Leadership Decision-Making

Leadership Decision-Making is a challenging yet powerful skill to learn and grow in with each other. As being a pastor for 25 years, I see that leadership decision-making can either go in two directions;  People Pleasing Decision-Making verses Vision Decision-Making. Are we making decisions to please people or are we making decisions based on the vision of Jesus Christ?

Quite often we, church leaders, get nervous when making decisions because we fear what people will think about the decision we have made. Will they like us? Will they stop liking us? Will they leave our church or our group or our ministry team?

We can recognize that we are in this mode of decision-making when we take feedback to be a personal attack on us. This can easily lead to not wanting to be fully truthful about what is happening in the ministry, which can cause avoidance to the real problems within the ministry. It can also lead to paralyses in decision-making. When we are in this mindset of people-pleasing decision-making, realize that we have made an idol in our leadership. The idol becomes people-pleasing. This is a shocking wake up call. 

It is helpful to understand that when the servant-leaders make decisions, about 80% of the people do not really care. 10% will be hurt by the decision. The other 10% are saying "it is about time you made the right decision."

When the leadership agrees to make decisions based on vision, God starts to move and people get uncomfortable. So, it is extremely important that we make decisions based on the clear vision of Jesus Christ, found in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. We need a vision statement that is based on the heart of Jesus in three areas; loving God, loving Christians and loving those far from God. Then, what are we going to do to show this?

We need to ask these questions when making a leadership decision: 
• Will this decision drive us to live out the vision of Jesus more? 
• Will this decision take courage because we are going to do the Jesus thing and not the people-pleasing thing? 
• Will this honor Jesus? 
• Will this build up, grow and mature Christians? 
• Will this reach those far from God?

We see Jesus making these leadership decisions all over the Gospels. One example is found in Mark 1. After some life changing ministry in Capernaum, the people sought out Jesus to stay and be their leader, their pastor, their spiritual leader. Jesus made the vision decision to leave and reach another community. Jesus said to them, "Let's go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach there too. This is why I have come." Jesus was more concerned with following His Heavenly Father instead of pleasing people.

Let's continue to have courage to make decisions based on the vision of Jesus, even if it hurts. It has been said, "If you are in the position to call the shots, you will take the shots."

Learning to be willing to take shots from others for Jesus,
Pastor Chris

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