The Pains of Leadership (Part One)

There may be a small percentage of it that some call “glory,”

but good leadership is costly, and worth it, and God is good!

Most who have positions of leadership – parents and managers and presidents and directors and pastors and more – do it because they love it.  The passion of standing at the helm and helping others join you there is never quite satisfied, and always drives, and keeps us going.

And the joys of accomplishment or a life changed or a ministry dedicated and accomplishing – these all are so satisfying.  We would not want to trade.

But let’s count the costs one more time as we keep going:

1. Stricter judgment.

Let’s go right to God on the first one, and our responsibility in front of Him.  James even warns that not everyone should be a teacher because teachers have stricter judgment (James 3:1).

When Paul writes about spiritual gifts in Romans 12, he tells those who lead to do it diligently or “with excellence.”  You can’t just plod along.  You are responsible for people and in front of God.

This all seems very fair of God, since any of us who leads takes others with us.

My favorite definition of a leader is still the very simple one – “someone who knows where he or she is going and can get others to come along.”

So we will give account of where we took them!

In our neighborhoods, near the pulpit and the office of the pastor, we’re trying to get people to believe the things that God wants them to believe, and to act the way He wants them to live.  So this is mighty serious.  So this deserves stricter judgment.

One way to say it is that we must commit our bodies and souls and callings to God, and follow His will as revealed in scripture.

Another plain way to say it is, that we must give it our best and never pretend we walk alone or without accountability.

It is amazing to me that many pastors don’t want accountability from their peers or their board or their staff friends.  And yet one of the main truths they teach – we have to, if we do Bible – is that we are all accountable to God and in many ways to each other.

It is a cost.

President Harry S. Truman’s famous quaint words, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” apply not only to this life but also to the thought of accountability in front of God.

2. Hard work.  Harder than anyone else.

Harder than we first thought.

Harder than the people in the church think.

Harder than the thoughts of the little boy who once asked me if I drove a school bus during the week, since he only saw me working on Sundays.  He chose not to come to the building during the week or to the hospital or to the homes or to the restaurants where I met with men.

I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that many people will not know how hard we work and do not need to know.  The last thing they need is to hear is how tired we are on Sunday, for instance.

But to do it well, we will work hard.

I’ve been to many seminars for pastors and experienced many different approaches or emphases about the pastorate.  There were years in my life when I attended one or two every year, a few times more.  And I feel like a common denominator was that the pastor worked hard.  Many different styles, from the dictator type that I met once to the “convener of fellow staff members” to the best in the world for calling himself a “leader among leaders” – but they all seemed to work hard.

I’m not just talking about hours in a week, though that’s usually involved.  Even the manager of the local fast-food restaurant doesn’t get by with a quick 40-hour week.

Pastoring is hard work.

Many times we divide categories of what we do as pastors into three areas: leading, teaching and shepherding—with the three converging in the pulpit.

All three are always on our agendas and should be at the center of our hearts, or close to them.

I would define hard work with some of these:

• Long hours.  You don’t just punch in or out or go home and stop thinking about the sermon or the people or the problem or the staff.  It’s a part of you.  Granted, we have to have distractions and do our family time and love it and exercise and personal worship and breaks.  Some even like sabbaticals. But you never quite get away from it, and that’s not bad.  Your heart’s in this work.  We love it.
• Always on duty – of course. So is a policeman. I remember one time when a really nice man on our staff did not want to keep his cell phone after 6 at night, even though the church had given him the cell phone partly for ministry use.  I did ask him if he would like people to have their tragedies between 8 and 5 or 6, or to call to see if it’s convenient.  Or to see if marriages or problem people should come to their senses and call him when he wasn’t studying or spending time at home. Of course we’re on call when we go to the restaurant and people walk up and ask just a simple question about the Bible or life or tell you about the death in their family. Of course we’re on duty after we empty our souls of the sermon and are dog tired at the end of the day and a needy person walks up just as you’re getting ready to leave the church building. Of course we’re on duty when we’re jogging and a neighbor stops us to tell us he finally thinks he’s got to turn to God with his heart.
• Smart work. For me this means learning from others and asking questions and reading books and attending those seminars and now adopting different areas and not avoiding a particular kind of ministry just because a friend didn’t like it.
• Doing things that no one in the church expects. That might be picking up paper on the parking lot or having one or two discipleship groups constantly, even though it’s not in the job description.  It simply means you’re trying to build into lives and do what Jesus would do, and said we should do when He left the earth – I’m thinking of Matthew 28:19, 20.
• Confidential work, at times. I don’t know if that makes it harder or not, but I think it does.  There are some things you can’t share with anyone.  I chose not to tell some of the pains to my own wife, especially when they were people, because I did not want her to look at them in a different way.  I also knew she would take it harder than I did, because of the way we are built. Sometimes even our closest colleagues on staff or the board can’t be told certain confidential items that might come to us.

That is a pain of a sort.

We’ll continue tomorrow to examine the pains of leadership…