Leadership in Missions

Let me make an observation. Many mission organizations do not value leadership on their teams or fields. It is a holdover from the past where missionaries viewed themselves as independent contractors rather than a part of an organization or team. In that culture, when there needs to be leadership, one elects someone who will basically leave you alone and the criterion is often that they have been on the field a long time (paid their dues) or it is their turn (among those who have paid their dues) with little evaluation as to whether they are truly leaders or not.

Let me make a second observation. Not valuing leadership in missions means that those missions are not truly concerned about good strategy, seeing significant fruit or missional effectiveness. The long term result will be the decline and eventual death of those missions because while they don't value strategy and missional effectiveness, the individuals and churches who pay the bills do - a lot. And they will not continue to pay for ineffective missionaries or strategies.

Furthermore, long experience on the field does not equal leadership skill. All it equals is long experience on the field. Veteran missionaries often resist leadership from individuals who don't have that long experience but they miss the point. Good leaders release others into focused, missional, strategic leadership. They don't need to know what a veteran missionary knows because they use the expertise of the team an determine where they go and then they align all team members in a direction that is likely to be fruitful. 

Leadership should be seen as a skill in itself. Good leaders don't know everything, in fact they may not know a lot. But they do know how to position people for success, build a team that is pulling in the same direction, solve problems and ensure there is a healthy strategy. That is true in business and industry, just as it is in missions. The job of leaders is not to know everything. It is to take the corporate wisdom of those involved and help craft direction and strategy and alignment.

In industry when business is in trouble, the board often will bring in a leader who has no prior experience in that field. What they do have is leadership skill and the ability to access, get the right people in the right seat on the right bus, determine what needs to be done in concert with the corporate wisdom of good people and turn the business around. 

Missions that will thrive and survive in the years to come will do so because they have courageous leaders who help lead missional teams toward fruitful ministry. Ignore leadership and your mission is destined to fail. Value it and you will move forward.


One final observation. All Christian movements globally require good leadership. That is why Paul spent so much time developing leaders. Missions who don't understand good leadership will never be able to develop indigineous leaders. And if you don't do that, you will not leave behind fruit that will last.

Red, Green, Yellow

Visual management is a tool long used in industry but has wonderful application to ministry as well. For instance, we evaluate our adherence to our core commitments in ReachGlobal with a series of defined metrics along with a color for each. Green means that we are doing well, yellow that we could be doing better and red that we need to pay attention to it. Behind each color is a comment indicating why we evaluated the metric the way we did. 

In the same way, as we define processes that we follow for various key functions we rate each process with one of the colors along with comments. This is easily done using Microsoft Excel. 


The colors are not about whether someone has done well or badly, in fact, yellow and red are not negative. Instead they represent "opportunity" to do something better. Red is an indicator that we have something that we really need to pay attention to.


Ministries are not good at evaluation, generally. Giving our metrics or processes a color along with comments is an easy way to start to evaluate what we say is important to us. If in fact, we don't honestly evaluate it is not really important to us!


Further, the colors give you a quick indicator of where you are doing well and where you can improve. Knowing that you cannot improve everything at once or solve all problems concurrently you have a choice from your visual management tool as to which you want to pay attention to now. 

The first time a team does this, everyone wants all the colors to be green. They never really are. Furthermore, if they were all green it would mean that you have nothing to improve which we know is never true. In fact, using colors honestly gives you a continuous management tool which is what we all really want. 

It takes a little bit of work but it is a highly effective tool! It is even more effective if you put them on a wall for all to see. People start to pay attention to areas where improvement is possible and they all get in the game.

Books on Kindle

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Words that bring life and words that bring pain. Our daily choice.

We live in a world that is often hard and harsh. Circumstances disappoint, life often throws us curves we don't expect or appreciate and people can be less than supportive. That is why we gravitate toward those people in our lives who are encouraging, who speak words of life to us and are literally Jesus in our lives.

Think of the difference between the words of Jesus and the words of the Pharisees. Jesus' interactions were life giving and the Pharisees' interactions were life taking. Jesus was full of grace while the Pharisees were full of legalism. I know believers who reflect the attitude of Christ and those that reflect the attitude of the Pharisees, those who bring grace and those who bring guilt.

Recently someone made a comment to me that was like a knife in the stomach. Words that hurt deeply. It reminded me of how powerful words are, either to be life giving or life taking. As I shared the pain I was feeling with another friend he brought words of encouragement, perspective and life. He was Jesus to me in my pain. 

Paul encourages us to "not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs...Be kind and compassionate to one another...Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs...(Ephesians 4-5)." 

Here is what I know. My words today can be life giving, encouraging and reflect the love and grace of Jesus. Or, they can be critical, hurtful and life taking and reflect the attitude of the Pharisees. I have this choice in every interaction I have. When I speak like the Pharisees I do so from pride and judgement. When I speak like Jesus I do so from humility and grace. 

Could this generation be the last?

I am not a predictor as to when Christ is going to return. However, I do read Scripture and am a student of both history and current events and what I am watching in the Middle East and elsewhere sure looks like it could lead to the apocalypse predicted in the Old and New Testaments. Think about oil, radical Islam, atomic weapons, terrorism, natural disasters, wars, the global financial crisis, the growth of unrighteousness and you have the descriptors of what will be at the end of time as we know it.

In the past, prophecy was a regular topic of preaching - perhaps too much so. In the present, it seems to be largely ignored. Yet, Jesus told us to be aware of the times and Paul lived in light of the return of Christ. 

It matters because when we focus our attention exclusively on this world we forget that there is a future for us in a recreated world that is better and more wonderful than anything we could ever imagine. And, that when the end comes, there is no second chance for those who don't know Jesus. Their future is one without Jesus - forever.

The truth is that any one of us could meet Jesus at any time. Apart from His divine intervention, I should have met him three and a half years ago when I was in an induced coma. None of us know when our days will be up - we all live on borrowed time.

As one who is deeply involved in missions I have an urgency for the billions of people who if Jesus were to return today would face a Christless eternity. It is estimated that half the people who have ever lived in human history are alive today so the spiritual stakes are high.

It is easy to be satisfied with our lives and our possessions and ignore our own mortality, or the coming return of Christ. The time we have is precious so we need to use it wisely. Jesus and Paul would ask the question, "If we knew that Christ were going to return in our generation how would we live differently?" I want to know that I have invested my own life in ways that build His kingdom and introduce people to their savior. In the end, not much else will matter. 

As you read the news of our world, remember that there is a day coming when the nations of the world will cause a huge conflagration that is unimaginable to anything we have ever seen. And, that Jesus will return in glory and power. Are our lives aligned  and lived in light of His (soon) return?

Develop, Empower and Release

As ministry leaders we love to release people into ministry and we should – that is the heart of Ephesians 4:12. The question comes as to how and when we do this in ways that are helpful to others and not harmful. I believe that the answer can be found in the concept of Develop, Empower and Release.

But first, There are some common mistakes made by those who lead others in terms of their training and releasing. Let me suggest three:

• Just releasing people to do their thing in the name of empowerment. While empowerment is wonderful, empowerment without training, development and coaching is to set up people to fail – and to hurt the church or organization they serve with.

• Never releasing people under the guise of “they are not ready.” In this scenario, we never really release because they don’t have the same training as we do or would not be as effective as we think we are.

• Development in the form of academic training only. Here we think of training of more theology (not bad), leadership theory (not bad) but short on hands on ministry experience.

All three of these errors contribute to disappointing results with those we are raising up and releasing in ministry. I believe there is another way: that of developing, empowering and releasing others. This was the pattern of Christ and of Paul and it is one that we could learn again from today.

Development is about helping others understand how they are wired and gifted, spending quality time with them in ministry, dialoguing and sharing our lives in a serious way. It includes modeling ministry, modeling the life of a disciple, training and mentoring in the things of God and the life of a believer. This is best done in relationship or in community where discussion and dialogue are possible (think of Christ with his disciples) and where they are challenged to follow God seriously and invest their lives in ministry. Even in this stage we are inviting people to use their gifts but in an informal way in their homes, neighborhoods and circles of influence. 

Empowerment only comes after development has been part of the picture. Empowerment is inviting people into ministry under our direction or coaching in ways that are appropriate to their readiness and gifting. It comes when we believe someone is ready to put some of their training into practice. This was Paul when he asked Timothy to take on certain assignments. It was Jesus when he sent out his disciples to heal and proclaim the good news and come back and report. It is ministry opportunity with a leash of coaching and accountability.

Empowerment is not just throwing people out on their own: it is inviting them into ministry in line with their level of maturity, under the coaching or authority of others. It is on the job training with feedback, coaching and ongoing development. Development and empowerment are not two separate phases as the development continues as we empower people to try their wings in ministry.

While developing is the first step, developing and empowering are tandem activities where increasing ministry responsibility is given as our mentee grows and develops. This was Paul’s strategy with Timothy. First Timothy traveled with him, then he started to give Timothy ministry assignments under his authority and as Timothy grew so did those assignments. If one short changes this dance of development and empowerment we run a significant risk of a ministry crash once on their own.  

Releasing is acknowledging at some point that people no longer need us in a direct way and are ready to be released out on their own. Paul developed and empowered Timothy for a number of years but the time came when he released Timothy to pastor and stood in the background to encourage him. Jesus released the disciples on his resurrection and ascension. Paul spent several years at Ephesus planting a church and training leaders and then released them to fly on their own. 

It can be hard to release because we are so vested in the development of others but at the right time it is time to let go, stand in the background, pray and encourage. It is like a parent who lets their eighteen year old fly on his or her own. They will make mistakes (as we did), they will pay dumb tax (as we did), they will face huge discouragements (as we did) and they will grow in their ministry (as we did). If we have developed and empowered, they will be ready to move forward. All the while, like Paul with Timothy or Christ through His Holy Spirit with the disciples we stand behind them cheering them on, encouraging them and providing counsel or insight as needed.

In our developing of people we will fail if we don’t pay attention to all three of these pieces of the development of individuals to the place where they can fly on their own – with a high probability of success.

One last note: For those who want to leave a legacy, the developing, empowering and releasing of people into ministry is the key. It is the 2 Timothy 2:2 principle.

Ministries don't drift toward success!

We wish we could but it does not work. Drifting toward success simply does not work. It takes a clear direction, intentional strategy, courageous resolve and long term thinking to get us to where we need to go. Think about those four descriptors. Do they represent the ministry you are a part of?

Clear direction. If you had to describe in one minute or less what your ministry was about and where it was headed, could you do that? Clarity of direction is not complex (forget the multi page position papers that no one remembers). Rather it is clear, concise, and easily understandable. If you were to ask each of the members of your team to do the same thing would there be significant alignment about what they all said? If not, some dialogue might be helpful!

What is your intentional strategy to accomplish your clarity of direction? Is it understood, easily communicated and make sense? Is that strategy a shared strategy by all members of your team and are they actually living it out rather than using it as a slogan? More to the point, do you have a strategy at the macro level to accomplish your goals or do you just hope that your activity gets you to where you desire to go? Remember there is a significant difference between activity and results.

Direction and strategy don't mean a lot without courageous resolve. There are many impediments to actually accomplishing the mission you have starting with people who may not want to cooperate, obstacles that get in the way, competing agendas or simply difficult circumstances. One of the reasons that ministries often do end up drifting is that they don't want do to the hard work of tackling these obstacles, courageously resolved to move in the right direction regardless of the costs incurred. It is much easier to simply let people do their own thing for a scattered result than to ensure that everyone is one the same page for a significant result. But that takes courage, conviction and resolve. Without those, ministries drift.


Long term thinking is the fourth key to helping move toward success rather than simply drift. Long term thinking is the result of leaders and teams thinking deeply about the desired future and what it will take to get there. They are not interested in the flavor of the month, the newest leadership guru or doing what everyone else is doing. They are thinking long term for long term results which is why courage to get there is so important. Can you articulate the long term results of what you do? One of the ways to do this is to ask what your five or ten year broad goals look like. They ought to paint a picture of the long term impact your ministry desires to have.

Drifting is easy, requires not real work, does not require discipline or accountability. It is also poor stewardship and won't get one to success.