Elders: The Care and Feeding of Elders in a Progressive Congregation: Five Dysfunctions of a Team

* Pat Lencioni is the expert

It’s my opinion that every eldership and every group of ministers should study these two books together: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable and Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors. It would be best if the ministers studied these separately and the elders studied these separately and they then studied these together. They are fairly short, easy to read, and exactly what most church leadership teams need.

I’d further suggest that the ministers lead the discussions for the sessions where the elders and ministers are together, because this helps them take ownership of the ideas and assures them that the elders value their leadership and input.

In the Five Dysfunctions, Lencioni recommends —

Lencioni lists five qualities a time needs to survive — being the opposite of the items listed above —

* Vulnerability — a willingness to be disagreed with and outvoted for the sake of the team’s common purpose.

* Healthy conflict — a willingness to disagree in meetings, even with your boss or best friend, because getting the best result is important and your relationships don’t depend on agreement. Rather, your relationship is centered on a commitment to common goals.

* Commitment — a willingness and commitment to making certain the decisions are well understood and communicated. People leave meetings knowing what was decided and who is charged with the tasks.

* Accountability — every member of the team, knowing what his part of the task is, expects to be held accountable. No one can avoid his part of the work by overruling the team and choosing to do something else instead.

* Attention to results — the team insists on measuring outcomes. Did we accomplish our goal? Are we making progress? Does the plan need to be reconsidered?

Get these five things right, and your church will be blessed because each is a deeply biblical principle — and yet each is very hard for most ministers and elders, because most ministers and elders are highly relational and have trouble doing anything that might hurt someone’s feelings, especially a member of his own group. The key is for each member to give permission to be disagreed with and held accountable.

Good stuff. Great book.

The second book, dealing with silos, deals with the problem of ministers who care more about their ministry than the church. It’s very typical for a youth minister, for example, to refuse to give up time with his teens to teach an adult class or help with an event that doesn’t help his own program. And this attitude is destructive to church life.

For churches to succeed, the entire leadership team needs to be pursuing the overall vision of the church — in their ministries and any other way they can — because they are all church members and all essential parts of the church. If the teen minister won’t support congregational efforts, he’ll inevitably turn the teenages into a separate sub-congregation, separating his kids from their parents and potential mentors.

One of the great problems of large churches is our tendency to segregate by age and run the congregation as several separate churches with differing visions and even differing theologies. And this is deeply unhealthy for young and old alike.

The cure is, first of all, to have an overarching vision that’s big enough to include members of all ages and, second, to manage the age-group ministries as elements of the larger church. That is, rather than doing short-term missions for the teens, do short-term missions for the church — and invite the teens to participate. This way, the teens will be with adults who are on mission out of passion for mission — rather than passion for the teens. And that helps show that the center of our lives is Jesus and his mission, not our children — which is better for our children.

You see, the more we center ministry on our children, rather than the lost and hurting, the more our children become self-interested, self-centered Christians. It doesn’t work! But bring them up surrounded by passion for the needy and lost, they’ll learn to have the same passions.