Encore Post: I Made A Major Leadership Blunder

I'm taking this week to work on my ebook, 'Good Fight', and a couple other writing projects. While I'm refocusing, I'll be re-posting my most popular articles as measured by the number of page views they've received. Enjoy!

Tim H. Swanson

I love my team so much. I am so proud of them. And I threw them so completely under the bus.

Go team!

At the beginning of the year my boss asked me to preach once at the beginning of July. I had been asking to preach, so if course I said yes. I had months to prepare. I am also very fortunate that our youth worship leader, Jonathan, is a paid member of our staff, and a better worship leader than I am, in my opinion. So asking him to lead worship, on the week I preached, was a no-brainer. I paired him up with a talented young lady, named Allie, who has great potential to be an outstanding Worship Leader. As a team, the two were excellent together. So I went on planning my sermon without giving it much more thought. I checked in periodically with Jonathan to see how things were going. As I expected, he had it under wraps.

Go me!

Then in June, I had a conversation with my boss, who offered me a second opportunity to preach. As we spoke, I was thinking about another one of my team members who I had considered encouraging into worship leadership. So I accepted the second preaching opportunity, and called my team member, a true lover of worship named Andrea. She jumped at the chance to lead, which was encouraging. I felt like things were really looking up. I was finding leadership potential all over the place within my team. And I was going to get the opportunity to preach twice (which is exactly twice as often as most Worship Leaders get to preach in a year).

The first Sunday in July came and went. I preached. Jonathan and Allie led the Music together. It couldn't have gone better. My team was pumped, and so was I. I was walking on clouds all week. I felt like I wanted to shout about the greatness of my team from a mountain top.

Go away team. I’m on a roll!

Then in the middle of the week, I got an email from our lead teaching pastor, Bob Kerrey. He said my preaching skills had gotten some pretty high praise from a prominent church member. He said he was encouraged by it, and offered me the opportunity to preach a third time in July. At this point, I was no longer thinking about my team. I was thinking about myself. And I had become greedy. I accepted the opportunity to preach a third time and scheduled Allie & Jonathan to lead the music. Without thinking about how it would effect my staff and volunteers, I saddled them with the pressure of working without me for a third week so that I could pursue the things I wanted for me.

My second week preaching came along, and again I received high praise for my oratory skills. But this time, my team did not seem pumped up. They seemed tired. I was dropping extra work on them at the last second, and they were clearly getting worn out.

That was last Sunday. Today, I’m in my office preparing for my final sermon this Sunday. It has been almost a month that I have been completely unavailable to my team. In every interaction that I have with them, I’m increasingly aware that they’re getting burned out. I don’t think the issue is that I accepted three preaching engagements in one month. I think that my mistake is that I accepted three preaching dates without preparing my team or thinking about how it would affect them. It’s hard for me to watch them suffer because I was being selfish.

My bad.

In the future, I plan on preaching with some regularity at my church. Only, the next time I preach, the well being of my team will be in the front of my mind. I will spend time in advance preparing my leadership for the rigorous extra work that they will face when I am unavailable. I will spend more time with them planning, praying and preparing for the weeks that I will be away. I won’t accept big responsibility at the last minute, if it means that my team will bare the brunt of the burden.

As Worship Leaders, it is not just our responsibility to lead our congregations in worship on Sunday. It’s my view that we have at least an equal responsibility to our troops who follow us into battle every week. It is essential that we spend quality time preparing them for new responsibilities. When we drop things on them at the last second, we are cashing in on their trust in us. Some of us are in the habit of changing songs right before Sunday morning services begin, or even worse some of you are like me and you selfishly saddle your team with last minute burden so you can take more opportunities. Whatever it is, we have to learn to mind our staff and volunteers better. We have to learn to bring them along with us. None of us will ever build high functioning teams if we don’t learn to do this.

Over the next couple weeks, I have some serious apologizing to do to my teams. They are strong and mature believers, so I know they have already forgiven me. But that’s not the point. In my selfishness, I have cashed in on some of their trust in me. I plan on spending some serious time and money reminding them about how important and necessary they are. Lets face it. When  the Holy Spirit moves on Sunday Morning, he uses all of us, not just me. Every person is important, not just me. It is the collective effort of my team that accomplishes the will of God, not just mine. I have had to be reminded of that this month. My hope is that you will learn from my mistake, and not have to learn this lesson the way I have.