Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 4

A final list of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality:

4. Leader's Reasons

Leader wishes to retain strong control over all aspects of church life

Developing a team means the leader sacrificing doing some of the stuff they personally enjoy most

Wrong theology held by the leader. eg "growth happens  through  teaching, I am the teacher, so I do everything"

Feeling disenfranchised and threatened by others who don’t have the benefit of my professional training taking a leading role

Leaders who don’t have time or perceived ability to develop team

Leaders being unable or unwilling to cope with negative consequences of things being done less well or of trying to change long-standing traditions

We might summarise the four lists as follows. Churches struggle to develop a team mentality when:

• structures don’t encourage it
• leaders don’t want it
• congregational institutional assumptions don’t want to
• historical assumptions don’t’ allow
• personalities are not temperamentally amenable 

All of which are likely to cause leaders to dismiss developing teamwork as an unwelcome extra burden

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 3

A third list of reasons why a church may struggle to develop a team mentality:

3. Individual's Reasons

Not realising they have spiritual gifts

Not realising they are meant to actively contribute

Thinking that only extreme talent is welcome – like in a sports team

Not motivated, not thrilled with God or church

"I go for what I get out of it" mentality

Spiritual immaturity and selfishness

Want things to happen, but want someone else to take responsibility: “you should do this”. (I think of a church that was exploring the possibility of church planting. It surveryed the congregation and discovered one portion of its demographic saying "do whatever you like as long as it doesn't disrupt my Sunday worship experience and I don't personally have to be involved.")

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 2

The second in a series of four short lists on why a church may struggle to develop a team mentality.

2. Organisational Reasons

Relational poverty – no sense of fellowship or really knowing each other

All effort put into running high quality main meetings rather than into discipleship or team building 

Structures (or theology) are set up to give most responsibility to few people, encouraging passive receivers

Leaders or congregation not able to cope with participative or consultative leadership, hence no invitation to others to take initiative

Lack of capitalisation of team. Unwillingness to take resources from other places to make team work

Organisational structure set up to disenfranchise the majority

View that the leader retains a degree of detachment from the community as the elite, trained professional 

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 1

In this post and the following three are 4 sets of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality. There are probably plenty more.

1. People holding wrong assumptions about what the church is:

• Church is meeting to attend rather than common life together
• Lack of understanding about every member ministry
• Unbiblical view of fellowship = activity or nice time together
• Unbiblical view of leaders = activity coordinators
• Unbiblical view of congregation = consumers or pupils
• Historical assumptions about relationship between clergy and laity
• Denominational assumptions or practices that turn leaders into a priesthood