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Experiencing LeaderShift: Letting Go of Leadership Heresies

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Some years back, when Don Cousins did a faithfulness/fruitfulness self-assessment, he reluctantly gave himself a two out of nine score. He wrote, "Suddenly I knew: I was about to get pruned." You absolutely must read this book.

Don Cousins sees leadership from one of the most unique perspectives in North America. After 17 years on the staff of Willow Creek Community Church (including the role of associate pastor), he began consulting with other churches and megachurches in 1992.

So with this year's media hubbub about Willow Creek (see the video at RevealNow.com "Bill Hybels Responds to `Willow Creek's Huge Shift'"), you'll miss the whole story--the important story--if you don't also read some of the historical context from Cousins, along with his biblical insight and personal reflections on leadership.

In his book, Cousins thoughtfully attacks leadership heresies and addresses the high price of heresy, the success heresy, the credit heresy and the organizational heresy. His original thinking--steeped in humility and biblical thinking--will get your attention.

A pastor friend borrowed my book this month and preached on the four questions (four F's) from the "The Success Heresy" chapter. Cousins asks: 1) Are you being faithful? 2) Are you bearing fruit? 3) Are you fulfilled? 4) Are you making God famous?

The Results Bucket is one of 20 buckets in my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit. Cousins asks the ultimate results question, "How do you know you're being successful?" What's the measurement in your organization? Are they the right ones? For more help, read Bill Hoyt's book, Effectiveness by the Numbers: Counting What Counts in the Church.

Churches in North America have done much in recent years to become more relevant, but many have missed the point. They're chasing numbers, not God and His desire for spiritual transformation. Don refocuses his readers on what "success" in ministry should really look like - both in the life of an individual as well as the church as a whole. The power of God at work in individual's lives is what SHOULD grow a church - not programs and popular techniques. The right kind of growth happens when people identify their unique spiritual gifts, discover their God-given passions and partner with God to make his name famous. Don challenges all church leaders to be equippers of others, so that everyone they lead walks down this path towards transformation.

This book runs refreshingly counter to much conventional thinking on leadership within the church. The author shows how the church has bought into worldly definitions of leadership rather than biblical ones. As result, we have exalted the gift of a select few, while downplaying or ignoring the contributions that other gifts can make to the growth and direction of the church. As one who not identify himself as a natural leader, I was encouraged to know that God has a place for me to exercise influence on his church according to my giftedness.

This book is soon to be a classic for those who desire to create a "serving church." This book is well written and filled with practical suggestions.

What a great book for church leaders. The author's chapter on Organizational Heresy, which in itself is ample justification for purchasing the book, is being used by our leadership team as a guide to right and Biblical thinking on how a church elder board should function and be evaluated. Too often churches adhere to what Cousins describes as the institutional model as contrasted to the Biblical model. The superiority of the Biblical model as described and explained by Cousins is so far superior that return to the institutional model would clearly be, well, unbiblical.

Experiencing LeaderShift: Letting Go of Leadership Heresies
This book was and will be of tremendous importance and significance to me. The principles offered in this book should be used as a litmus test when accessing the effectivness of church leadership. This book has been read by key members of our leadership team and will hopefully be the catalyst to significant biblically based change in our team.

Don totally understands leadership in today's world. His assessment of leadership is relevant in both the church and the corporate world. A must read for anyone in proximity to leadership....all of us.

Don zeroes in on helping the church envision the Biblical model for church leadership. All too often churches embrace a business mindset when seeking to govern church organization. Don engages his readers to embrace a Biblical model which emphasizes four key principles when governing: the pastor leads the church; the church board protects the church; the church serves: and the community is served. Don contrasts the Biblical mindset with the business mindset: the pastor runs the church; the church board leads the church; the church is served; and the community is ignored. After forty-years of ministry in the church, I highly recommend this book to church leaders and pastors. The principles therein will revolutionize your church governing process. Do you desire a well-running church or a healthy fruit bearing church? Experiencing LeaderShift will transform your church to be faithful and fruitful!

Experiencing LeaderShift, by Don Cousins promises guidance for church leaders to increase their effectiveness.

Yet it is not clear to me what Don really means by "effective church leadership". Though he denies we should measure effectiveness by the size of a church, he repeatedly cites numbers to determine whether the leadership is doing its job. On page 18, Don begins our journey by introducing a church that now "struggled to break through the two-hundred barrier in weekly attendance." On page 26 Don speaks of growth rate. On page 33 Don speaks of 2000 attendees, on page 44 he speaks of a church with 15,000 attendees. On page 50 he speaks of "the church grew from tens to thousands." On page 62 Don states, "large ministries...have something to teach the rest of us. After all, their numbers tell us: They're successful!" This focus on numbers continues throughout the book.

I don't want to you to think I am minimizing the importance of evangelism or that I frown at the growing number of people who turn to the Lord. Clearly Acts 2:47 speaks of the growth of the Church as a very good thing. Yet my point is that the growth that we see in Acts 2:47 and 1 Corinthians 3:6 is the growth of God's kingdom of believers, not the growth of any particular body who attend in a given building. You can see how Don misses this point on page 68.

Don does a nice job outlining the fact that each leader has unique gifts. Another way to understand this is that no single leader has all the gifts needed to lead an effective church. Don does a great job of illustrating the truth of this concept, both from Scripture and from his experience. For example, on page 35 he quotes Ephesians 4:11-12. Yet it seems Don then drifts off the point and claims that according to Scripture, "leadership means equipping." Sure, the term "equipping" is in verse 12, but that has to do with God equipping the saints... not a human leader "who can organize ... people to do the work."

Don continues to look for Scripture that teaches that delegation is the key to effective leadership, and on page 37 he quotes Jethro as he guides Moses in Exodus 18:17-27. Jethro was not a prophet, nor am I too certain that Jethro even believed in the God of Israel (I could be wrong). Certainly Moses put Jethro's council into action, but I remain unconvinced that the Godly definition of a leader is one who delegates. Don does not provide any more Scripture than this to make his point.

There is an illustration of "Sam" in Don's book that alarms me. According to Don on page 38, Sam "was a true man of God, of the highest integrity, with the heart of God...". Yet Don shares that he and others decided to fire Sam from the church staff. Clearly Sam was doing God's work in helping those who were hurting. Yet, Sam failed to do what Don and the others wanted him to do. Sam failed to stop helping those who are hurting and start delegating that work to others. After Don and his colleagues fired Sam, they "hired a man out of the marketplace who fit the position perfectly." Don never mentions whether or not this better leader was a true man of God, or had a heart of God, or was even a Christian. I truly think Don has his priorities backwards. I fear this is what a focus on numbers can do.

At this point in the book, I am wondering if Don is teaching me a lesson. A lesson that is the opposite of what he is writing about. I believe the lesson I am learning is that God likes small groups of people meeting regularly together. It seems the large groups (mega-churches), by definition, have leaders who don't need the heart of God to be successful.

In spite of Don's infatuation with numbers, I do want to be fair and list where Don states otherwise. On page 69 he says, "Defining success with numbers is harmful because it appeals more to the flesh that to the spirit." He then goes on to say that the way we measure success is whether or not we are faithful, bearing fruit, and being fulfilled. This is great stuff! I love what he writes on page 77 about fruit. Yet, in reading these words, I cannot help thinking about poor Sam, who was clearly judged by some other yardstick. There is a fourth way to measure success that Don introduces called "Making God Famous". The Scripture that Don quotes (Matthew 5:16 and John 15:8 on page 80) to back up this supposed goal of effective leaders does not do much to convince me. I doubt I will ever set forth with the goal of making God famous.

Also, on page 152 Don states, "We need to forsake our focus on achieving numerical `success'". Yet this comes literally on the heels of "startling and disturbing facts" (page 151) about the church in America today, where Don lists nothing but church attendance facts, like "85 percent of churches have plateaued or are declining." I really think that if Don believed that success of leader should be measured by whether the leader is faithful or not (as he previously advocated), then we should be looking at statistics like, how many pastors cheated on their wives, or embezzled funds.

While Don resides in the heart of Calvinist land in Western Michigan, he betrays his belief in free will by sharing how God is a contingency planner on page 88. He notes that if we fail to cooperate with God, God will simply find someone else. I'm not sure this is what Scripture teaches.

On page 124, Don gives what I feel is a very accurate description of a church I know dearly. On page 131 Don provides what he calls the Biblical Model for church structure. I love this section of his book and suggest that if you read nothing else but this part, you are getting your money's worth.

Don literally paints an analogy about seeing the Mona Lisa. This very famous painting is so very plain. The reason the painting has any value at all is simply because of the person who painted it. In the same way, we as Christians have value because of who our creator is. While the analogy falls apart when studied in detail, it is the first time I have heard it said so well. Take the time to read pages 184-185. It is worth it.

I was encouraged to read LeaderShift because the leadership team of a church I am consulting to has been using it with their board, staff, and key lay leaders. I am very glad that I read it. Cousins makes a solid defense for building a foundation in the local church of God's measures of success and ensuring that the church truly follows an Eph. 4:11-12 model of equipping the saints for ministry. This model includes an emphasis on the Four F's: Being Faithful, Fruitful, Fulfilled, and making God Famous.

He spends a lot of ink on what he calls leadership heresies: e.g. that only those with the gift of leadership can lead, that success is about numbers, that God needs our help, and that leaders are to represent the people (vs. God). He then moves on to encourage reliance on the Holy Spirit and for churches to have a vision for reaching the lost, discovering their zone of service from their gifts and passions, and becoming contributors. Some will be Eph 4:11 equippers. Some will be Eph 4:12 equipped. He then concludes by encouraging implementation in churches that want to make the LeaderShift.

I think he overstates the concern about focusing on numbers and slips into a slight false dichotomy, i.e. leading one to believe that if a church makes the LeaderShift that they cannot focus on numbers. The logical conclusion of that is that a church could become one year or more behind on space needs and other infrastructure. In addition, the Great Commission is indeed about both numbers (make more disciples) and inner fruit (teach them to observe). I maintain that some in the church are gifted to focus on numbers and plan and that they can still abide in the 4 F's. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend that you read this book.

Jim Barber
Barber Church Consulting
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Executive Director, Society for Church Consulting
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