Making Adjustments as You Grow

Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in Charlotte had some good insight on church growth here in this video. He talks about the importance of working yourself out of some of your responsibilities as the church grows. When you’re small, a few people do almost everything. But as you grow, if you want to truly equip people, then you must give them the opportunity to jump in and lead and takeover some of your responsibilities. Steven talked about how he used to setup the soundboard every Sunday morning, then he stepped back from that and took more of an active role in leading Worship, then he stepped back and focused more on just making sure everything was setup correctly, and now he just focuses on his message on Sunday mornings. Of course because of their tremendous growth, he also now has many more responsibilities that take up his time.

As your church grows and your responsibilities grow, you must become effective at delegating. You essentially work yourself out of responsibilities. I also heard Andy Stanley talk about this. When Northpoint was young, the core staff made up an org chart with around 100 different positions they needed to fill based on what they felt called to do as a church. The small core leadership group filled all 100 positions with the intention of trying to get new people involved. That allowed them to work themselves out of secondary responsibilities so they could focus on where they were gifted and where they were needed most.

In too many churches, pastors are expected to do everything, and in the process they can’t do anything with excellence. I’m so glad that the church I pastor doesn’t expect me to do everything. I know one of my chief responsibilities is to enable and equip and encourage new leaders to serve in the church. And in the process, I will have to make adjustments to back out of some of what I am doing now, so I can focus on what God has called me to do.

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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