Operating Models of Leadership

Pastoral

Missional

Expectation that an ordained pastor must be present at every meeting and event or else it is not validated or important.

Ministry staff operate as coaches and mentors within a system that is not dependent on them to validate the importance and function of every group by being present.

Ordained ministry staff functions to give attention to and take care of people in the church by being present for people as they are needed (if care and attention are given by people other than ordained clergy, it may be more appropriate and effective but is deemed “second-class”).

Ordained clergy equip and release the multiple ministries of the people of God throughout the church.

Time, energy, and focus shaped by people’s “need” and “pain” agendas.

Pastor provides solutions.

Pastor asks questions that cultivate an environment that engages the imagination, creativity, and gifts of God’s people in order to discern solutions.

Preaching and teaching offer answers and tell people what is right and wrong.

• Telling
• Didactic
• Reinforcing assumptions
• Principles for living

Preaching and teaching invite the people of God to engage Scripture as a living word that confronts them with questions and draws them into a distinctive world

• Metaphor and stories
• Asks new questions

“Professional” Christians

“Pastoring” must be part of the mix, but not the sum total.

Celebrity (must be a “home run hitter”)

“Peacemaker”

Make tension okay

Conflict suppressor or “fixer”

Conflict facilitator

Keep playing the whole game as though we are still the major league team and the major league players. Continue the mythology that “This staff is the New York Yankees of the Church world!”

Indwell the local and contextual; cultivate the capacity for the congregation to ask imaginative Questions about its present and its next stages

“Recovery” expert (“make it like it used to be”)

Cultivator of imagination and creativity

Function as the manager, maintainer, or resource agent of a series of centralized ministries focused in and around the building that everyone must support. Always be seen as the champion and primary support agent for everyone’s specific ministry.

Create an environment that releases and nourishes the missional imagination of all people through diverse ministries and missional teams that affect their various communities, the city, nation, and world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.