Four Key Attitudes of Leaders…

The following four key attitudes of leaders whose churches will thrive in the future are from a post that was written by Thom S. Rainer (author of I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Who Moved My Pulpit? and many more) on the Church Answers website.

1. “God is not done with us yet.” To be clear, the leaders of secular organizations were unlikely to articulate this attitude in the same way church leaders were. But all of the healthy organizations had attitudes of hope and possibility. Defeatism was a foreign concept to all of them.
2. “We are not waiting for things to return to normal.” Any organization waiting for a pre-COVID normal is already in trouble. Any churches expecting patterns of attendance, giving, and ministry to be similar to 2019 are really up against a wall. There will not even be a new normal, because normal cannot be defined. These leaders are looking for indicators of a new reality and they are making pivots to these new realities. 
3. “We will be more outwardly-focused than ever.” Too many churches and other organizations got comfortable prior to 2020. The leaders of future-focused organizations are determined more than ever to reach beyond themselves. The churches and the organizations of the future cannot and must not be navel gazers. 
4. “Major change is inevitable; we will embrace it.” The healthy church or organization of the future cannot simply move from change-averse to change-receptive. They must proactively seek and move toward radical change. They cannot wait for change to come to the organization. These organizations must take faith-based risks like many have never known before. If the leaders of these organizations succumb to the whiners who lament, “We’ve never done it that way before,” the organization is doomed. Healthy organizations of the future will embrace change with wisdom and courage. 

These four key attitudes if adopted by church leaders could help change the world – Bill Hybels (founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church) is quoted as saying that “the local church is the hope of the world“, and I’m pretty sure that we all want our churches (or Corps in our setting) to thrive.

The thing is, we’ll need to embrace what God is doing in and through our lives today to impact the world – But throughout the western church it would appear that we have become far too comfortable with ‘normal’ and keeping the wheels of the institutional church or Christian organisation turning.

As Catherine Booth once said “if we are to better the future, we must disturb the present“.

Therefore, we need to challenge the status-quo, the systems, processes, policies and structures that we have built up for our protection and control.

Some of these along with traditions, rituals, symbols and sacred cows are potentially no longer fit for purpose in this day and age.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul tells us that we need to “destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God…” (New Living Translation). According to Matthew 5:13-16 we are to be the salt and light that this world needs. God longs to use us for His purposes, so that others will see Him through our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.

Therefore, we need to carefully look at the ways that we have been doing church, our methodologies and ascertain if they are fit for purposes, are they achieving what we set out for them to do?

We’ll quite possibly need to come up with creative ways of engaging with our communities so that we can bring ‘life and hope‘. And we’ll also need to be more adaptable as the Holy Spirit leads us into new ways of doing mission and ministry going forward, reaching people who we would not necessarily reach out too.

The reality is that change is happening at an increasingly faster rate than what we are accustomed to in our world, so we’ll need to be a lot quicker at making decisions.

I believe God is doing a new thing but His overall plan hasn’t changed that He will use us, as His church, to change the world.

Shall we embrace the change? 

Are we up to the task?

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What consumes your thoughts today?

Our thoughts can consume us so much so that we can have restless nights or even find it hard to get to sleep at all… Psalm 34:1-3 (Living Bible) gives us some advise on how we should be focusing our attention on God rather than the problems and/or issues that we are facing.    

“I will praise the Lord no matter what happens. I will constantly speak of his glories and grace. I will boast of all his kindness to me. Let all who are discouraged take heart. Let us praise the Lord together, and exalt his name.” 

Bill Hybels in his book “Engraved on your heart: Living the Ten Commandments Day by Day” says that ‘many well-intentioned Christians have carelessly permitted a multitude of other concerns to become their “gods.” They’ve allowed these concerns to usurp the position of prominence that Jehovah God should have in their affections.

Are you really worshiping the true and living God? Does He have ultimate authority in your life? To help answer those questions honestly, let me ask you another question about your affections: Of whom, or what, do you find yourself thinking during quiet moments of free time?’

Often we become so absorbed by our doubts, concerns, and/or issues that we are facing that we put our faith and trust in God’s provision on the back burner. And all to often we start with trying to solve the problem ourselves and putting some initial steps in place to come to a favourable position in our own minds-eye… Which takes more time to digest and ultimately keeps us from spending time with God seeking His wisdom and peace.

Bill Hybels goes on to say ‘I realize that most people, including myself, do not have a lot of free thought time. Our thoughts usually are directed toward specific tasks, responsibilities, or conversations – whether we’re at home, school, or in the marketplace. But at isolated moments … our minds do have the freedom to focus on whatever we choose. …

Our minds, like the needle on a compass, can focus on a variety of subjects throughout the day. But in the end, when they’re left alone to settle, they’ll focus on the objects of our greatest affection.

Where does your mind settle? … The person who truly has “no other gods” before the living God usually will find that his thoughts “swing around” until they focus on God.’

So no matter what comes our way let us focus in on the one thing that matters most. And may we praise Him for what we have, for what he is doing in our lives and what he is going to do.

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