lowry — September 20, 2012—

From Exponential Weekly

Twelve months ago, Church Planter Marcus Toussaint moved from the heart of the Bible Belt in Dallas to the mountains of Northern Arizona to help start Flagstaff Community Church with a few friends. He serves as External Focus Pastor of the growing Flagstaff community that has moved from Lead Pastor Mike Mahon’s living room to an unused car garage to now Flagstaff High School. Recently, he blogged 20 lessons he’s learned about planting in what he calls a ‘postmodern, post-everything frontier,” including “All that stuff about ‘calling’ is true” and “A church plant is a lame idol.”
All that stuff about “calling” is true. A lot of guys smarter than me say that church planting is for those who truly feel called to it. They’re actually right. The first few months, particularly if you’re a parachute drop, can feel lonely and difficult. There are times when the only thing keeping you going is the reality that “God has called me to this thing.” If you have never had a clear sense of calling about starting a church, seriously, save yourself and others the trouble and do anything else.
Choke the church plant pride quick. There is often a not-so-subtle hubris deep in us church-planters, being the new, idealistic kids on the block. Kill that pride before, during and after every visit to another church in town or after hearing about another church in town. There really are faithful churches and ministries in your city that have been praying for it long before you even thought of being God’s gift to Gospel-contextualization. Be humbled to be a small part of the answer to their prayers and long-suffering in a tough place.
Learn how to apply the Gospel to rejection and criticism. Starting a church from scratch involves throwing yourself out there and facing a lot of rejection. It’s like high school all over again. Sometimes, you will have to preach the Gospel to yourself like 20 times a day, remembering that because you are fully accepted in Christ means that any kind of rejection you receive just isn’t that big a deal. Also, pass all criticism through the filter of your critics’ demonstrated Christian maturity.
Debunk the “superhero pastor” mindset in your people from day one. It’s true that [most of] your people can only rise to the level of your leadership—so it’s a good thing Jesus is the head pastor! Just because you’re “called” doesn’t mean you’re called to be Superman. Living in an authentic community is actually a core value at our church. Be strong, but own your (numerous) mistakes and share your daily need for Jesus with people. They’ll find you refreshingly real in an artificial culture, and you’ll foster a church culture that truly emphasizes the “priesthood of all believers.”
Failure is an option. The tried-and-true, canned church planting processes killing it in the Midwest and the Bible Belt flat out just don’t seem to work anymore in postmodern American contexts (that is, if you want to reach non-Christians and not just disgruntled church people), so just about everything is an experiment. We just try a bunch of stuff and see if anything sticks. Frankly, we fail a lot. We’re sort of learning as we go; it’s the ultimate on-the-job training. For us, failure is failure to try.
What you’re excited about is what your people really learn. I actually stole this from a D.A. Carson quote in an article at the Gospel Coalition. Genuine excitement about anything is contagious. Churches and church plants come and go, but Jesus will be the jam forever. Be excited about Him. Be excited about the Gospel.
Team dynamics are trickier than you think. I remember having a conversation with a seminary professor about how “church planting teams don’t work.” He said it was because the inevitable conflict within teams most often causes the mission to unravel. At the time, I believed he just didn’t understand how to build a solid team that could manage conflict well. The reality is that you can dive headfirst into a sea of personality inventories like StrengthsFinder or Myers-Briggs, but conflict is going to happen, period. Personalities are going to clash. Healthy, godly teams have conflict. But don’t let your commitment to biblical conflict resolution be detrimental to the mission God has you on together.
Leverage stories continuously. In my opinion, stories of life change are the key metric for success in ministry. When you’re a parachute drop church plant attempting to build momentum at ground zero, you don’t have a lot of stories yet. So you have to use the ones you’ve got, namely everyone in your launch/core team’s story of grace and stories/media from your amazing sending church or organization. At each of our worship “gatherings,” we tell the story of grace of someone in our community. Create a culture where you never shut up about God and what He’s doing.
People will bail. It’s one of those things you’ve heard about and prepare your heart for, but it still hurts when it happens. Because church planting is extremely personal; when people leave, they’re not just breaking up with the church, they’re breaking up with you, your leadership, vision and its implementation. The temptation is to harden your heart and not allow yourself to truly trust people. Don’t give in! There really are amazing people out there! The incredibly personal nature of planting a church is actually the premise of this book by Brian Bloye.
God will send you some “Barnabi.” In the midst of frequent rejections and difficulties, you’ll get a few “sons of encouragement” who truly love Jesus, buy into the vision of “our church” (love hearing that!) and who are faithfully servant-hearted for the long haul. Let yourself be pumped about it and apply 2 Tim. 2:2 to them as soon as they’re recognized.
Objective, outside coaching is essential. We get great coaching from some Yodas in Phoenix and Dallas. In addition to learning new face-melting leadership axioms, we get encouragement and wisdom from some guys who don’t suffer from the situational tunnel vision that church planters in the trenches inevitably develop.
Attractional strategies largely don’t seem to work in post-Christian contexts. At least they haven’t really for us. Why? I think it’s because they are like cultural mosquitoes to our context—they’re annoying. Everyone expects them and is inoculated against Christian evangelistic outreach. If the definition of “crazy” is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, then most of us are crazy. Lots of Christian thinkers that have been saying “duh” to this for a long time.
All of us need to be explicitly taught “how to be missional.” It’s sexy to say you’re “missional.” But under the deluge of “missional” material out there, most of us Christians are better at going to Africa than across the street. People need not only to be continually invited to join what God is already doing in their communities, they also need clear, practical instructions on how. We have to recover the idea of “evangelism as a team sport,” and teach people that to be “missional” involves pursuing a big vision with small steps.
Some Christians may take your presence as an insult. Love them anyway. Prove them wrong. Before I even moved to Flagstaff, I met a Christian teacher who balked at the idea of another church in Flag. After all, “Flagstaff has sooo many churches already,” to which I arrogantly thought Yeah, too bad they’re not reaching anyone! The truth is some churches take the proliferation of new church plants in their community as an indictment on their ministry efforts instead of as a movement of God, and some church planters consider the very need for their plant as an indictment on other churches. That’s too bad. I like how one church planting friend in Flagstaff put it, “We’re here to complete, not compete.”
Commit to loving the hurting in your community and you’ll always have an audience (stolen from Jud Wilhite). It’s a good word. We live in a Christian leadership culture that still largely focuses on “influencing the influencers.” It’s explicitly one reason why church planters are flocking to the world’s city centers. That’s awesome, but I also believe that Jesus still chooses to use those of us who are foolish and weak in the world’s eyes to build His kingdom (1 Cor. 1:27). The county I live in has two times the national suicide rate and suffers from rampant alcoholism, yet has almost no Christ-centered recovery ministry! So we started one, and it has grown simply by word-of-mouth.
Define success for your church plant biblically. Whether consciously or unconsciously, what you count is what really counts in your church, and I’m convinced the church needs better metrics for success. If “making disciples” is truly the mission, then only counting butts in seats won’t cut it. What about the number of people in community groups as a percentage of your church body? Or the number of intentional relationships with non-Christians in the greater community? Just a couple of numerically oriented questions that might be more helpful (but maybe less immediately gratifying) than whether the crowd is growing. There are many more possibilities.
Ask non-Christians. To me, few things are sillier than a navel-gazing Christian culture sitting around guessing about how to “attract” non-Christians. Ask them. Get to know them, their hopes and dreams, what they think about spirituality, and why they may think Christianity sucks or is at least irrelevant.
Beware of babies in business suits. Often, churched people tend to position themselves as mature believers ready to lead. I would wait to make that call until you see it demonstrated in faithfulness. They may quote Keller and talk a big game, but when the rubber hits the road, they still want the church plant to become “First Vending Machine Fellowship Church.” You can tell a true servant by how he or she responds when they get treated like one.
The hardest person to lead in your church plant is you (stolen from Todd Wagner of Watermark). You are the biggest problem in your church plant. If you can tame the tiger within, everything else isn’t that big of a deal
A church plant is a lame idol. Seriously, even if the thing totally bombs, everyone bails, you run out of money and have to be tri-vocational, Jesus is still coming back and dropping His kingdom on this broken world. Success in the Christian life is faithful obedience to Jesus, not a list of stacked accomplishments. Some friends in Phoenix call church-planting “spanktification”; I connect with that. It’s tough, so are you consciously becoming more like Jesus? Do you love Him and people more as a result? If not, you’re missing it.
This post is the collection of a four-part series called “Lessons From My First Year of Church Planting” posted on Marcus Toussaint’s blog, Dark Sky City: Church Planting in Flagstaff, Arizona. Follow his adventures there and on Twitter @Marcustoussaint.

Lindy Lowry serves as Communications Director and Editor for Exponential.To submit articles for Exponential’s weekly enewsletter, Church Planter Weekly, contact her here.

SENT Network is planting churches in cities

Recently I met with Mark McGeever, the lead for SENT Network out of Annapolis, MD. They have planted four churches since they started 3 years ago. Downtown Hope in Annapolis illustrates there vision for new churches. Downtown Hope, led by Pastor Joey Tomassoni, has a culture of focusing on encouraging believers to develop relationships and take initiative to reach out to people in their neighborhood and their circle of influence.

They have seen many far from Christ begin to search and many make decisions to trust Christ with their lives. They have developed small discipleship groups to develop these new believers in their faith and impart to them the same vision for being "missional" in their sphere of influence.

Mark and I met with Tally Wilgis of Captivate Church in the Towson area of Baltimore and Scott Ancarrow who just moved to the Federal Hill area of Baltimore to plant a church. Most new churches start in the suburbs. But the most difficult areas to reach are the older established communities of the city. With Accelerate we want to bring together pastors to pray and brainstorm how to best reach their communities.

Pray for Mark who is training new planting pastors.
Pray for Tally who is seeking to reach people far from Christ.
Pray for Scott as he and his wife gather a core to start a church.
Pray for Joey who is discipling new believers.
Pray for me and Accelerate as I seek to be an encouragement and catalyst to planting pastors.

Mentoring a few for greater impact

Yesterday I met with a pastor of a new church that is reaching a particular language group. The church was started by a group who came from a mother church 30 miles away. Pastor (we will call him Joe) was asked to lead the group. He has had no training or experience in church planting.

Joe is now coming to one of our Accelerate Coaching Networks for pastors of new churches led by an experienced church planting pastor. We are also trying to hook him up with a national network for their local intensive training.

Joe is frustrated because most of the people are not "catching the vision or involved". I encouraged him to view the people as Jesus modeled. He spoke to the masses. He trained the twelve. And he spent focused time with Peter, James and John. In effect Jesus had three strategies. He gave each group what they needed to help move them to the next level. The majority of his time was not spent with the masses, but with the twelve and specifically with the three.

Who are the three in your church that you are spending time with? How can these people be mentored in their spiritual life and leadership? Did Jesus recruit them into a classroom to lecture them? No he took them with him and modeled life and ministry.

Try this: Line up times when you are meeting with people to: share your faith, follow-up a new believer, encourage a believer in his walk, disciple someone. Then call one of your three and ask them to go with you. They can come along to pray and "catch" ministry concepts and skills. Then you debrief and talk about it - what they saw, what they learned, what we could have done differently, etc. Gradually you have them take the lead in situations while you watch.

What you are doing is mentoring people in the Christian life and ministry and leadership. Instead of "recruiting" people into ministry you are "mentoring" people into ministry.

3 Steps
1. Pray for the right three
2. Pray for and take opportunities to minister to people
3. Invite one of your three to go with you

Yes, God really does change lives!

For multi-site churches, one of the struggles I see campus pastors having is how to connect emotionally with the people at the service. Somehow giving announcements alone does not endure the people to a pastor.

For new church plants and for any church we share what the Bible says but often don't show how these truths have actually affected someones life. And life change is our goal, correct?

I want to suggest adding an element in the service I'll call a "Changed Life Interview" or "God stories". This is a time when the pastor interviews a person in the congregation who has seen God change their life. It could be how they came to Christ, how God intervened in a circumstance, how God answered prayer, how they had the opportunity to share their faith, how they did the godly thing at work and God protected, etc.

A 3-4 minute interview like this helps people:
1. See that God is at work today.
2. Trust God to do it in their life also.
3. Makes us all real, especially as people learn to share from their weakness, not their strength.
4. Connects the pastor with people and changed lives.

Large churches sometimes do this on video so they can edit it and keep it on focus. But a smaller church needs to show itself personal and intimate. This can be very effective. The pastor should coach the interviewee, if possible do a practice interview. When I've done this I get to know the person's story, tell them what questions I am going to ask and coach them on what to talk about.

An interview format keeps the pastor "in control of the time and stops rambling". This is a way to interview missionaries also and youth coming back from a retreat where God worked or people who did a service project in the community where a God impact happened, etc.

The result will be people excited about how God changes lives and will encourage steps of faith by others.

Great Vision, Bad Execution – 6 Common Mistakes

Great Vision, Bad Execution – 6 Common Mistakes