The Four Deadly Sins of Emerging Church Leaders

The following four sins are excerpted from a TeamUp tool that helps your team engage key concepts for emerging church leaders around Steve Saccone’s book, Protege.

You can download the TeamUp tool here.

Character is doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, no matter the cost. That is the essence of true heroism, and the defining mark of a Christ-centered leader. Unfortunately, character is not required to be an effective leader. On the other hand, character is what makes a leader worth following—and it’s what gives people a compelling life to follow.

#1 – The Sin of Imitation: Envy Envy is not only a deadly sin, but probably one of the most uncomfortable sins, especially for emerging leaders as they strive to distinguish themselves from everyone else. And sometimes it’s immensely difficult to distinguish the difference from personal development and imitation development. The pathway toward overcoming the sin of imitation involves the pursuit of living an original life, a pursuit all can attain, one we were in fact created to attain.

#2 –  The Sin of Performance: Self-Reliance Every leader faces the challenge to produce or perform. Although this ambitious pursuit and intentional focus isn’t inherently wrong, I’m convinced that what ought to motivate us and what actually does motivate us gets all too blurry. The mindset of productivity is so pervasive in our culture that it can result in a subtle but critical shift in our approach to how we view and do ministry leadership and understand what great performance is really about.

#3 – The Sin of Overconfidence: Foolishness Where do we draw the line between healthy confidence and unhealthy overconfidence? Where does the balance lie between knowing you have specific gifts to offer, and thinking you are better than you are? And how does knowing the difference actually make a difference? My experience shows me that ministry leaders don’t always seek the right kind of wisdom, thus maintaining characteristics of what the Scriptures call, “a fool,” which is where the sin of overconfidence leads us.

#4 – The Sin of Entitlement: Greed Greed is a deadly sin because it takes more than it gives. It consumes rather than creates. It is never satisfied. What makes it worse is that greed is difficult to recognize and then acknowledge within yourself. As a result of going unchecked, greed begins to fuel and pollute our ambitions, the very ones that look good on the outside but wreck havoc in our leadership, marriage, ministry, and personal lives.

>> Read more from Will.

Download PDF

Tags: , , ,

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Leadership >

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will Mancini

Will Mancini

Will Mancini wants you and your ministry to experience the benefits of stunning, God-given clarity. As a pastor turned vision coach, Will has worked with an unprecedented variety of churches from growing megachurches and missional communities, to mainline revitalization and church plants. He is the founder of Auxano, creator of VisionRoom.com and the author of God Dreams and Church Unique.

See more articles by >

COMMENTS

What say you? Leave a comment!

Recent Comments
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

Clarity Process

Three effective ways to start moving toward clarity right now.