10 Leadership Lessons from My Years at New Life

I recently rediscovered these “Turning Point Lessons” that emerged out of a strategic planning retreat of our New Life Fellowship staff team in 2010. At this point, the church was twenty-two years old. What struck me as I re-read these is how timeless and relevant they are for today. The following are my edits and summary out of that discussion:

1. Character is more important than gifting. Being is more important than doing. When we have overlooked issues of character because of anointing, effectiveness, or natural abilities, we have always paid a price.
2. Do not rush. When decisions were made quickly, without pausing to pray, think and process implications, we always experienced regrets. Seeing the Promised Land without carefully discerning God’s timing led us on detours and painful disciplining from God.
3. Be sure each leader takes responsibility for their growth and development. Our world and church are constantly changing. Thus, every leader needs to be a lifelong learner – humble, curious, and teachable. Without the hunger and discipline to make this a priority, the church will eventually outgrow them and their impact will be limited.
4. Take the needed time to develop and communicate clear vision. Vision is a clear picture of a preferable future. Few things energize and unify people like a compelling vision. When this has been unclear – be it on a ministry or all church level – it has resulted in confusion and stagnation.
5. Build into the culture Sabbaticals for key leaders/staff. Three to four month Sabbaticals for our key staff has resulted in the release of rich fruit and significant new initiatives from God for New Life. It has provided time and space for them to hear God in fresh ways and re-tool for the next phase of their leadership journey.
6. Face the truth and act on it, even if it hurts. When we have avoided difficult conversations and changes that were needed, we have paid for it dearly. We discovered that we cannot build the Kingdom of God by pretending that something is working when it is not.
7. Enforce and be careful not to dilute our values. When we have compromised on this, due to expediency, it has been costly, damaging our integrity and long-term effectiveness (e.g. who you are is more important than what you do). Declaring values is easy; living them is an entirely different matter. Why? It takes a lot of time, reflection, and courage to reinforce them and keep them in the culture.
8. Be faithful to our “charism,” i.e. the grace from God that is unique to our local church. For example, commitment to reconciliation across race, culture, class and gender is at the core of NLF. We can learn from other streams and ministries, but we need to be content with the unique DNA given to us from God.
9. Invest in the development of key people. This has always borne rich fruit. Our strongest leaders have emerged out of this regular, intensive mentoring of the few. To skip this step has not worked, especially in the long-term. But taking the time to regularly strategize and implement a leadership development pipeline has been key for us.
10. Take time to record and reflect on hard lessons learned. This is difficult to do because it requires we talk about failures from a wide variety of angles, excavating all the mistakes made. And that is painful. Every time we did this, however, the hard lesson learned became a building block for the future of New Life. When we have failed to do this, we have simply repeated the same mistake at a later date.

If you were going to make a list of “Turning Point Lessons” in your particular ministry, what might they be?

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