senior pastor or lead pastor?

Leonard Sweet contends in his book Summoned To Lead that leaders are not naturally “born” or “made” but are “called into existence by circumstances… those who rise to the occasion are leaders.” (p.12) Here is an interesting bit of research from that book:

“More than nine out of ten Protestant Senior Pastors claimed to be leaders – until we posed a specific definition of a leader (at which time the percentage dropped below two-thirds) or asked if they felt God had entrusted one of the leadership-related gifts to them (at which time the ratio dipped below one in four).

Protestant Senior Pastors are most likely to assert that they are leaders because they feel they do a good job in the areas of teaching an providing encouragement to people; in fact, they rated themselves comparatively poorly regarding leadership functions.” (p. 27)

Sweet also has some key thoughts in regards to appropriately conducting the leadership elements:

“More important than finding someone to fill a ‘job description’ is hiring an employee with the right ‘spirit description’… better to conduct job inner-views before job inter-views.” (p.76)

“What is the ultimate in a ‘right spirit’? Two components: confidence and humility. Or in their cognate forms, absolute concentration and total relaxation, gravity of purpose and levity of tone… In Jim Collins 1996 study of… the Fortune 500 list from 1965 to 1995, only 11 percent made the truly ‘great’ category. What ‘great companies’ had in common was leaders who keep distinct, even opposing views and virtues without collapsing them into one another. Collins describes such leaders as ‘modest and willful, shy and fearless.’ These people ‘look in the mirror’ to apportion blame for poor performances and ‘look out the window’ to credit success.” (p. 80)

“The true leader makes each team member twice the person they were before… The secret is to lift up others, not yourself.” (p. 91)

“A leader helps people move from living their lives to singing their lives. A leader helps them realize that there are a part of a score larger than themselves – not ‘God has a plan for you’ but ‘you are part of God’s larger purposes and design.’ Everyone has a story to tell, a secret to impart, a song to sing. A leader’s job is to find the melody line around which everyone can harmonize.” (p.106)