The Church Now and Then: Any Commonalities

(Part 2)

Samuel Tengey, PhD

Introduction

It was indeed refreshing to read the responses of many of you regular readers, who have encouraged me a lot. These comments suggest to me the issues I deal with are those of grave concern, and that dealing with them can resolve a number of contentions within the wider body of Christ. But I have also taken on board comments which are not compliments but suggestions for making my articles gain a much wider readership. I need much of these too, so let me thank everybody who has taken the pain to read and comment on my article. Having now been assured, my articles are useful at least to some of you readers, I am encouraged to present below the part 2, which I promised. Please, come with me once again on this exciting journey of discovery. I will be releasing the subsequent articles in trickles to make for easy digestion. In this second part, I share the passion, which has propelled me to venture into this area; draw attention to the lack of people management skills as the major source of contentions in the church, suggesting ways to address this, and finally shedding light on the importance and ramifications of leadership decision and behaviour for church members and the wider church community. But first of all, let me share my passion with you before I proceed.

Passion and Objective

As a human resource management expert, I am sufficiently informed, with practical evidence about the potential of an organisation’s human resources-often described as untapped reserves of human resourcefulness-to offer the organisation a competitive edge if properly utilized. As a pastor’s son and with over twenty years experience as a church planter, and church worker serving in various capacities internationally, and now a church leadership and management development consultant, I am startled by how much human resources the church either wastes or loses in various ways. I have seen churches boom with every calibre of gifted people, yet sooner than later crumbled into extinction. I have been eye-witness to the painful segregation and disintegration of powerful churches with great visions and visionaries. I have noticed with grave concern the abysmal extinction of the ministries of great servants of God. In almost all instances, such breaks occurred simply because either their leaders have failed to effectively develop, motivate retain, and deploy their workers, or because the gifted members do not understand the rationale for the ministry gifts and thus used them for the wrong reasons.

So what?

From the foregoing, the need to identify specific areas where church leaders require systematic and comprehensive resourcing becomes immediately apparent. Identifying these areas and addressing them will help church leaders to effectively resource (train and develop) and relate to their workers effectively, while developing and preparing church workers to relate to their leaders and congregations in appropriate ways that would leave the church strengthened, edified and prepared for ministry. What follows then is identification and brief overview of specific areas [developed into modules] that I think, against the backdrop of the issues raised, deserve close attention in the training agenda of church leaders and church workers. I address all such and similar other areas and topics in my ‘Church leadership and Management Development Seminars’ (please check out my site www.strategicresourcers.com) for details. I take some of these broad areas, discussing them in turn below.

The uniqueness and generality of church leadership and management…

Church management is uniquely different in several respects. Firstly, the product we market is different from what is marketed elsewhere; theirs are physical while ours are non-physical: the message of the kingdom. Additionally, whilst the patronage of their product is dependent principally on the degree of publicity accorded the products, the patronage rate of ours is in addition, significantly influenced by the conduct of those who publicise it. For church leaders then, this calls for more than simply knowing the Bible; it calls for living out the Bible, and making our messages practically relevant, thus transforming our lives into living epistles of God! To be effective our preaching needs to be what we live; we must reflect what we preach. Unbelievers’ concept about God is influenced by our character, attitudes, and behaviour. Thus while thorough understanding of the Bible coupled with oratory skills are indeed are common success factor in church leadership, these are simply necessary but never sufficient. A sufficient condition is attained when the preacher begins to prove to others by their example that their message can be lived in our contemporary world of challenges. In spite of this uniqueness however, leading a church-as a human organisation, is similar in some respects to leading other non-church human organisations such as corporate businesses. Please don’t get me wrong: I do not mean we must manage churches strictly as we do business; what I do mean is that we, as leaders (pastors, elders, deacons, etc) do certainly require some fundamental management knowledge to be effective in ministry. People have some fundamental qualities similar to everyone, irrespective of the organisation they operate in, and it is only logical to argue that clearly understanding these basic qualities or features can help strengthen leaders’ capacity to lead people. Anointing can bring the crowds but you and I would agree anointing doesn’t sustain the crowd; what sustains the crowd is essentially character and effective people management skills. This may help reduce the frustration of many pastors, particularly those who have great anointing but still struggle to maintain their membership and their commitment.

Part of my contribution to the body of Christ is to supply this missing link. With my profession as a management practitioner and human resource development expert with experience with both corporate and church organisations, I am passionate to help strengthen the managerial capacity of pastors and church leaders: my passion is to see the church more coherent, strong, united and productive. In this module, I attempt to establish the uniqueness of church leadership and management but also show how it is similar to managing other forms of organisation, suggesting practical steps to effective church management.

People, lives, relationships and destinies is what is at issue…

Our message is all about people, lives, relationships and destinies. Whether targeted at unbelievers, carnal Christians living daily under the control of their flesh and continual condemnation; or even at spirit-filled Christians expecting to maximise their potentials, our messages must be borne out of a genuine commitment to seeing people, lives, relationships and destinies changed for the better. We must be people-oriented, understanding how much people matter to God. As leaders we need to develop a value system that reflects belief in people and confidence in their ability, and treasures human life and relationships above material gain. We need to see in people what God sees in them although their present circumstances might present little hope. The only treasure from God to the church (apart from Christ, Holy Spirit and salvation) is people. God gives us people; we, not God, determine what we make of, and do with them. Like fishes, there is a gold bar in the mouth of the people God brings to us. Like Peter, we need to be able to see the gold bar in the mouth of the people. We have the capacity, with the help of God, and the right training, to build the people into what God wants them to be, and into the anticipated mature excited, enthusiastic and committed Christians we have always prayed for. Accomplished in this module is an attempt to focus church leaders on the centrality of people and relationships to successful church work, and practical ways of dealing with people irrespective of their race, ethnicity, colour and socio-economic background.

Leadership and follow-ship

As leaders we have follow-ship; people’s lives and destinies are influenced by what we do and the decisions we take. As leaders, our actions and decisions have lasting consequences for our followers, necessitating the need to be exceptionally circumspect in our choices and actions. Because leaders are required to portray God to the world by their conduct, and since God’s name is blasphemed among the gentiles because of what we do (Rom 2: 24), God cares much about leadership behaviour (Ezek 22: 25-31). We need to identify and respect the call of God on our lives that forbids us to do just anything that others might freely do:

‘For he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; for he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb….(Luke 2: 15-16). We should be able to say like Jesus…’for their sake, I have sanctified myself so they also may be sanctified (John 17: 19)’, and like Paul, ‘follow me as I follow Christ (1 Cor 11: 1)’.

By virtue of their position, leaders have automatic following-they are followed sometimes even blindly when they are wrong. Have you never seen a church where almost everybody tries to behave like the pastor-trying to preach, minister with same or similar disposition or gestures? Because of this dynamic, it is important that leaders exercise great care before making decisions-sometimes even when they are so convinced they are right. Charismatic leaders, who tend to influence so many minds, need to exercise great circumspection in their conduct and reaction to issues. This was a hallmark of the church then. It still exists in some churches but it needs to be strengthened and embraced by others. Look out for Part 3. Before then visit www.strategicresourcers.com for more information.

CEO of Strategic Resourcers, Samuel Tengey is currently Director of Business School and Vice President (African University College of Communications, Ghana). He also lectures in Human Resource Development and Organisational Behaviour, and consults in leadership and management development with special interest in church leadership. Contact: samuel@strategicresourcers.co.uk; stengey@aucc.edu.gh; URL: www.strategicresourcers.com