Leadership Weekly

Just watched a message from my Senior Pastor on Empowering Leadership which has really got me thinking about who in my world I need to empower more. Who would really step up to the mark if I would just speak to the potential in them and see them as I know they could be rather then focus on their weaknesses?

In talking with many children’s pastors some common reasons often come up for not empowering:

1. It is easier to do things ourselves - The reality is if we just put the effort in to train others up around us then in the long run you will be able to do much more by empowering others. Things get easier as your leaders get better at it.
2. We feel others may not want to do children’s ministry - Children’s ministry is a priviledge and we need to expect for others to see it that way. If we expect people to not want to be in leadership then why would they? For me, serving the children and families of my church is the greatest honour and I thank God that someone empowered me!
3. We don’t trust others to do things as well as us – They wont…that’s right…they wont! Give them time though and they will do it better then you ever could. Training someone is hard because at first the standard of the work that is done will go down but given time the empowered leader will pick it up and take it up past your current level.
4. Insecure about our position or role so therefore don’t want to give it away - Our security comes from our relationship with God not our position. The quicker we get a hold of that the sooner we will be confident in our leadership role.
5. They are too young for responsibility - Younger people are an investment but like all investments if you will just put into it then eventually you will reap a reward.

I think about my life in ministry. I was empowered to be the School aged Children’s Pastors at our church at just the age of 20! Talk about empowering people at a young age!
If we fail to empower then we fail to see our influence go beyond our life time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.