Christian leaders should maximize abilities, pastor suggests_50304

Posted: 5/03/04

Christian leaders should maximize abilities, pastor suggests

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

SALADO–Leadership is not telling people what to do, but working with and for others, a Rockwall pastor told the Baptist General Convention of Texas Ministers of Education Retreat.

Leaders understand when to take a stand, but they spend much of their time helping people through projects or following the advice of others, said Steve Stroope, pastor of Lake Pointe Church.

Pastors, ministers, Sunday school teachers or church project coordinators need to realize the ways God strategically blessed them and lead in a way that maximizes their unique abilities, he said.

Abilities typically align with a person's passions, he explained. Enthusiasm can drive people to accomplish much more than someone working on the same project without excitement.

“It's not about the power of positive thinking,” he said. “This is not a pep talk. This is not 'If you can dream it, you can do it.' It's 'If you can grab (God's) dreams, you can do them.'”

If leaders recognize how they are gifted, they can build a staff of workers around them to balance weaknesses, Stroope said. He added that ministries grow when Christians are working where they are passionate.

Where leaders are not gifted, they should work under the direction of another person in hopes of strengthening the ministry, he said.

Stroope encouraged the ministers of education to use trial periods to help volunteers find where they best fit.

Allow workers to try different positions for short periods until they and the minister find the proper place of ministry, he suggested.

“If you're doing something and you're not bearing fruit, you're doing the wrong thing,” he said.

When delegating work to others, volunteers need passion, but they also must have strong character and competence, he emphasized. Leaders must model their beliefs and work effectively.

Supervisors also need to share a vision with the people who work for them, and it helps if they like the people they oversee, Stroope said.

Those factors help the two enjoy working together toward a common goal. The relationship enables each party to strengthen where the other is weak, he noted.

These steps will help ministers and ministry, but they will not keep the work from wandering off track, he said.

Individuals, programs and churches run through typical five- to seven-year cycles that include stages of dreaming, doing, feeling something is wrong and a period of reinvention that can lead to dreaming again, he maintained.

In tough times, ministers must lean on God to carry them through, Stroope said.

“There are people who look at you and me and say, 'You can't,'” he said. “They don't know our Father.”