Recently at a student event I saw an interesting scene. At the front of the meeting room, a musician was performing some songs. Throughout the room there were a number of tables laid out with students sitting around them, watching the performance.
At one of the tables, there was a group of guys. They sat, soaking up the atmosphere and gazing admiringly at what was going on. All of a sudden one of them looked down at a leaflet on the table containing the lyrics of the songs that were being sung. The other guys also looked down. This one guy then lifted up the leaflet. The others followed suit. He perused it. His colleagues began perusing too. Finally, he put it back on the table. The other guys also put it down.
Once the evening was done, this central guy got up, putting his jacket on and prepared to leave. Then, he headed out of the room. You can imagine what the other guys did!
One of the topics that is very popular in this day and age is leadership. Left, right and centre, there are courses, seminars, books and all sorts of nuggets of wisdom on this topic. All of us human beings are one way, or another, affected by others and in turn involved in have influencing on those around us, which explains the popularity and relevance of the topic.
We could define leadership as the ability to influence the actions of others. Above we see a good example, whereas when I organise children’s activities, a less than successful leadership attempt can be witnessed!
There are probably many different styles of leadership, some better than others, although much depends also on the abilities of the person leading as well as the circumstances in which leadership is being attempted.
Many leaders prefer an authoritative style. This has the advantage that it can motivate people to get things done, but the disadvantage that it depends a lot on the whiles and whims of the leader, who could easily abuse the situation for personal gain or mistakenly lead people in a wrong direction.
Thus, a second leadership style is group leadership. A good example (hopefully!) is democratic government. Here, although things are often led by one person, a prime minister or president, they are subjected to scrutiny by their own political party, which is then in turned scrutinised by opposing parties. In other words, not just one person is deciding what to do.
A third style is relaxed leadership, or ‘pandering to the people.’ This involved making decisions simply based on what others want. Otherwise said, letting the people being led dictate to the leader what to do, rather than the other way around. In a measured way, it is important to let the people being led have a say, which is at the basis of democratic government, but it’s probably still necessary to have someone making the decisions because it will be chaos in any organisation if everyone can have their say. As they say, where there are two Baptists gathered, there are three opinions!
There is a much-loved Bible verse in Genesis 2:18, which says that ‘it is not good for the man to be alone…’. Obviously from the context this is talking about marriage as God then proceeds to create Eve. Nevertheless, throughout the Bible we can see examples which show the same principle applied to Christian ministry.
One such occasion would be at the beginning of Exodus when God appears to Moses in the burning bush and tells him to go to Pharaoh and request that he let God’s people go. Moses is not too keen on such a daunting task, so we see in Exodus 4:14 God sending Aaron along as well. They form a team that undertakes the difficult work of freeing the Israelites from Pharaoh’s grasp.
In the New Testament, we find Jesus choosing a group of men to be His apostles, that were with Him and went out to preach (Mark 4:14). When He sends them out, He sends them out in pairs (Mark 6:7). Thus, even Jesus didn’t work alone.
There is much debate and different opinions to church leadership, but from what we have seen, it can nevertheless be said that some sort of team leadership is favourable. In 1 Timothy chapter 3, Paul describes both church overseers and deacons thus suggesting more than one person in leadership. From both personal experience and scripture, it is clear that Christian leadership is a spiritual battle (Ephesians 6:11), so it is logical that those in leadership need support and hence a team leadership model is a good idea.
As alluded to above, team leadership can eliminate some potential problems when one person becomes too dominate in leadership. It offers the chance for accountability, which can help things remain on track and prevent things becoming one person building their own empire, for their own ends. It also shares around the burden of a work or ministry and means that things don’t all depend on one person. This can be particularly important as things can often be great if there is a charismatic leader leading the way, but if that leader grows tired or goes off the rails, they can then fall apart.
Team leadership thus offers longevity to ministry as it enables leaders to keep going for longer and gives rise to the possibility of followers who will take things on at the right moment. A good leader will also want a group of people to share their vision for what is going on, as that way people will be more inclined to get involved, if the vision is group owned.
One other advantage of team leadership is that it guards against the extreme of a leader simply pandering to the people and not actually leading anywhere.
A good text to illustrate Christian leadership is Mark 10:42-45, which compares leadership in the world to leadership in the Kingdom of God. Here, we see that in the world people lead by dominating others for personal gain whereas this is contrasted with serving others. Indeed,
‘For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ Mark 10:45
Thus, in the world as someone progresses in leadership their rights and privileges grow. On the other hand, in Christian leadership as someone progresses their rights and privileges decrease, and their responsibilities increase. This can be illustrated by an example that I heard of the General Secretary of IFES queuing in a long line for food at a large student conference, rather than skipping to the front of the queue!
In conclusion then, we can say that team worker is when a group of people make a coordinated effort to fulfil a task. Team leadership is when a group of people coordinate that effort. From a Christian point of view, the aim of team leadership is to build up and serve those around through the activities carried out, rather than profit from them.
Inspired from ‘CURS Baza biblică a conducerii şi lucrului în echipă
de Mihai Dumitraşcu, Cristi Petricioiu şi Mihai Ciucă’ BIG impact Romania
