Making Big Leadership Decisions

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Leaders Have to Make Decisions All the Time

  • Everybody needs to make decisions all the time.
  • Some decisions are made more consciously than others.
  • Nothing will happen if we don’t make decisions.

‘God’s Man of Power For The Hour’

  • In many churches, we often look for heroic, anointed leaders.
  • There is some truth in the fact that God wants leaders to be heroic in their role.
  • However, this can put a lot of pressure on leaders to be right all the time.
  • When you are a leader, you won’t get it right all the time – and when you don’t, this doesn’t invalidate your leadership.
  • To stay healthy, we need to disavow people of such a high view of leaders (particularly amongst certain cultural groups).
  • As a leader, you will make lots of wrong decisions in your leadership journey.

How to Make Decisions

Apply Biblical Understanding
  • Have good spiritual health before the decision – regularly engage in the spiritual disciplines. We can often wait until the crisis moment, but we first need to build a foundation.
Wait For Prophetic Leading
  • It is important to allow enough time for God to lead and guide.
  • Very few decisions are as important as they first seem.
  • It is possible to go to the opposite extreme and dilly-dally too much.
  • Listen to other people and hear God’s voice through them.
Check Your Motives
  • Be self-aware enough to know your own predisposition.
  • Are you tempted towards a certain choice because it makes life easy for yourself?
  • Are you trying to avoid a confrontation (or charge into one)?
Ask God For Wisdom
Listen to Others

A Decision That Didn’t Go Well

  • Richard has heard God speaking about going for 2000 people.
  • They started looking for buildings with 2000 seats in an auditorium plus lots of great facilities, breakout rooms, etc.
  • But whatever they tried, they were unable to get such a venue.
  • They realised that it was a wrong decision because it wasn’t working.
  • It can be tough to know when is the time to say something was a wrong decision and when is the time to push through.
  • It comes down to hearing God.
  • Richard still thinks that he heard God about thinking next of 2000 – but he had interpreted it in terms of what he already assumed (a big building with everyone together in one place).
  • Going to multiple congregations had been tried in the past but not worked – so they were feeling burned by that option.
  • In the end, they needed to come to the congregation and just say they had got it wrong.
  • You need a leadership culture that has a readiness to apologise.
  • When you have an idea of what God is saying, it’s good to step out and have a go – even when you don’t have certainty about how things will go.
  • Your best leadership decisions are decisions that create space for people.
  • As leaders, we can’t control everything.
  • Give people a spacious place, and then establish the boundaries for them – the principles/truths that keep it safe for people as they have a go.

A Decision That Did Go Well

  • The decision to plant congregations again – this time calling them sites (because ‘congregations’ hadn’t worked in the past, that name had baggage so it was re-branded).
  • Just because something didn’t work in the past, that doesn’t mean that thing was necessarily wrong – look at the context and circumstances.
  • There is no one model that always works.
  • They started planting in partnership with some Methodist churches.
  • They started a new site in a run down old building – but there was a vibrancy and life there, and God was doing things.
  • The plant is in a largely Muslim area – God challenged Richard about not giving up on any place.
  • They put on a community Christmas dinner and lots of locals came along and commented on feeling loved and included.
  • The key is seeing what God is up to and going with that.