Tag: Goals

Personal Musings

The Expectation Gap in Leadership

mind-the-gap-1484157-1280x960I want to talk about something in leadership I call the “expectation gap”.

The truth is that all leaders are always looking forward, and see “where we could be”. That’s inherent in being a leader, seeing the goal, the vision, and the hope.

But that creates an “expectation gap”. The “gap” between where we are at, and where we hope to be. And this gap exists for leaders in all sorts of areas in business, church, or even in relationships. We see where we hope to be, where we are working towards, but we aren’t there yet.

The trouble is that this “gap” can cause discouragement easily and quickly, because we have never “arrived”. We are never able to be content, and at ease because there is always more to do. This is inherent in any leader to drive for continual progress, growth, and excellence. But what do we do with the “gap”? How do we not let it discourage us, nor also create in us a sense of apathy?

Well to ensure that I don’t get discouraged, or apathetic I ask myself one question: is the gap shrinking or growing? Are we getting closer to the goal? Are we making progress? Because that’s what really matters to me – progress and movement. This helps me not to be discouraged that we’re not there yet, but also not apathetic that the journey is never completed. That question focuses me on the things that I think matters for leaders: movement, progress, and growth. Because the gap will always exist; so the point isn’t to get rid of the gap but continually shrink the gap.

Theological Musings

Evaluating Church

1441915_68829979Let’s be honest, we evaluate everything. We do, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. The trouble is rarely do we evaluate what we are evaluating. Let me explain, as this is particularly problematic with church.

We do evaluate church, and it happens all the time, and I know you do it too. On the ride home you talk about how the sermon was maybe good or flat. You talk about the worship and whether it was anointed or off. We evaluate and measure things.

My contention is not with evaluating the church, it’s with what we evaluate the church by. I would say that in the pastor world the standard three things we evaluate the church on is this: budget, buildings, or attendance. Is our budget growing? Are our facilities top notice? Is our attendance growing? And then we start evaluating how we are doing by our programs (i.e. preaching, worship, youth min. etc)

And none of these things are intrinsically bad. We need to be thinking through our budgets, buildings, people, and programs – but these are not the best criteria to evaluate the church. These are not the best criteria to make sure that our church and communities are pointed in the right direction. Because hear me clearly, what the world needs is not bigger budgets, better buildings, more churchgoers, or cooler programs. What the world needs is more devoted followers of Jesus. We need more disciples.

Neil Cole writes this:

Ultimately, each church will be evaluated by only one thing – its disciples. Your church is only as good as her disciples. It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs, or property are; if your disciples are passive, needy, consumeristic, and not moving in the direction of radical obedience, your church is not good.

Cole is seeking to take our focus off of the things the church often does (programs, preaching, etc) to the thing the church is called to make – disciples. And I think this is how we need to be looking at our churches. I think these are the kind of questions we need to be asking:

  • What kind of disciples are we making, and do they look, live, and love like Jesus.
  • Are we doing a better job at that – than last year.
  • Are we releasing and raising up disciples and sending them out?

And rather than just using our budgets, buildings, or numbers to evaluate where we are going, what if we ask this simple question: how are we doing at making disciples? Because for the church to be faithful to Jesus, it needs to be faithful to its calling – to make disciples.

And I think if we ask that question it will point us in the right direction. It will help us to be more faithful. It will help us to not get caught up in all the good things around us and miss out on the most important thing – making disciples.

And so it’s a hard question as a pastor to ask, but I think it’s the right one. And I think it’s one that points in the right direction, because it points to Jesus and the church’s calling. And I think that matters.