Leadership Thoughts

The executive staff at NewSpring had our meeting yesterday morning in my living room. (The doctor said I should not return to work yet—but he didn’t necessarily say that work could not come to me!) :-)

Let me just say this—I could not be more proud of the group of people whom I feel God has surrounded me with to assist in the leadership of this church.

To put it bluntly—I almost died last week. I was in ICU for several days—I was completely incapable of making a decision or attending a meeting…I was out of the loop.

But the work of the church went on; in fact, these guys didn’t miss a beat. They knew what they needed to do and they got it done with level 10 excellence.

I was speaking to a staff member last week from my hospital bed and said, “You know, it is sad—but if this had happened to the senior pastor in a typical church then I believe that church would be freaking out and its foundations would be falling in.” And please believe me…I am not saying that we are better than everyone else—it is just that in many chuches the pastor does EVERYTHING—the visiting, the preaching, the meetings…you name it. And so when the pastor leaves or something bad happens to the guy the church sort of dangles there—praying for the next senior pastor to come along and rescue it…or for a quick return of the current senior pastor.

But not NewSpring. We have a structure in place where each person leads a main area of the church and I am in charge of leading the people who lead those areas. I have hired people who I love and trust—who get the vision—who are in love with Jesus—and who know how to make things happen. And because of this structure I can honestly say that while I was flat on my back last week…I didn’t worry for one single second about the ministry of New Spring—I knew it was going to be awesome because of the capable people in place who were getting the job done.

I am not one of those pastors who feel like I need to do everything; in fact, I have discovered that I am good at about three things…leadership, casting vision, and teaching…and if you get me outside of those core areas then I promise I will mess something up.

The argument here is, “Well Perry, you need to work on your weaknesses and become a more complete person.” That is a bunch of bull. Let’s take Michael Jordan for example—he was an excellent basketball player—probably the best the game has ever seen. But what happened to him when he tried to “develop his weakness” as a baseball player. Uh, yep—he bombed and eventually had to make a return to basketball.

I do not believe in the “well-rounded” person. I believe that God has designed each of us to be good at two or three things…and when we get into that zone is where we see the most effective results.

One of the reasons our staff is so effective is that each person is “in the zone” and doing what God has called them to do—and that is so cool because when I was out—well—the truth is—I wasn’t missed that much. Don’t get me wrong…I don’t think the staff threw a party because I was in the hospital—but once again they did their work and didn’t need to consult me to make sure they were doing it right. They had been released to do ministry—and they felt the freedom to operate within their areas the way God was leading them.

I have always heard that in leadership those closest to you will determine your level of success—if that is the case then I feel I am in good hands—because the people around me are awesome…I could not do ministry without them!