Church leaders matter. People don’t drift towards holiness, sacrifice, and courage. They drift towards cold complacency. Leaders help change the tide.
I recently read Andy Stanley’s forthcoming book, Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend, and he makes this point well:
It’s this drift toward churchy, graceless, lifeless church that makes what you do so important. As a church leader, you are mission critical. It is your responsibility to lead the church in the direction that Jesus originally intended. As a leader, your task is to protect the missional integrity of the Jesus gathering to which you have been called. It is your responsibility to see to it that the church under your care continues to function as a gathering of people in process; a place where the curious, the unconvinced, the skeptical, the used-to-believe, and the broken, as well as the committed, informed, and sold-out come together around Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. (92-93)
I have more lessons and thoughts to share from Deep and Wide, but for now I just want you to remember how critical your job as a leader is — whether volunteer or vocational.
