In my previous article I outlined three essential relationships within the leadership ecosystem of a church: those between the leader, the people, and those responsible for governance. Each has a critical part to play, but beyond fulfilling their individual roles well, it is the quality of the relationships between them that determines the health of the system. Over the coming weeks we will look at each in turn, exploring the purpose of each role and the healthy way they relate to one another.
The Leader
We need to start with the leader because although all three areas are dependent on each other for health, vibrancy, and effectiveness, the leader sets the tone. As the saying goes, “As goes the leader, so goes the church.” The leader is often one person, and that will be the primary way I discuss the role here. However, in some contexts leadership is shared between two people, such as a husband-and-wife team, while in others it is exercised by a leadership team where authority and decision-making are shared.
The Purpose of the Leader
The leader’s primary responsibility is to create an environment where people flourish. Like a conductor, the leader helps each person play their part in harmony with the whole. Like a cultural architect, they shape the culture in which people can flourish. This often comes from establishing direction, creating culture, clarifying roles, and empowering people and teams. Establishing direction provides clarity about where the church is going, why it is going there, and how each person contributes to that journey.
The leader outlines each team member’s responsibilities and the extent of the authority each person has within their role to fulfil them. In other words, they clarify where the boundary lines are. People require the clarity and certainty that only a leader can bring if they are to maintain a sense of security and find fulfilment in their role. Without that clarity and certainty, there is usually an increasing sense of tension, anxiety, and frustration.
The Two Wings of Leadership: Authority and Accountability
Creating an environment where people flourish is a key part of the leader’s role. Equally, for leaders to remain healthy and flourish in that role, there are certain things they need too. For a leader to function with effectiveness, integrity, and wellbeing, two essential conditions need to be held in balance. I refer to them as the two wings of leadership. They are:
Authority is the legitimate capacity to act. It is what leadership needs to make decisions, take initiative, and move the church forward. Accountability is the appropriate oversight of how that authority is exercised. Are the actions taken helpful or harmful, clear or confusing, reassuring or anxiety-inducing? Both wings need to remain in balance because when one is either missing or overdeveloped, the consequences for the church can be debilitating or even destructive.
When Authority Dominates
In some churches, the tendency has been to elevate the leader’s authority. These contexts may look to other “less effective” churches and want to be different. They want growth and momentum, and that comes when there is “strong leadership” and “leaders can lead”. Whether intended or not, those contexts will often reinforce the authority of the leader through their values system and language. For example, they may emphasise such values as honouring the leader, loyalty to leadership, being a team player, being faith-filled and servant-hearted. All great values and qualities. The difficulty arises when they are used to support a leadership system that is already overextended on the authority wing. These values then create an environment in which the leader has significant power to act, which often goes unchecked.
The benefit is that things get done. The church moves ahead and may grow significantly. When a church is doing well and growing, it is understandable to ask, “Why question it?” It can be seen as the favour of God and even a sign we are doing everything right. The momentum of “success” can be very hard to challenge. It takes a brave person to say to a successful CEO, leader, or pastor that “the emperor has no clothes” or at least that there are areas of concern with their leadership style, strategy, or approach.
The pitfall, which has been painfully witnessed in different contexts, is that without appropriate accountability structures and feedback loops, patterns of significant leadership failure can remain uncorrected, or even reinforced. Leaders can, unfortunately, operate with repeated leadership failure without genuine accountability for years. Governance boards may exist on paper, but they carry no real authority in practice, so the appropriate and necessary correction needed for health and vitality is missing.
For some leaders, it may be that the governance board is in fact comprised of friends and family members, with the pastor serving as a board member and even fulfilling the role of Chair. Other times, the “governance” is oversight that comes from other external leaders, who are removed from the day-to-day functioning of the church, and act more like an advisory board to the leader. While this can be very beneficial, what it means in practice is that there is no genuine accountability structure. There is no healthy mirror being held up to help the leader to lead well and lead better.
As we will see, healthy governance is critical to the overall wellbeing and flourishing of the church and everyone in it, at every level. It would be fair to ask, “If this is the case, then why doesn’t every leader have healthy accountability and why wouldn’t every leader want it and push for it?” The reasons, however, are varied. Sometimes it is because of the leader’s sensitivity around receiving feedback and appropriate correction, or fear of interference from what is perceived as a “bureaucratic ball and chain”, or it might be because of a misguided theology that sees the leaders as being head over all and accountable only to leaders at similar level in other churches.
When it is done well, however, healthy governance can provide the appropriate support, encouragement, feedback, and correction that actually accelerates the leader’s performance rather than diminishing it. It also protects the enduring legacy of what the leader is establishing.
Encouragingly, many churches where the authority wing has dominated are rethinking this leadership model. I have spoken with different leaders who have said to me something along the lines of, “We are in a state of confusion and flux when it comes to leadership. Because what we used to call ‘strong leadership’ is now being described with words like narcissism and bullying. It is making us wonder, ‘So what is good leadership?’” It is exactly the right question to be asking.
When Accountability Dominates
On the other side, in other contexts, accountability is elevated to the point where healthy authority is substantially stifled. In these contexts, there can be a sense that “we don’t want to be like those other churches where leaders have unchecked power and disempower their people”. This may be reinforced by their value system, where they emphasise such things as “We are the priesthood of all believers, and we are just trying to give expression to that.” They may emphasise the leadership role of eldership or various forms of governance.
The problem occurs when accountability suppresses authority, or when collaboration with the many supersedes the responsibility of the many. For some churches, before anything can happen, it needs to be ratified by the board, vestry, elders, or church council. Leadership is subsumed by governance or a governance-type group. These groups may also consist of people who are only available on some evenings or once a month, significantly slowing down the decision-making process. It may be that even routine decisions need to go through an AGM or an EGM.
What is meant as an empowering form of inclusion or healthy accountability can, in practice, result in leadership being severely limited. By this, I mean not only that the positional leader may be limited, although that is a likely consequence, but that the leadership function within the church may itself be limited. The purpose of leadership is to provide such things as direction, clarity, equipping, mobilising, and supporting the saints for the work of ministry. This leadership function can be profoundly limited when the accountability wing dominates the authority wing. The leader may also be worn down as they are asked to carry responsibility without genuine authority. Over time, that constraint can breed the kind of frustration, passivity, or disillusionment that contributes as much to church stagnation as any external factor.
The irony can be that governance groups can themselves become the primary leadership body, carrying both the authority and responsibility for key decisions, yet with no one holding them accountable. Or they may have been given the authority to lead but fail to exercise that leadership responsibility so little is actually getting done or moving forward, and there is no one holding them accountable for their actions or inactions. The church may languish with the proverbial “too many chefs in the kitchen”; plenty of opinions are shared but little coordinated action is taken. We need to remember that it is the priesthood of all believers, not the leadership of all believers.
This model also presupposes that the congregation or committee can lead and lead well. I have witnessed the heartbreaking situation where quality leaders are placed within contexts that are “entrenched systems of dysfunction”, with high leadership accountability and low authority. Within these contexts, these leaders are limited, frustrated, and eventually leave.
Someone or Something is Always Leading
It is important to be aware that someone or something is always leading. A church or organisation moves according to the direction that has been set and the values that are enforced. Leadership might happen through the senior pastor. It might be through “Garry”, who can only make the monthly church council meetings. It might be through “Jill”, who is on the hospitality committee and everyone is afraid of. Or it might be through years of inattention and complacency that diminish important priorities and generate inertia. In other words, just because something is presented as being democratic or collaborative does not mean it truly is.
Consider, “Who holds the influence here?” or “Whose approval do we need to get a decision across the line?” These questions will often reveal who actually holds the authority. It will always be held by someone or something, and in reality it may not be what our theology or organisational philosophy intends, or what the positions on an org chart suggest. This is why it is important to be aware of who or what holds that authority, and then ask, “Is this what we intended?”
Now, please don’t mishear me. I am not saying that a collaborative or democratic model of leadership cannot work. There are various models of leadership that can work in a range of contexts. The issue is not the model per se but rather whether the model provides transparency about who is leading and the balance of authority and accountability for that leadership. As with each model of leadership, the key is in how it is being exercised in practice. Is it fit for purpose? Is it achieving what needs to be achieved, in a healthy, people-serving, God-honouring way? Whoever comprises the leadership and whatever decision-making process is used, does the model empower the leader(s) and workers carrying out the ministry, or does it instead create a system that limits, frustrates, and exhausts the very people entrusted to lead?
Blinded by the Familiar
Here’s the thing. No one intends for their model of leadership to end up being unhealthy, restrictive, or working counter to what is desired. We often don’t see what has occurred because we are blinded by the familiar; we are blinded by our tradition that has become so much a part of who we are and how to faithfully serve God. By tradition I mean, “the way we do things”, “how we have always done it”, and “how our denomination does it”. [1] When our tradition becomes so dominant in our imagination, it can inadvertently prevent genuine review and self-reflection. When the familiar is entrenched, or deeply valued, it can blind us to where the Holy Spirit is leading and and deafen us to what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to us.
Seeing, reviewing, and critiquing our own traditions and models is not an easy exercise. If we are unable to engage with the question of whether our wider model of leadership is serving the purposes God has called us to and entrusted us with, we may need outside help to see more clearly.
In everything we do, we need to be aware whenever we elevate our human structures and systems above what God requires and what He has entrusted us to steward.
A leader with authority but without accountability can become dangerous and damaging. A leader with accountability but without meaningful authority can become ineffective. Both wings are required — and when one becomes overextended, it quickly suffocates the other.
[1] W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities (Sage publications, 2013), 68.
