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Principle # 3 – You Must Have A Commitment to Empowering and Releasing.

If you are going to lead your church to grow and reach more people with the Gospel you can’t try to do everything yourself. God has put all the tools and gifts that you need in your church. It is His body, so He is sufficient in all things. You must be willing to empower people and release them into ministry. Here are a few principles concerning it:

• Your leadership style must change as the church grows. When we started Avalon Church 8 years ago we had 19 adults in addition to Kim and me. I have had to learn that the kind of leadership style that worked when we had just a few people on roll does not work now that we have several thousand on roll. You have to be able to adapt and lead differently as God grows the church. You do not love differently, you just lead differently.

• You must become the leader rather than the manager. This is a difficult switch, at least for me. I like to know everything that is going on and control things. If you are not willing to change that about yourself you will never grow beyond a certain point.

• Discover that less is more. I have learned that the fewer things I do the better the church is. The church grows when I spend the most of my time doing the few things I am good at. When I do the things that only I can do the church grows. You have to decide whether you want everyone to think that you are really busy or if you want to see your church grow.

• Don’t be the bottleneck. We used to have the world’s worst organizational chart. I was in the center and everything pointed at me like spokes on a wheel. That was dumb. Not only did it cause me great stress, since I made nearly every decision, it also limited our church growth. Do not be the bottle-neck guy. It never works.

• Invest in your staff. This is a whole chapter unto itself so I will not try to deal with this extensively. Invest in your staff whether they are paid or volunteer. They need your focused energy even more than they need your time.

Let me know what you think. You can learn more about our Avalon HOPE Pastors Coaching Network by clicking here.

Ritchie