Leading a Healthy Church Culture - Lesson 12

This is a summary version of the Christ-Centered Leadership class in the Certificates section that includes a study guide and additional resources.

Dr. Rick Sessoms
Leading a Healthy Church Culture
mc610-12
Discussion of Two Principles
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] Well, I'd be interested in in hearing your list if the church truly embraced these seemingly simple. Uh, principles from the life and teaching of Jesus. How would, uh. How would the church look different? How would our leadership be different? Maybe we could start with this group. Who's the spokesperson? You have one? Well, the leadership were saying there would be less burnout in the leadership because they would be all in Jesus. So you feel like burnout has a direct correlation with machinery with you. So if there's one person in charge, okay, doing the oiling and the gears, then you. Okay, good. What one did you guys come up with? Well, one never counted. There should be more witnesses on the Cyprus ship building. Because if the leaders are following Christ and. Focus. Towards that senior pastoral person. So everybody was a leader of the priesthood. So the priesthood sense would rise to the top. There'd be more emphasis on the priesthood since. And you wouldn't have the burnout then, because you've got folks share. You don't have one person whose shoulders and all on. Everybody's got a responsibility. Right? So what's a second from this group? Second point. Well, you. As a visitor coming to this community and getting involved. You would. It's a it's a community that would you know, you'd get more connected to it because you can kind of people can kind of come and go from churches so easily. They church shop and church hop and. And you would become so much more invested in a church where your involvement is valued and and you're developed and grown and and so people become much more sort of invested in, in that church culture because their inputs valued so much. Okay, good. And along the same line, fewer people are being dissatisfied.

[00:02:33] Fewer people would be leaving the service. Yeah. Do you think satisfied if there. It's interesting that. When a church, there are many churches, particularly larger churches, that have been developed really on a almost a consumer mentality. And if this shift were made, the evidence suggests and we've seen this happen a number of times, that there often is a dip. Before there. You can get out of that spin simply because if people have been conditioned to have their, uh, you know, coffee with caramel in it when they come in in the morning, I'm not picking on coffee in the lobby. But, you know, I'm saying there's a consumer mentality that really exists in the church. And so the, the response may not be real positive at first. If that approach were taken, just a just a warning there. Another one from this group. You have another. With genuine expression and gifts from just filling slots within the church leadership and body there would be. More of a genuine expression of what their gift truly is, okay? Rather than really become that they take people with the business and the accounts and put them in the money areas, the needs of the church. Whereas there they really may have some other outstanding guidelines to bring, but they get shoved in the slot. And I had that. I when I was a pastor, there was a guy that was treasurer the church, and I didn't realize for a couple of years that he just absolutely hated it. He was a, you know, an accountant guy at work, but he, he really had this passion to be an elder and to to lead people. So we went through this process and he discovered his giftedness and his passion. And he's been serving that capacity now for over 20 years and just loves it.

[00:04:49] So that's a great example. Another another point from over here, certainly piggybacking on to that, Rick, would be that every single person would be important, would be essential, and there would be no hierarchy or certainly folks who have different functions, but every single person would come and feel valued, important so that the result would be greater than the sum of the individual people. That's great. Great thought. Other points and we cover them. Do you have others look really different from the culture around it? Would, wouldn't it? Because if it really is that and you really do examine how it was in Jesus day and just how different the church could be, The church, in fact, one of the challenges I think we face today is, is we're dealing with not folks who are unchurched, but we're dealing with a whole culture of folks who've been damaged by religion or they've gone to religion and not found anything different than the world in it. And so it's not attractive. You're not going to poor folks. You can go play golf on Sunday morning. You're not going to pull them away from some other event that they might get that's much more pleasurable. So you need to have something that's really better than what they got. It's like being an alcoholic. You're not going to stop drinking until you find something better than what that alcohol is doing for you. And so, I mean, the negative stuff doesn't do it. So what, you got to have something better. And so if folks came to the church that was led by Christ and that everybody was important, everybody's part of a family, then people would come and say, I want what they got because they got more than what I can find in my golf game.

[00:06:38] And there's just an attraction to that, isn't there? Yeah. Well, this is an exciting discussion. It it is possible. And there there are people who are catching on. And it's exciting to see as we share this around the world.