Leadership Style of a Pastor - Assignment Example

Leadership Style of a Pastor Good leadership is essentially managing relationship and communicating within an organization to progress towards a specific goal, and good leaders are dedicated to building a world to which people want to belong. The term ‘leadership’ may be defined as: “The ability to lead, including inspiring others in a shared vision. Leaders have clear visions and they communicate these visions to their employees. They foster an environment within their companies that encourages risk taking, recognition and rewards, and empowerment allowing other leaders to emerge”. (strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/instco-levc.nsf/en/h_qw00037e.html) So good leadership is basically related to person’s abilities, skills and degree of influence. Good leaders have the capacity to inspire and motivate others to achieve goals. Moreover, good leadership involves managing relationship and communicating within an organization towards a specific targets. Christian churches and organizations are different from other institutions in many ways. Their structures, size and services are determined by internal and external forces such as location, services and personalities. An effective Christian pastor combines different character traits and skills while administering his pastoral responsibilities. Most of the Christian pastors feel that god has given them a unique calling for their life, and they have spiritual gifts of teaching. Generally, the three leadership models used by pastors are coach/ team, shepherd/sheep, shared leadership. So Shepherding and bridge building are their leadership styles of the most of the Christian leaders. Some other styles of Christian leadership are directional, team building, and visionary styles. As a leadership style, entrepreneurial style was the least likely style Christian pastors have. Rearranging, strategizing, visionary and management are some of the very rarely used leadership styles by the Christian pastors. An active leader makes things occur, Ministers through formal programmed talks, ministries through words and actions, performs tasks personally and makes decisions unilaterally and individually. On the other hand, a passive leader allots tasks to others, engages and takes part in collective decision making, ministers through personal presence and compassion, preachers via Holy Spirit. Generally, it is very difficult to describe a Christian pastor as an active leader or passive leader because traits of both types of leadership are found in people. In other words, there is no totally passive or active leader, only varying blends of both character traits. The head pastor Father Joe should be able to make things happen through, budgeting, planning and programmed Implementation. It is also suggested that as a pastor he should have endurance to wait for things to happen through prayer. Moreover he should take important decisions through group deliberation. Problems unavoidably erupt when a pastor becomes too passive or too active. If father Joe becomes very active, he is likely to experience problems, such as overwork, premature decision making and action, over dedication, conflicts, poor interpersonal contact, lack of strong leadership with individual church members, poor congregational response, opposition to change, difficulty in getting church workers to execute decisions and programmes. On the other hand if father Joe become a passive leader, he might face problems such as incompatible, vacillating decision making, find it difficult to motivate and inspire church leaders waste too much time in group deliberations and frequent committee meetings, poor coordination of church activities and programmers, too much dependence on lay people for work progress. so what should be the leadership style of a head pastor, whose parish financial situation is very poor. Before suggesting a leadership style which is suites his parish, it is imperative to study views of the a few authorities on leadership. John kotter’s change face model talks about 8 steps for successful leadership. These steps are establish a sense of urgency, create the guiding coalition, develop the change vision and strategy, communicate the vision, empower board based action, generate short term wins, consolidate gains and produce more change and anchor new approaches in the culture.( http://www.case.edu/admin/aces/documents/NSF_Site_Visit_Overview.pdf) When you study deeply, it is very clear that this style of leadership is more suited to business. According to Daniel Golemam “Good leaders are effective because they create resonance. Resonance comes naturally to people with a high degree of emotional intelligence such as self awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management but it also involves intellectual aspects”. It is very necessary that a pastor should have high level of emotional intelligence to be successful. He prescribed six types of leadership i.e. visionary, coaching style, affiliative leadership, democratic leadership, pacesetting leadership, commanding leadership. Out of these six styles, many Christian pastors follow the coaching style of leadership which includes listening to people, helping people to identify their own strength and weaknesses, counseling etc. According to the Hertzberg’s Two Factor Theory people get influenced by hygiene factors and motivation factors. “Hygiene factors are needed to ensure that an employee does not become dissatisfied. They do not cause high levels of motivation, but without them there is dissatisfaction. Motivation factors are needed in order to motivate an employee into higher performance. These factors result from internal generators in employees”. Generally, Christian pastors do not prefer this type of leadership as it is more managerial. Jim Collins suggested level 5 leadership. It is “based on the idea that respect towards people, selflessness by the leader, and a strong powerful commitment to achieve results, bring out the best in sub ordinates. Level 5 leaders are a paradoxical blend of fierce will and personal humility. They are stubborn and ruthless. Yet, they are humble. They are ambitious for their company and rarely allow their ego to be an obstacle for the success of their organization.” Some characteristics of the Christian leadership are present in it. Compassion for human being, one of the important characteristics of Christian teaching is absent in it and it is not recommended for Christian pastors. Pastor Joe’s leadership qualities should have a perfect blend with the emotional intelligence of his flock for getting the best result from the laity. It is by knowing their psychological drawbacks and uplifting them using the powerful elements of emotional intelligence. Pastor should be aware of the of the emotions of others to solve their problem. To smash the blocks of the negative feelings of subordinates and lift them up to higher values in work and behavior, it is essential to have the emotional intelligence and its high performance in leadership. By transmitting the emotional intelligence qualities from leadership to subordinates, there happens an outstanding awareness of value and commitment to the society and especially to subordinates and himself. Father Joe should follow a type leadership style in which he should make the people feel he always desires to be a part of the congregation, should become one with them, and move forward with them. He is supposed to inspire the spiritual leadership through teaching, preaching and worship so that the congregation will apply their belief into their everyday lives. In addition to this, he is supposed to lead the laity as a ‘coach’ thus by acting as a trainer, facilitator and encourager of the gifts of the believers. He is supposed to make sure the laity follows their Christian commitment. Generally, most of the Christian organizations and churches prefer a balanced leadership. It is necessary for a pastor to be gentle yet assertive. It is possible that good managerial theories do not always make good pastors. For example, a pastor may have excellent ideas, which are derived from the books, how to lead the parish councils. But if his ideas, obtained from the textbooks, ignores the unique relation between pastor and parish council, then the ideas may become stumbling block in improving relationship between the pastor and the parish council. So it is recommended that pastor Joe should follow a balanced leadership. Though there are thousand people in his parish, the parish is in poor financial situation. It may be due to very poor financial management. Since his assistant, father Don does not like to get involved the in day-to-day affairs of the church, the head pastor should take the leading role. He should convene a meeting of the all the members of the congregation and inform them about the financial conditions of the church. He should form a 8 members committee to improve the financial situations and Father Joe, himself serve as the chairman and in his absence associate pastor Father Don. Deacon Ruiz should be requested to serve as a member in the committee. The remaining five members should be selected from the congregation. The committee may be called ‘ Financial Management Committee’. The members of the committee should meet at least once in a week and Father Joe, Associate Pastor Father Don and Deacon Ruiz should be present in all the meetings of the committee. It will send a strong signal that the officers of the church are really interested in improving the financial conditions of the church. This is very important because as the congregation is a very big one, it won’t be difficult to raise money from the congregation. At present, as the financial situation is very poor, very rich members of 1000 member strong congregation should be approached for donation. Moreover, members of the laity should be requested to contribute liberally to improve the financial conditions. Work Cited Read More