| As our Nominations/Lay Leadership team gets started in building our core leadership for 2023, I want to share with you the letter I sent to them to get our hearts and minds in the right places:Hello, Team! I want to thank you for all of the hard work you did last year to get us to a stable place THIS year! Since I started here in January, I have been thankful for the leadership teams you have provided. It’s time to start discussions for 2023 and beyond, and I trust that God has the right leaders already in store for us. Since you know this congregation better than I do, I will be relying upon you to give me insight. We will be following the CHARACTER/CHEMISTRY/COMPETENCE model in choosing leaders – CHARACTER – Whom do people look up to? Who in our church do people want to emulate? For me, this is primary. A leader is someone who inspires first; who gets people to want to follow. CHEMISTRY – How well do they work with others? I want all of our church activities to be done in teams. There are no “solo heroic leaders” in Christian service; we are to always be working with others and encouraging them. COMPETENCE – What are the actual skills involved? A task that requires auditing and spreadsheets will need someone who understands them, whereas maintenance work requires a different set of skills. Many churches start with COMPETENCE first, without regard to Character or Chemistry, and they get in trouble by electing people who just try to do a job without seeing it as actual ministry. I want for us to see that everything we do is ministry – how we pay our bills, how the facilities look, how our business meetings are run reflect our relationship with God. That’s why I start with Character and Chemistry before I start looking at Competence, because skills can be learned, but integrity is a part of who a person is. So I would like to start tomorrow’s meeting by asking Whose faith stands out in our church? Who seems to have the most insight, the most compassion, the most vision? Don’t worry yet if they can swing a hammer or balance a checkbook – that will come later. I want to surround myself with people whose first priority is loving God and loving others. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness – and all of these other things will be yours as well.” This was the focus of our first meeting, and we were pleased to see how many strong, spiritual people we already have! God has graced us with people who want to serve Him first and to love their neighbor – and that’s the right starting point for any church. As we continue with this process, we see our job as more than just nominating people to serve in our church. We want to help EVERYONE find their place in ministry! Ministry is not just what the pastor does; it is how we all love and serve God. We would like to offer Spiritual Gifts courses again, so that you can find out where God has already gifted you to serve. We anticipate that there is a special place for each one of us, so our role as the Nominations/Lay Leadership team is to offer guidance. If there is a place of service that you have always wanted to try (teaching, building, visitation, preaching), please call me and let me know! I would be glad to help you hone your skills and find out what is the best fit for you. In the meantime, pray for all of our church leaders – and for those whom God is going to send! Rev. Bill |
