How To Be A Blessing To Your Leaders

Three quick thoughts on how to protect your relationship with your church leader. It’s key that as worship leaders, we’re fully behind our senior church leader, serving their vision and supporting them. In many ways this is one of the most important relationship in the life of the local church, because if there isn’t unity over the worship at the heart of the church, then there won’t be unity across the wider body. We spend a huge amount of time with our senior pastor Nicky Gumbel, listening to him, asking him questions, getting his advice on challenges and issues. He’s the first to admit that he knows little about the practicalities of the musical side of worship, but he’s passionate that we have worship at the heart of our church that connects people to God. We’ve learned that there are three essentials to keeping our relationship with the senior church leader healthy: [1] LOYALTY Firstly, we give our leaders undivided loyalty. It says in Hebrews 13:17 “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as those who must give account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.” There is a biblical principle at play here: we reap, we will sow. If we sow disloyalty to our leaders, then we will reap disloyalty from those we lead. Likewise, if we go out of our way to honour and serve our leaders, we will reap a harvest of their loyalty, and the loyalty of those we in turn lead. We’ll find that they will trust us, release us and believe in us and incredible things can happen in teams where there is a culture of loyalty. [2] FRIENDSHIP Secondly, we do everything we can to value friendship with our leaders. In many ways, friendship is the glue that holds a healthy ministry together. Jesus said in John 15:15 “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his masters business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” We invest time in making sure that our leaders know we want first and foremost to be their friends, rather than appearing with a list of concerns or an agenda. Friends trust one another, they have fun together, they instinctively know what the other person is thinking and they are a pleasure to be around. But friendships take time, and if we’re going to be friends with our leaders, we must not be afraid to waste time learning to do life together. [3] HONESTY Then finally, the third essential to keeping a healthy realtionship with our leaders is honesty. Loyalty and friendship create a same environment where we can be honest with each other, where we won’t be afraid of sharing where things are at. We regularily have honest discussions where we say what we really think, and thrash out complicated issues, but all of this is done in the context of friendship and loyalty. Nicky is always telling us that we have ‘the obligation to dissent!’ We’re always encouraged to tell him exactly what we think, good or bad, and he makes it clear to us that his job is to decide what the right thing to do is. He’s constantly asking us ‘what do you think of this’ or ‘how can we do this better?’ Of course all of this takes place in an environment where we are fully supportive of Nicky, but for us as creative people it has been a real blessing to work under such conditions! Nicky, at the same time, is incredibly patient and discerning, and will often listen very attentively and graciously. Once we’ve said what we think we can relax, safe in the knowledge that he’ll know what the best thing to do is. Honestly is a two way street: we want to know what our leaders think of the direction we’re taking things, the songs we’re choosing and the worship life of the church. We’re contantly asking Nicky ‘what did you think of that’ or ‘how can we improve things?’ and we find that, even when there’s nothing to change, it’s key that our leaders know that we’re ready and responsive in serving them. A healthy relationship with our leadership is key to seeing the worship life of our churches flourish and is always based on loyalty, friendship and honesty. Do chip in if you have thoughts below!