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sounds like the same idea only shown in leadership as a whole and directed toward churches of the future
this book is amazing. definitely worth the read. it will mess with your head, in a good way. :)
I think there is a lot about it that I agree with. It is a lot of fundamental things I'm thinking about as we begin launching our own church and developing it's ethos.
Would love to hear more.
1. some of this you cannot avoid; it's just going to happen, be the communicator good or bad. there's a connection people have with their pastor, whether they known him "in person" or just from the seat. and when he / she leaves, it's like a divorce or sorts and the step-dad enters under great tension. churches are organic and communal - they are very personal in nature. so i don't think there is anything you can actually do to ultimately solve the potential issue. you could have 6 amazing preachers rotating, but people are still going to gravitate to one of those. and when one or two of those leaves, there's a certain segment that will disconnect as well.
2. solution: let the people go. the gospel is more important, not whether or not people stay and support the new guy. that's actually "their" issue to deal with, not the new pastor. if they leave, they leave. the leadership of the church shouldn't worry about that.
my 2 cents.
Entirely too many American mega churches are built around a variation of either Alpha-male leadership or prosperity theology, and eventually that stuff crumbles.
Ahhh... Trying to be the church... Jesus couldn't you have left us a simple set of rules and guidelines???
www.fellowshipmemphis.org
Fellowship Memphis started with a management team and has three pastors leading the church, all sharing the pulpit and dividing the traditional responsibilities.
The problem still comes to have to replace one of these 10's one day though.
"It's the cult of personality"
Unfortunately we can get caught in going to church and only being butts in seats. We have checked our brains at the door and forgotten the fact that we are all charged with going and reaching our world. We rely only on the preacher to do the preaching and feeling satisfied that God's work is done for the week. If we are all leaders and are the hands and feet of Jesus, then a leadership change at the top is not that traumatic. It is hard to get your panties in a wad when you are hands are on the plow.
grace and peace, y'all.
The main flaw I see wrong in the alpha leader approach, is there's a big danger in ego and power. There's got to be some major accountability for it to work.
Leadership does matter. No doubt. It's all over the Bible. Look at Moses. What happened when Moses died? Did Israel fall apart? Was another leader ready to step up?
i know some would disagree, but i forever will hold that is how it should be: men AND women teaching the Word (and not women teaching only women or children).
that is just my thought.
1. He's a control freak who doesn't trust someone else to do the job as well as he does.
2. The church is built around him, his personality, his "greatness" and putting someone else out there on another campuses, someone thinks, will not draw people or move people the way him "being there" will...and that's a bad thing.
3. He hasn't made disciples. He's got no one who thinks like him, works like him, believes like him to be him in the places he can't be.
( Jesus left the planet with eleven replicas of himself - his theology, his methodology, his lifestyle. He gave them marching orders and they went out as little Christs - aka Christians. If Jesus were in ministry today would he instead put himself on DVD and hire community pastor Peter to press play?)
These are the three big reasons folks have given me for launching video church locations. It's alpha male thinking at it's worst.
Is there good use for video? Heck yes. Excellent use. Very true. But it's also true that most video churches are run by guys who are not replicating themselves, like control and think they are the essential ingredient to "success." That's screwed up. It's the worst of evangelical American churchdome exaggerated to the point of absurdity....often, but not always.
Good discussion, Los. Thanks for hosting it.
I can argue both sides of the argument. I agree completely that churches should not be "personality-driven" (reliant on the dynamic personality of it's pastor). Like the speaker said, when this pastor leaves the church is left with shoes that need to be filled. And they can only be filled with someone of equal personality traits and charisma.
On the other hand I've heard someone say "anything with more than one head is a monster." If you have multiple people who are all co-equals but no clear head where does the leadership and vision come from?
No answers here...just more questions and discussion.
Brad Ruggles
www.bradruggles.com
Also, you just can't escape the fact that Alpha Males are Alpha Males for a reason: they aren't afraid to lead & take a challenge. Both of those things are required to lead in the church world and/or plant churches.
I don't know if there is a right or wrong on this...it just needs to be kept intentional and be talked about constantly.
So I think the real question is how do we find balance in this? Obviously if there is a lead pastor he should be the head of the body (local church). But how do we balance speaking responsibilities between multiple staff?
There are 1000's of expamples (beyond Willow) of churches that have been blessed and limited by their dependence on a Single dynamic Leader.
While the conversation about a Balanced /Team leadership model is great, where is the conversation about Gender Balanced / Team Leadership approach.
Let's not only break our dependence on Alpha Males, but while we're at it, let's base our dependence on exclusive Male Leadership in general.
Great dialogue Carlito - Not as interesting as the one about your vasectomy, but good none the less.
I do have a couple of other questions about Los' statement.
Why would the Alpha male need to be replaced "when it is time"? What defines "when it is time"?
The reasons that Willow's three amazing communicators leaving seems a bit shallow (because they aren't Hybels) and doesn't really reflect the character that I've experienced from Willow, albeit from the outside looking in.
I've been a part of a church where the only reasons that the alpha male left was disfunction, and was replaced from within. The replacement stepped down due to disfuntion in his own personal life. Both men were involved in "starting" this church.
This led to my original question. What are other reasons for alpha males leaving other than disfunction?
Maybe the problem with the Alpha Male model is just that - It’s almost always MALE!
There are 1000’s of expamples (beyond Willow) of churches that have been blessed and limited by their dependence on a Single dynamic Leader.
While the conversation about a Balanced /Team leadership model is great, where is the conversation about Gender Balanced / Team Leadership approach.
Let’s not only break our dependence on Alpha Males, but while we’re at it, let’s BREAK our dependence on exclusive Male Leadership in general.
Great dialogue Carlito - Not as interesting as the one about your vasectomy, but good none the less.
To try and conclude that those leaders left Willow because they couldn't be Bill is speculative at best, shallow and divisive at worst.
It's safe to say that there's a whole lot more going on in the lives and character of Breux, Appel, and Frazee than them feeling inadequite to Hybels.
To assume that as primary motivation is to minimize the work of God in their lives.
even the vasectomy part...:)
Kevin, I never said it was. I said it is true, in my experience visiting 100+ churches a year (most of them large), that video churches OFTEN are led by guys who are Alpha Male pastors. That's not quite what you took away, so I apologize for the hasty posting and unclear communication.
Great discussion, guys. I'm seriously loving being provoked to think this through some more. Thanks for that.
So.
Where then, do you think the alpha male fits in the picture?
Where is Vernon Reid when you need him?
“It’s the cult of personality”
Vince Says:
We always called them the ‘Cult of Personality’ leader..
I could care less about this psyco-babble topic to take up Cenference time and money but I sure do dig the Living Colour is getting props in the comments.
Bottom line, everyone just needs to get over themselves and start living like Jesus said, serve each other, not be caught up in Alpha male crap, just love God and then love your neighbor as yourself and stop over analizing everything.
I love the video church mentality to give people a chance to get involved in their own communities in the church family theyre so passionate about. Right now my church is over 100 miles away and many of my friends dont understand my fire but if we had a video campus it would grant me the opportunity to do that. Thanks Carlos and everyone for the awesome discussion opportunity.
Concerning the Alpha male, he fits in the picture because God has not only called him personally, but given him a vision. If a body of believers is on board with that vision and want to be discipled by him, then you have a church with an Alpha male/Senior pastor/whatever you want to call him.
2. The very fact that Alphas exist (and sometimes they are female, not male) means that God has a purpose for them. I think part of the church's current problem is that we have hinged so much of our forward movement and our structure on the Alpha that we are unbalanced and don't know what to do without one. To me it's a matter of balance rather than yes Alpha/no Alpha. I can't tell you exactly where I think Alphas fit, because I think so much is in transition right now that we may have to wait and see. However, I fully understand why so many of us are re-thinking this issue.
@ yeidy - I think you might be missing the point of the "alpha male" argument though. I see it this way. You can tell when someone is an alpha male when they start to micro-manage everything. Start showing up at everything and trying to run everything. They have an aura about them that screams, "I think I am better than you." Now granted there are some really great communicators who are the most humble men and don't necessarily fit the alpha male role but my question for them is, "What are you doing to train up other teachers who can effectively proclaim the word of God?"
Again I don't think this thread is a knock on the video venue church. I think it is more about a type of personality and not about a certain method for getting God's word out. It's strictly personality NOT methodology.
"These are the three big reasons folks have given me for launching video church locations. It’s alpha male thinking at it’s worst."
"THE three big reasons." i read this comment to mean that shaun beleives these are the only, or at least the main reasons for video churches. i simply wanted to dispel that thinking. i also found it hard to swallow that someone who mostly visits many churches a year feels they have enough information to geveralize based on those visits. i agree that ths thread is not a knock on venue churches. shaun's post, i believe, however, was, and is continued as one at shaun's blog.
i truly believe that this method has helped our church to grow together and to feel like one church, even as we are in different cities, and i think it has proven valuable to us to be able to feel like we all belong to the same body of believers.
i still leave with the thought, be careful what you knock until you have truly seen it at work, and not from a critic's perspective, but with an open mind. honestly, is it really worth it to slam the methods of churches if people are being saved? don't we have bigger things to worry about?
i think sometimes we get so caught up in wanting to bash anything that becomes "popular" or big, that we forget why we do what we do in the first place... let's not forget the big picture (and i don't mean the video screen).
(also, this post was not intended as an attack on shaun...i like your songs, man... but simply the attitude and thoughts behind the post.)
Having actively served in ministry for almost 10 years now, and been some sort of staff for the last five, I must say that I think that both systems have flaws. I have certainly seen the downside to having alpha males in leadership who have gotten so used to doing things their way that they have lost the ability to decipher the difference between their way and the best way.
Multi-staff leadership teams, however, are a huge draw on resources. If you start a church with five pastoral staff members, assuming they earn the average of all the congregants' salaries, you have to have 50 people before you break even in the budget. That's assuming that all 50 are tithing a full 10% too, which may be a lofty assumption considering churches should be planted to reach those who are currently outside of the church culture and therefore haven't adopted all of the traditional disciplines yet.
This is all assuming that you ONLY have to pay for five staff members too. There's no accounting for administrative staff, facility purchase/rental, technical equipment, etc. It doesn't take very long at all before you need over 100 people tithing just to break even.
Obviously, money isn't what it is all about, but let's assume that our hearts our where our treasure is. At what point do our collective church resources stop going to serve US and start defending the fatherless, feeding the hungry, comforting the harassed and helpless, etc.?
It's easy to say that we need to change the model and pay more staff to lead us when we've been handed an affluent church by our predecessors, but Jesus started the church among people who had very little money to give.
Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely thankful for my multi-staff position in ministry. But I think it's time to admit that maybe we've got the model upside down.
Jesus (one guy) invested everything that he had in the disciples (12 guys + the others who aren't named, the 70, etc.) so that they could go out and do his work, living his gospel. They (except Judas) invested in more people, who in turn invested in even more people.
Today, we ask a lot of people (dozens, hundreds, thousands) to invest only part of their resources in a few guys at "the top" (and whatever support staff/facilities/tools they need) to essentially do the majority of the work of spreading the gospel.
This is all not to mention that we've trended toward investing those few precious resources in the guys that can give us the "most bang for our buck" - polished communicators, near-rockstars, and wannabe CEOs. God used stutterers, adulterers, tax collecters, and rejects that no other rabbi wanted.
If we're ever going to see and real change, maybe it's time we flipped this thing on its head.
Thanks Los. Look forward to reading your thoughts after you've had some time to digest the talk.
Personally, churches where the pastor is promoted above the church itself scares me. I think its sets things up for failure if the pastor were to ever leave. I think this could be right in line with your discussion on the alpha male.
VERY good discussion.
I thought I'd be the first to jump in with the whole starfish/spider thing, but Ryan be me to it.
This is an issue I'm struggling to understand/grasp.
I agree - I didn't think Shaun was saying ALL video churches are bad/wrong.
I can't wait to see the rest of this discussion.
my reply was that we are called to make disciples of jesus, not disciples of our pastor. to say that we are missing a calling to make disciples because we're not creating clone pastors is a misuse of Jesus' meaning of disciples. a pastor on a video screen can very well be fulfilling his calling to reproduce jesus in his congregation.
when jesus told his 11 guys to go and make disciples, he meant disciples of Him, not of those 11 guys. that's what i meant. it was a response to the misuse of "disciples", as jesus meant it.
Is this Communicator not telling his people that being involved in a body is so much more than Sunday morn? Challenging them to become involved each week? Or is my friend just not listening, liking the fact that he lives to far from the church to become involved and liking the fact that the communicator is so great that no-one else could ever compares. What is liked more by my friend - the Great Communicator or the ability to never have to commit to a church?
i've read about half the comments and i'm tired. so please forgive me if my thoughts overlap with someone else's. i have to get this out of my head so i can sleep.
1. i think the rough concept of the alpha male is biblical. god typically chose an individual rather than a team of individuals to set the vision. honestly, i can't think of any team or co-leaders in the bible. there were leaders with great leaders underneath them... but in the end there was one with the final word. someone please correct me if you can think of something.
2. i think a really good leader's first instinct is to raise up and empower other leaders around him. it has been written in more than one leadership book that a true indicator of the strength of a leader is the strength of the leaders he draws along side of him. the goal of leadership is to reproduce. otherwise what's the point except to take a huge ego trip? which is obviously not the goal for the church.
3. i don't think any leader should be concerned with replacing apples with apples. the goal of leadership is not to produce clones of one's self but to empower, guide and inspire other leaders to find their own voice.
4. good leaders are good vision casters. to be a good vision caster you can only have leaders on board who are in step with the vision. gifts, abilities, perspective, voice, personality can all enjoy a great deal of latitude as long as the leader is the leader and has set the vision.
5. even in the best case scenario with a leader raising up other leaders with clear vision.... change is never easy. 1 leader, 5 or 20. change is uncomfortable. and there is nothing quite as uncomfortable as changing leadership - no matter if it was for a good reason or not. but then again, sometimes god likes us to be uncomfortable.
there. it's out of my head. i hope i can go to sleep now. this is a great discussion.
Let's make it about the "GOD of MAN" and not the "MAN of GOD."
He followed is point with the idea that "we are not called to change the world... but to create culture." If we are creating a culture where the body of christ as a whole is taking ownership in the its movement... then i think we will nee a nautual culture shift away from the CEO driven Alpha male leadership modle.
Because then... people wont just go to church... they will be the church!
http://bobbytriplett.com
Good stuff.
Gene Strother
http://firstnetchurch.com
PS - I am linking to your blog in hopes that our members and site visitors will find you as engaging and interesting as I.