I recently asked my staff team and some of the key people at City Campus Church how often they thought I should preach in 2018. I'm the leader of this thing. I've logged the most hours and experience preaching and communicating. My family's story and C3's story are interwoven...made of the same fabric. I'm wired with vision and called in general to champion that vision and invite others to champion it with me.
In a typical church, the lead pastor is likely north (in many cases, FAR north) of 80% of the yearly preaching. This is almost a no-brainer in many settings. They are paid to lead the thing. They should be the voice of the thing.
Delivery matters. If you're a good, growing, gifted communicator, you should hone the gift.
Preach, evaluate, grow. Preach again.
Delivery matters.
But development matters more.
Replication is one of our five values as a church. We want to see it happen at every level. Disciples making disciples who make disciples. Leaders making leaders who make leaders. Missional Communities who make Missional Communities who make Missional Communities. And yes, churches launching churches who launch churches. If we really believe that the church is a body and that every cell will run its course and die, all the while new cells are being made, then the quicker we align ourselves to the desire to activate more cells to realize the fullness of their potential.
Jim Winkler did it for me. I was a young gun who thought I knew how to lead and preach and I was like third or fourth on the depth chart at the church. But he kept letting me give it a go there. And when I fumbled the ball, he didn't take me out of the game, he put me back out there and gave me another shot. The highest calling of a leader is to see what others can't or won't see in themselves and then do what is necessary to tease that potential into existence. This is discipleship in a nutshell. Choosing development over delivery.
If you feel pressure to do 90% of the preaching, all that is doing is guaranteeing that your church will likely die or largely turn over when you try to turn it over to the next person because they won't deliver the way you delivered.
Delivery is a good servant, but a horrible master. We should want to do our best and inspire and encourage hearts. But not at the expense of teaching and developing others around us to do the same thing.
So? Back to the question I posed. I was getting a sense that the answer I was to swing at this year was between 60 and 70 percent. The church still needs my leadership, but they need it up front and through the painstaking work of developing others.
The staff I asked all said the same thing.
And the key people of C3 I spoke to said the same thing too. And many of them said that it wasn't because they were tired of me (I think they would tell me if they were), and they admitted that if I wasn't preaching, their posture in hearing and engaging the message often times would diminish. But they all came back to this same idea that if we really are about replication, then, we need to represent that in our culture and let the fumbles happen. It was one of the coolest moments in leadership for me. I usually feel like I have to convince people if it isn't the normal way...But in this instance, they were already largely there. They believe in a culture of development.
And that is a thrilling place to be.
Believe it or not this principle applies 100% to the corporate world and even to family/parenting dynamics. You develop people to be able to deliver as well or better than you, then the potentiality of your company skyrockets compared to managing a team and making sure they deliver of the tasks set before them.
Don't get me wrong. We don't throw delivery out with the bathwater. Delivery matters. Development matters more.
Our Staff Team has some maxims that we try to filter our decisions, our attitudes and our leadership through. They are:
1. Where is God in this? (What's Jesus saying?)
2. Make it better. (What are we going to do about it?)
3. Same Team. (A win for you is a win for me.)
4. Who's Next? (Always look for who can replace you and invest there.)
5. Stay Curious. (Ask more questions than you give solutions.)
It feels like a posture as a team that allows us to feel the freedom of chasing development while still being attentive to delivery. Fumbles are likely the way our people learn to hold on to the ball the best. And once they have grown in competence and confidence in holding onto the ball, then they can start handing the ball off to others.
Each person who preaches at C3, myself included does a run through of their message on Sunday morning. They are all working off the same preaching grid, that I've tried to download to them so that we know what effective communication is and can hold people accountable to it. After the run through, everyone there gives feedback. Its a pretty vulnerable place because we've all fumbled a time or two, but knowing we are on the same team and seeking to make it better and support the next person up on the depth chart has been an absolute game changer in our culture.
After talking to all these guys, I felt pretty good about the 60-70% range for the sake of developing an arsenal of dynamic communicators. I talked to one of the more important leadership voices I know of in the Church, Mike Breen and asked him what his approach to preaching was. At one time he was leading one of the largest churches in England and his approach to discipleship has impacted literally tens of thousands of lives across the globe. He has lived as a movement leader. His answer? 50%!
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