Bill Curtis, Ph.D.

Gather with a group of professionals, and eventually the topic of leadership will emerge. From Good to Great to Extreme Ownership, everyone has their favorite book about leadership, and there are few topics that arouse stronger opinions and feelings. Whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the manager of an IT department, a college football coach, or the pastor of a local church, your skill as a leader has much to do with your ultimate success.

Recently, I talked with a young couple about the challenges of church planting and the value of church planting residencies. As a co-founder of The Pillar Network, and as a church planter myself, I love the process of equipping church planters and planting churches. Consequently, I always enjoy having these types of conversations. As we talked, this couple asked a question I hear often: “How do you determine if you have the gifts necessary to be the lead pastor of a church plant?” I’ve been reflecting on that question, and here is how I flesh out my answer. I’ve come to believe that there are five prerequisites for succeeding as the leader of a church plant:

1. Clear Vision: As the lead pastor of a church, you are responsible for understanding, embracing, and communicating the mission and vision to your church and potential members. If you are hired as the lead pastor of an existing church, the mission and vision should already be set. If so, you are agreeing to lead the church in a way that is consistent with that mission and vision (If there is no clear mission and vision, then you must seek to help develop one).

If you’re planting a new church, then it is your responsibility to prayerfully identify your core mission, vision, and values (this is best done while you are completing a church planting residency in a healthy, like-minded church). When it is properly constructed, you should be able to share a compelling vision for your church in 5 minutes. This does a couple of things. First, it reveals that your mission, vision, and values are clear in your mind. Remember, a fuzzy vision never motivates potential partners. Second, it ensures that you can sow a seed of interest in a brief conversation, knowing that you can always expand the conversation if time permits.

I once knew a church planter who had a number of qualifying gifts. However, he was never able to get clarity on his vision. Every time I talked to him, he was struggling with some aspect of his vision. His vision seemed to shift whenever he heard what other pastors were doing. Because of this, his core team became frustrated and his community was never presented with a consistent vision of the church. After a season, he left the church, and the church limps along without a compelling vision to this day.

No one should have greater clarity about the mission, vision, and values of a church plant than the planter himself. If you can clearly communicate a compelling vision for where the church is going, people will be much more inclined to follow you to that destination.

2. Confident Direction: It’s one thing to have clear mission, vision, and values; it’s quite another to know what to do to bring it to life. Again, this is where participation in a church planting residency can be so valuable. If you spend time with people who have successfully planted a church, they will be able to model a successful process.

Many planters have discovered that their initial strategies and plans need to be adjusted when they actually arrive on the field. This doesn’t mean that early preparation is unprofitable, however. The key ministry components of a church plant are the same everywhere: gatherings, small groups, ministry, outreach. As a result, every new church plant needs to clarify the way it plans to do these things before it launches. The way to best implement the plan in their planting location may need to be adjusted over time, of course, but a strong confidence about one’s missional direction is critical for the health of a new plant.

Remember, hope is not a strategy. I recommend that my church planting residents build a portfolio of resources that they can utilize once they arrive on the field and assess their core team composition, meeting location, and potential community partnerships. In this way, they don’t have to spend time researching and planning when they should be mobilizing.

A clear knowledge of the church’s mission, vision, and values, along with a clear strategy for leading the church into that vision, will instill confidence in your core team and in those who consider joining you. After all, it’s much easier to follow someone who knows where he’s going than someone who is wandering around in circles.

3. Core Competencies: Here is the famous question: “Are leaders born or made?” The answer, of course, is yes. There is no denying that some people are created by God with unique leadership gifts. However, the yearly proliferation of books about leadership reveal that leadership is also a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved.

At its core, leadership is the ability to energize and mobilize people around a common goal. Those who lead in the secular workplace (and some spiritual spaces), lead people who are paid to work. In a local church context, the leader is seeking to energize and mobilize a volunteer workforce, whose subsequent investment of time and money must be developed, not demanded. This is a very different kind of leadership indeed!

The core competencies that must be developed in those who lead church plants are these:

• The ability to create and communicate a compelling vision;
• The ability to model a confident expectation of reaching the goal of becoming a self-sustaining church in a reasonable amount of time;
• The ability to mobilize the church into the mission, especially when the initial rush of enthusiasm wanes;
• The ability to make disciples, who will become the first generation of leaders in the church;
• The ability to navigate relational conflicts, especially on the core team, with grace and wisdom.
• The ability to develop strategic partners and raise money;
• The ability to shepherd your family as you shepherd the church.

When you consider these skills, you’ll notice that every task the church planter does falls under one of these categories. Further, these aren’t occasional tasks. Without fail, the church planter must provide leadership in these areas every week. Remember, no one can do this better than you—that’s why you’re the lead pastor. Now, as you train your people, you will be able to share some of these responsibilities with others. Yet, day or night, rain or shine, good or bad, God has appointed you to be the leader, and you must embrace that responsibility. Does this ministry work sound awful to you? Then you can know that God isn’t directing you to be the lead pastor of a church plant.

4. Compassionate Oversight: In recent days, there has been a lot of discussion about unhealthy leadership models. From Mars Hill to Echo. Church, claims of toxic leadership in local churches continue to surface. Clearly, there are two ways to exercise oversight in a church. You can drive people or you can lead people—you can’t do both.

Compassion is one of the important words in the Bible. It speaks about the way that we treat those around us. While it has implications for all of the people we encounter, it certainly has greater implications for our brothers and sisters in the church. Compassion motivates us to “care about” and “care for” those that we lead. To “care about” people means that we value them and want the best for them. To “care for” people means that we take practical steps to demonstrate that we value them and want the best for them.

Oversight speaks to one of the primary functions of an Elder, so this is especially important for the lead pastor of a church plant. Remember those skills we just mentioned? All of them require oversight. Leadership requires motivation, implementation, observation, course correction, and celebration, but it should never resort to manipulation.

When we put these two concepts together, however, we begin to gain a proper understanding of a biblical leader. Leadership in the local church must be oversight motivated by love. This is what makes local church leadership unique. While oversight is essential to the long-term survival of a local church, oversight without love is counterproductive. It turns people into props, pastors into dictators, and churches into corporations. Ultimately, the body will become unhealthy and die.

5. Relentless Commitment: As you can see, it takes a unique blending of gifts to be the lead pastor of a church plant. The foundation for these gifts is something even bigger—a relentless commitment. Here, I’m talking about a deep-seated assurance; an assurance that God has given you a desire to create a new church out of nothing, regardless of the sacrifice it may require or the suffering it may produce.

Everyone who plants a church begins with the highest of aspirations and expectations. But in reality, the process of creating a healthy, self-sustaining, reproducing church takes decades—not years. Within that journey, there are innumerable blessings and burdens, victories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies. There are the seasons of growth and loss. This occurs when critical mass is just within reach, only to evaporate when some key families are transferred to other cities or grow weary of mobile church. Then, the slow push towards critical mass must begin again. There are the seasons of celebration which fade when disunity erupts on the core team and threatens the life of the fledgling fellowship. And then there are the tangible things: the sudden loss of a meeting space; the sudden loss of a financial partner; the sudden loss of a staff person who decides to move back home.

If you have planted a church, you have walked these roads—often. If you haven’t yet planted—you will walk these roads. What separates those leaders who are vested in church planting for life from those who are in it for a minute? A relentless commitment to God’s plan for church planting. I’ve labored in 3 church plants during my 33 years of ministry (one as a staff member and 2 as the lead planter). Those ministry experiences have provided the greatest joys and sorrows of my life. On several occasions through the years, I’ve felt the icy hand of the tempter urging me to quit. After all, there MUST be an easier way to make a living.

 But that’s just it—we aren’t making a living, we’re living a mission. It’s that central truth in the core of my being that gives me the strength to press on—no matter the obstacles or the outcomes. God leads, and I follow. Then, I lead, and people follow. Ultimately, leading with this type of relentless commitment is the best hope for seeing a new church planted (or an old church revitalized). And when that happens, the gospel flourishes and the Kingdom expands for God’s glory. That is a mission worth giving your life to accomplish!