I remember
going to my first amusement park when I was 10. We went to Six Flags over
Georgia. It was a harrowing experience. The confusion began with actually finding
it and locating a parking spot! This was long before the days of Google Maps
and smartphones. From there, it was continued confusion mixed with both fear
and fun.
Once through the gate, an immediate sense of being lost overcame us
and we had no idea where to begin. So we did what came natural. We started
walking and reacting to what was in front of us. “Here is an interesting ride,
let’s do that.” Then we would wait in line for 30 minutes for a ride that was
over in 2. We did that all day and when it was over, we were exhausted. We were
more impressed with the fact that we made it through the day than with the
rides.
For pastors
and leaders, church life can be like that; a lot of frenetic activity
with no real agenda and direction.
Take a
roller-coaster ride through basic church life: buildings, budgets, crises,
staff conflict, growing pains, disgruntled members, besetting sins and
providing care, sermons, meetings…meetings…..meetings…..and more
meetings….fatigue, excitement about lives changed, another sermon to
preach….more meetings…personal struggles, various ministries and programs to
staff and events to plan, desperate need of volunteers, difficult people! Life
in a normal church can feel like an amusement park---lots of activity, people,
distractions and the constant potential for getting lost in the din of activity.
You are either following the crowd or responding to the urgent.
The demands
of pastoral ministry are precisely what blur the focus of what is most
important for pastors and leaders in the church. Church leaders often become
managers of the busyness. They turn into a board of directors who set policy
and often micro-manage the activity but lose sight of ministry to people.
In his
best-selling book, Good to Great, Jim
Collins makes an astute observation that maps very well onto church life. The
book is about what makes a company great and not just good. One thing the team
of researchers observed is distinguishing between a hedgehog concept and a fox concept.
Hedgehogs focus on one thing, while foxes focus on many. Companies that acted
like hedgehogs and not foxes were the ones that went from good to great.
Those who built the good-to-great
companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their hedgehog
nature to drive toward what we came to call the Hedgehog Concept for their
companies. Those who led the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never
gaining the clarifying advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead
scattered, diffused, and inconsistent.
I think the
same can be said of churches and church leaders. Because church life can be so
frenetic and scattered, unless you have a clear biblical vision of what is most
important for church and church leadership, you will default to acting like a
fox. Thankfully, Scripture gives us a clear vision and mandate for what is of
utmost importance for church life and church leadership.
Over the
next several posts, we will be honing a biblical philosophy of ministry, rooted
in Scripture that can guide leaders to focus on the important over the urgent;
to be hedgehogs and not foxes.
Copyright © 2013 Tim Lane. All rights
reserved.
