What Leadership Does Your Church Need Right Now?

Different seasons call for different styles of leadership. Understanding what stage your church is in right now and how to lead in this season is crucial to providing the leadership your church needs.

A great question to ask is where is your church in the life cycle of an organization?  I recently came across a model for understanding stages of organizational life that I found helpful. It comes from the book The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. Here’s the idea:  

Your church in one of the following situations:

• Startup
• Sustained Success
• Realignment 
• Turnaround

Your church is a start-up if it is new—a plant, new campus, satellite, or a new ministry.

Your church is a sustained success if you are healthy and growing. 

Your church is in need of realignment if you were a sustained success, but things are slipping. 

Your church needs a turnaround when things are not healthy and not growing.

Here’s a very important question if you want to bring the appropriate leadership to your situation:  What stage are you in right now? 

I recently listened to Eric Geiger on his leadership podcast describe how this model of understanding life-stages of an organization helped him determine what kind of leadership to bring to Mariner’s Church when he took over as the Senior Pastor a few years ago (By the way, if your church is moving toward succession, his podcast is fantastic.)

Eric gave great advice in one of the episodes:  Don’t decide alone. That is, as you seek to determine where your church or ministry is in the life cycle, pull other trusted leaders into the conversation and get their perspective on whether your situation is startup, sustained success, realignment, or turnaround. 

Once you understand what stage your church is in, you need to adjust your style of leadership to fit the situation. 

Let’s think of this in terms of speed. A startup and a turnaround require an emphasis on speed. You need to act quickly and decisively. There is an urgency. If you don’t establish yourself in a startup, you will fizzle out. If you don’t create change and movement quickly in a turnaround, people will lose hope and move on. 

Both startups and turnarounds require speed and urgency. If your church is in one of these phases, act accordingly. As a leader, you need to act decisively to bring clarity and vision. Set goals and create movement. Speed is crucial.  

What if you are a sustained success or a realignment? It’s the opposite. Speed will be counterproductive here. You have time to make a wise decision. Take your time. Make sure you have enough perspective. Seek advice and listen to feedback. The best move in these situations is to make a careful decision and to take your time securing buy-in with key stakeholders. 

Eric Geiger described the difference in leadership styles needed between startups/turnarounds and sustained success/realignment as hunting and farming. One is quick, decisive, and aggressive. The other is slow, methodical, and careful. You might think of it as offense vs. defense. 

Here’s my point: Understanding your situation empowers you to choose the right leadership style for the moment. The key for us as church leaders is to match our style to the situation. 

I hope this has been helpful as you think about your church or the specific ministry that you lead. May you choose the right style for this season.