SUMM<\/u>ARY<\/u><\/p>\n Pastoral leadership is a complex topic because leadership<\/em> is a complex topic. In Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em>, editors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana present a collection of papers on leadership written by different scholars from a diversity of fields. The outcome is an insightful book that should be part of every leader\u2019s library, not only because of the rich insights but also because of the extensive bibliographic information found in each chapter. The book asks, \u201cWhat advice can scholars give leaders who are entrusted with the challenges of leading organizations and ensuring their continued viability and prosperity?\u201d (3) The answer is 822 pages of scholarly advice; almost as thick as my Bible. The editors do not apologize for the immensity of the volume, because they have one underlying hope. They say, \u201cthe world is crying out for better leadership. We hope this volume improves the supply.\u201d (24) This cry has been a personal one for me, because after thirteen years of ministry, I feel the need to get equipped to be a better leader.\u00a0 I can testify that this volume has indeed improved my understanding, which I hope will now help me supply better leadership to Ethnos Bible Church.<\/p>\n REFLE<\/u>CTION<\/u><\/p>\n The conversation with my hairstylist is a significant experience because it forced me to have to explain to somebody else what is the role of a Senior Pastor. Theologically speaking, the Bible summarizes the role of pastoral leadership by its three titles: Elder, Shepherd<\/em>, and Overseer<\/em>. Yet, these titles do not come accompanied by a comprehensive job description. They point out the functions of teaching\/preaching, shepherding lives, and overseeing organizational health. However, in practice, there is a level of complexity in performing these roles that the Bible does not completely address in a comprehensive and prescriptive way.<\/p>\n In light of my experience and in the midst of the many perceptions of pastoral leadership, I found chapter 16 of the book very insightful. The chapter is entitled “What is Leadership?\u00a0 The CEO’s Role in Large, Complex Organizations.” I was surprised to see how many parallels existed between senior pastoral leadership and the role of a CEO. The roles and challenges listed were exactly the roles and challenges that I faced. Just for fun, and to make the parallel more evident, let me change the word CEO in the following section with the word Pastor<\/em>. Think of the role for a second. Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria point out that the role of a CEO is summarized in five key roles. Let me adapt them to my ministry. \u00a0As Senior Pastor, I have to (1) provide The challenges of a Senior Pastor are just like the ones of a CEO. Allow me to continue to exchange the word CEO for Senior Pastor<\/em> in the following list. For instance, a Pastor\u2019s \u201cevery word and action are followed and scrutinized closely\u2026. Anything the Senior Pastor<\/em> says or does is widely and extensively interpreted, and thus runs the risk of being amplified.\u201d (440) The Senior Pastor<\/em> is the face of the church to the point that \u201ctheir personal lives (such as their families, their health, and their avocations) may well suffer. Putting everything into a job that demands every ounce of their energy, without losing themselves in the process, is the ultimate challenge of the Senior Pastor<\/em>\u201d (441). Pastors<\/em> must think of the long-term goals to ensure that the church is \u201cwith better shape and with better prospects than when they took charge.\u201d (441) Senior Pastors<\/em> are expected to be proactive, to \u201cset an agenda, develop plans, and drive action. They are expected to anticipate the future and plan for potential contingencies.\u201d (442) Since there are always unexpected situations that demand the Pastor\u2019s<\/em> attention, these events \u201ctypically require urgent attention and can be enormously time consuming. The Pastor\u2019s<\/em> job thus requires a complex combination of proactive and reactive activities.\u201d Consequently, Pastors<\/em> are faced with the reality that \u201cthe demands of their time are endless. Everyone wants direct contact with the Pastor<\/em>\u2026. There are also rituals and events at which the Pastor\u2019s<\/em> presence is expected.\u201d For all of these reasons, Pastors<\/em> \u201coften find themselves overcommitted, or spending time on things they regret.\u201d (442) Thus, one of the most challenging realities of a Senior Pastor<\/em> is \u201cmanaging time\u2014doing the things that are highest on the Pastor\u2019s<\/em> priority list, while still being responsive to the incessant flow of other demands.\u201d I know well that despite the similarities, being a Senior Pastor is fundamentally different from being a CEO in that I am called to make disciples and So, what are the immediate implications of these obvious parallels? The book advises that \u201cthe CEO cannot perform even a small fraction of these functions personally. Inevitably, the CEO must principally harness the work of others.\u201d (443) Based on my experience, I see how my role as Senior Pastor is evolving as the church grows. I believe that this change of role is not only a result<\/em> of growth, but also an essential ingredient<\/em> for growth. It demands a switch of investing time from doing<\/em> to overseeing<\/em>, from managing people<\/em> to managing the organization<\/em>, yet, without eliminating the personal connection. Consequently, there are three immediate implications for my ministry. First, I will need to start expanding and strengthening my leadership team so I can start delegating more. At this stage of my ministry, I must \u201cpay close attention to the composition and development of a broader group of top talent\u201d (446), improve the one-on-one reports, and harness the multiplier effect (456). Secondly, in light of the vast array of issues that demand my attention \u201cand the impossibility of personally doing it all\u201d (452), I must be disciplined to set a prioritized agenda for the use of my limited time. This is a \u201crelative short list of major priorities that are ordered in terms of their time horizon.\u201d (452) Finally, in order to enter into this transition, I must create certain venues that will improve communication and increase clarity, because \u201ceven in a moderately sized organization, it is virtually impossible for the CEO to directly communicate with everybody.\u201d (454) This last point will require for me to start thinking in innovative ways, because \u201cbesides face-to-face or oral communication CEOs must also make effective use of other communication media such as organizational newsletters, annual reports, intranets, voice or video messages, e-mails, and blogs to get the message out.\u201d (454) I hope that by taking intentional steps to expand my leadership team, maintain a clear personal agenda to manage my time, and by creating new venues to improve communication, I will be able to navigate this leadership transition in my Senior Pastoral role at Ethnos Bible Church.<\/p>\n In addition to these three implications, one question remains: What do I do with all<\/em> my free time? If you are still wondering, please allow me this time to roll my eyes while I sigh.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" INTRODUCTION \u201cWhat do you do with all your free time?\u201d This was the first question that a hairstylist asked me when she found out I was a pastor. Initially, I did not understand what she meant, so I asked her to explain her question while she kept cutting my hair. She then clarified, \u201cAfter you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[689,195,688,702],"class_list":["post-6364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ethnos-bible-church","tag-nohria","tag-pablo-morales","tag-pastor-pablo-morales","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6364"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6531,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6364\/revisions\/6531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"DSC_2281\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/DSC_2281.jpg\")
<\/a><\/u>What is pastoral leadership? What is the job description of a Senior Pastor? In my experience, the hairstylist is not the only person suffering from misconceptions about these questions. On the one hand, many seminary students graduate thinking that their main role is to preach on Sunday and teach Bible classes. Then, they get eaten alive by the human side of ministry demands and quit ministry altogether. They were expecting to spend a lot of time doing exegesis and writing books. They were not prepared to deal with conflict resolution, marriage counseling, and dysfunctional church politics. Other students seek pastoral ministry because they love helping people. Then they discover an ocean of organizational needs that not only consume their time but also their joy of ministry with it. They were expecting to spend time with people, rather than organizing programs, meeting with church boards, and dealing with IRS regulations for non-profits. On the other hand, church boards try to figure out the fair salary for the Senior Pastor. \u201cWhat should we compare the job to?\u201d they think. \u201cIs it comparable to a public school teacher?\u201d they wonder. This confusion may result in pastors feeling undercompensated and discouraged. \u00a0This problem is magnified by the fact that most churches are not mega churches with a full team of associate pastors. Rather, most churches will have only one pastor\u2014one pastor who is expected to do it all.<\/p>\n<\/a>Think of my case. After graduating from seminary, I started working as a Senior Pastor of a declining\u00a0congregation that had seen their church decrease throughout the years from about four-hundred people to a crowd of twenty-five\u00a0members in an increasingly multiethnic city. A fire destroyed our sanctuary and church offices during my fourth year. I was preaching, teaching, counseling, writing, mobilizing teams, leading a capital campaign, rebuilding the church after the fire, and doing outreach in the community. We brought some new pastors into the team, and took a training on strategic leadership. With our church leaders we developed our mission, vision, and values, which lead us to revise our entire ministry to create alignment. This process resulted in changing our church name, creating a new website, reengineering our leadership structure, and meeting with lawyers to change our legal identity and by-laws. That is the summary of thirteen years of ministry. As of today, we are still in this process. Consequently, I have felt for the past years that my ThM prepared me well as a theologian\u2014to preach and teach\u2014but I now need more training in organizational leadership in the context of globalization. As I have discovered, balancing the role of Elder, Shepherd, and Overseer is quite a challenge.<\/p>\n<\/a>direction and ensure aligned strategy for the church, (2) ensure that the organizational structure is aligned with the strategy, (3) recruit and develop senior leadership, (4) create an atmosphere that fosters commitment, (5) and implement organizational systems that ensure that goals are achieved in a timely manner. The goal is that the Senior Pastor will ensure alignment and adaptation in the church ministry. \u201cAlignment means that choices in each area must be consistent with and reinforce others. Adaptation implies that these choices need to be reviewed and modified as internal and external conditions change.\u201d (436) This is a challenging role because there is \u201ctoo much to know, too much to do, and even too much to monitor.\u201d (437) Newly appointed Pastors<\/em> are often \u201csurprised by the realities of the job and how different, not to mention more demanding, the Pastor\u2019s<\/em> job is from anything they have done previously.\u201d (437) In order to mobilize the organization, Pastors<\/em> need to learn to accomplish most of their work through others, rather than themselves, which means that they have to invest more time working with boards and leadership teams rather than doing things themselves. \u201cCollectively, these activities take up what many Pastors<\/em> experience as a surprisingly large fraction of their time and energy.\u201d (438)<\/p>\n<\/a> care for lives rather than profit. Yet, when looking at it from the organizational role of being an overseer, the similarities are clear.<\/p>\n