Giving away leadership opportunities is the best thing that has happened in my life this year. It is also the hardest! Hard because it demands I give away control. Hard because I have to trust other leaders to make the right choice. Hard because I have to embrace change. This year we changed our student ministry structure to allow our staff and volunteers to serve by maximizing their strengths not our rigid job descriptions and traditional roles. We divided our team into three areas…Production & Events (I lead this area) / Small Groups / Operations…and we placed different leaders in different areas. We have an amazing volunteer who leads our operations team and makes our ministry run smooth. Brandon Reed is now our small group pastor for student ministry. This week I watched as my small group pastor managed some intense situations. Everything in me wanted to get in the middle of the issue. It took everything I could to stay back. Guess what…it worked out fine. Brandon made great leadership decisions, and I was able to get a ton of work done for our fall retreats. When our team is able to focus on a few things rather than everything we are more efficient. We do more to advance the Kingdom of God when we divide and conquer. Our team learned about this type of structure from several innovative churches and we are finding that staffing by strengths rather than titles is working for us. We are letting go of our traditional pastoral roles and rethinking what ministry will look like in 10 years. Why not try it now instead of waiting? Think about dividing and conquering in your setting. Give away some leadership opportunities today!
Michael, I’m constantly encouraged and praying for Grace! I miss my Grace family, but I know that God is doing amazing things through you guys and is changing lives in the Clarksville/Ft. Campbell area – proud to be one of those testimonies.
But as for leadership roles, God has been drawing me out as a leader here in Charleston. You may think God is asking you to let go of part of your role, but what He’s also doing is calling you to invest in new leaders. I’ve been presented with a couple leadership roles over the last couple of months and I’ve grown tremendously in my faith and in my abilities as a leader. I am highly appreciative of the other leaders for giving me this experience and had they not stepped out of the way to help me, I never would’ve been able to step out and serve!
Love you guys!
Nikki…wow thanks for that post on here. So proud of you and how you are serving!