How Leadership Sounds in my Church
When I started at my current church, we had just come off the mission field and were unsure of what was next for us. We stayed with my wife’s parents for a few months and attended Sarah’s home church. I became co-pastor with Sarah’s dad on September 1, 2019. He was the retired county attorney who became pastor following a church split in 2010. The church was struggling, with only a dozen people attending regularly. On my third Sunday as co-pastor, we had eight attendees and four volunteers (my wife Sarah, her parents, and myself).
I started regularly preaching on the same points: the best days of the church are in the very near future, and we are called to reach the people of North Iowa who are least likely to hear the gospel. Those were the mission and vision that I believed our church needed to embody.
Reading Jules Glanzer’s book The Sound of Leadership was like returning to an old friend. While I’ve never read it before this week, Glanzer voiced lessons I’ve learned and tried to pass on to our church. This book is about leadership lessons from the missional church movement using the music analogy. Based on the diatonic scale, the notes of leadership are listen, see, learn, do, and love.[1] Glanzer says we “[listen], first to the voice of God and then to people.” [2] We learn to listen to the cacophony of sounds and voices around us and identify the pitch and melody of God. Glanzer points to 5 filters to decide which voice to focus on: mission, vision, value, resources, and the Voice of One.[3] Glanzer says we listen to the Lord, see the world as God sees it, learn from what we have heard and seen, do the work, and love others.[4]
Without naming them, our church used these filters. In my first few months as a pastor, we began a process of listening for God’s voice, seeing our community as God sees it, including our position in it, and asking God to teach us how to reach the people God wanted in our church. Our church sanctuary seats 199 people—we had 20 on a good Sunday. I believed and preached that there were 179 people in our community that God wanted in our church that we needed to reach. God led a few of us to begin working with people in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. That population began representing our calling to reach the people least likely to hear the gospel. While we had started building relationships, nobody from that community had come to church.
Then COVID hit.
Of all the times to become a pastor, September 2019 would not be my recommendation. COVID hit 6 months into my learning the rhythms of the church. Our state shut down worship for 6 weeks. We came back with 35 people.
Glanzer says, “The very nature of leadership requires a situation that needs to be addressed, a person who is called to address it, and a group of people who are willing to become equipped and inspired for the common good.” [5] Our dying church was our situation to be addressed. I was the person God called into the position to lead, and some people in the church accepted the calling to become equipped to reach the people least likely to hear the gospel in our community.
COVID provided the catalyst we needed. To stick to the choir analogy, COVID was our sounding board that amplified everything. Our unhealthy habits and newfound mission were both amplified. COVID was our (my) opportunity to bring needed changes in a time of upheaval. Addressing COVID became an opportunity to organize on the mission.
Glanzer says the major chord of leadership is comprised of integrity, courage, and humility.[6] By God’s grace, I feel equipped with these. As referenced above, Glanzer says we must see the world as God sees it. I had the integrity, courage, and humility to speak the truth about our church: We were dying and in need of revival, but God was not done with us, and the best days were in the very near future.
We are beginning to see the fruit of our efforts to learn to hear God’s voice and unify on our mission. Glanzer says a leader’s magnum opus is the leaders they raise up.[7] My goal as a pastor is to work myself out of a job. I’ve often told my church and others not to measure me by the growth of the church I pastor but instead by the leaders I equip. Measure me on what the leaders I pour into go on to do.
In the next few months, we’ll name Evan our community pastor. Two years ago, he came to our church out of jail. I’ve been in an intentional discipleship relationship with him to teach him how to be a pastor. He has learned how to provide spiritual care for the church, preach, and equip others. Evan is one note in my magnum opus. I hope God writes a symphony of equipped and sent leaders with my life.
Glanzer says, “Leadership is being that results in doing.” [8] In my life, I’ve tried to be the type of person who, first and foremost, embodies a dependency on God and is devoted to bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I’m fortunate that God is using me in my context in north Iowa. Our church has doubled, doubled, and nearly doubled again. I still believe the best days for our church are in the very near future. We haven’t found all 179 people that God wants here yet, but we’re closer now than when we started.
[1] Jules Glanzer, The Sound Of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune Your Life and Influence (Plano, Texas: Invite Press, 2023), 2.
[2] Glanzer, 3.
[3] Glanzer, 22–23.
[4] Glanzer, 84–85.
[5] Glanzer, 53.
[6] Glanzer, 49.
[7] Glanzer, 118–19.
[8] Glanzer, 46.
About the Author
Robert Radcliff
Hi! I'm Robert, and I'm seeking to understand who God is calling me to be in my community while helping others do the same. I enjoy reading, training for triathlons, and using exclamation points!10 responses to “How Leadership Sounds in my Church”
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Robert,
I appreciate the ‘179’. What a great reminder that we all have space to invite others in, and I’m super excited for you guys and Evan! How do you see ‘your personal song’ changing as you bring on a new pastor?
Darren, in some ways, my personal song doesn’t change. I continue trying to work myself out of a job. In other ways, things have to shift. I’ll be teaching him how to work himself out of a job. There will be learning curves with him. Luckily, we are formalizing and recognizing the responsibilities that he is already serving. How our church changes is up to God, the Church, Evan, and myself. I get to play only one part in that. We’ll see
I’m cheering Evan on and praying for him already!
OK, my turn now… how would you personally define leadership, Robert?
Joff, haha. I would personally define leadership as the interaction between a person or group with others toward a purpose. Glanzer says something like that as well on page 53: “The very nature of leadership requires a situation that needs to be addressed, a person who is called to address it, and a group of people who are willing to become equipped and inspired for the common good.”
My answer, like all of my best ideas, is shamelessly stolen.
I love this story a lot- thank you Robert. What an excellent application of Glazers principles to a real life church setting. And I am excited to see how many people Evan will reach through his story of being transformed by Jesus.
Do you have a plan when you get to 185 people regularly attending? Another congregation? A new campus? I am excited that we get to watch this for two more years at least…
Betsy, I didn’t think that far ahead. I don’t know what will happen when we get to 185. Right now, at 70ish, our parking lot is full, and we use part of our lawn for parking. We have to figure that out next. Our building is an old dairy barn that was converted into a bar and dance hall in the 50s and became a church. It’s not a great building. We’ll likely need to move.
I love this. I’m excited for you and the community transformation that will then impact your schools, police, criminal justice system, health system as you bring His Kingdom in!
Excellent narrative, Robert. You filled in some blanks from our in-person conversations about your church and how you ended up there. I greatly respect the work you are called to lead.
So many stories about churches navigating 2020-2022 read more like Steven King than Robert Radcliff. As much as I believe that crisis develops character and can bind a group together, the phrase “COVID provided the catalyst we needed” has rarely hit my ears. I am more accustomed to hear that the sounding board which amplifies unhealthy habits resulted in driving people to seek their own rather than implement healthy change.
If you can share here, I’d be interested to hear what changes you were able to make which lead to the doubling and doubling again. You already confessed your dependence on God and I doubt that handing out twenty dollar bills was the healthy and sustainable strategy.
Rich, thanks for the great question. This is a long answer to a short question. I would say that I didn’t have a set strategy and stumbled through it. There were things that the church was doing out of inertia that went unquestioned. COVID allowed space to question. We have changed nearly everything, including our service, leadership structure, and purpose. I was fueled by optimism and grit. I was optimistic that God wasn’t done and wanted to grow the church. I had enough grit to keep pushing for healthy changes that were slow for me and painful for others.
The service is more friendly to newcomers. During COVID, I changed how we pray for people and greeting time. There are a couple paragraphs down below that detail how I changed these.
At the size we were, nearly everything was done by my in-laws. We didn’t have committees, and our elder board was not functioning well. They only met when there were issues to address or to approve repairs to the building. Now, we have healthy teams running ministries and a healthy elder team that oversees me and the churches spiritual health well.
I wish I could say the church rose to the occasion, but they didn’t. Almost all people serving now are newcomers in the last 5 years. Nearly none of the established people have stepped into a serving role. I continue to invite them, but they say no. Some of them left, and a few came back.
This church revitalization effort has felt like we were changing the engine while flying the plane. In hindsight, I think it would have been easier had we closed and re-launched the church. Yet, God has been faithful and revitalized our church. One lady in her 80s who helped plant the church in 1979 recently pulled me aside. Regarding another lady who had left, she said, “She left too early.”
Thanks for the question!
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We had a greeting time where visitors were only approached by a few people. To change that, I emphasized being a welcoming church from the moment people arrive. We don’t do greeting time, but we have a slide that says we’ll be starting late, so take time to talk. I make an effort, and people have followed and learned to stand in the back, greet people as they come in, and chat with them.
We had a prayer time for individual prayer when anybody could come to the front and receive prayer. The rest of the congregation was just sitting there. We put that at the end of the service during our last songs so people could go to a designated spot and be prayed over.
I love knowing your story! It is one close to my own heart in who you serve. There is so much about your church that could have gone wrong. Not to keep the typical stereotypes, but that you became co-pastor with your Father-in-Law is one that could have gone real bad. But it didn’t. The timing disastrous. But it wasn’t. Who would think a church that had to close down would come back stronger. COVID should have been the bomb especially for a church (as you know, many churches closed for good in that time). But it wasn’t a bomb that destroys- it was more like a bath bomb that released color and fragrance into the water.
What an encouraging story. Your humility and courage shines through in your dependency on God to write the song. It seems like the symphony of your life is well on way to be a full and beautiful piece that continues in the Kingdom of God forever.