A charismatic, confident, highly skilled leader can be a great asset or a great danger to a church. In the moment, it can be exhilarating to be part of an organization that is run by such a leader, but over time, problems can begin to surface.

A highly skilled leader can tend to forget the importance of equipping others.

Leaders love to do the work they do. They enjoy the various aspects of moving an organization towards the vision and goals that have been defined – often by themselves. In their desire to do a good job, they easily forget about training others to learn how to do what they do. And it feels like a waste of time to slow down and train others when you can just do it yourself. A leader usually has more they want to do than they have time for, so doing things they don’t want to do, like equipping others, falls onto the “not so important” list.

A highly skilled leader may portray a way of doing things that others think they can never imitate.

When a charismatic leader connects with people and leads them well, those without those gifts can tend to think they can never match up to that leader and how they lead. The leader may even portray their leadership as the one and only ideal way to do things. This means that anyone who does not have the same skills or even the same personality may come to the conclusion that they can never learn to do the same thing. Those watching may even give up on pursuing leadership at all because they cannot do it the way that this leader does it.

A highly skilled leader can make it all about themselves.

The temptation of a confident leader is to make it all about themselves. They may not mean to at first, but if people start following them and giving them accolades, the leader may begin to think they are really quite something. They may begin taking the spotlight on themselves, and being okay with that, rather than pointing them to God. When people come to church to hear the preacher and not to meet God, there is a problem. That leader needs to find a way to always keep pointing to Jesus and always give God the glory for any abilities he has.

A highly skilled leader can make others dependent on him.

A great leader recognizes that people can not depend on them but constantly and consistently works at building a team. No one should be dependent on one person. No one should depend on one counsellor or one pastor. If this happens, that person may be completely lost if that pastor moves on to a new church. A leader must develop a team and build up the larger body of Christ so that people will see they can depend on the larger church family and not just on the pastor. The pastor also needs to equip people to depend on God and not on individuals around them. Point them to Jesus. Give people skills that help them to depend on God.

If a leader functions like a boat in the water, leaving a wake behind it, leaders need to ask themselves what kind of wake they are leaving behind them. A highly skilled leader needs to recognize their responsibility to equip others to join in with the work that they are doing. Leaders need to learn how to develop a ministry that is not dependent on them and will succeed even if they are no longer around.

Keep looking up,

Andy Wiebe