Let me try to ramble my way into hopefully saying something helpful.

I’ve been thinking about a leadership paradox that confronts me almost daily.
Leaders who refuse to cooperate with this principle get choked to death by it.
Leaders who don’t know about it are perpetually blindsided and bewildered by the implications of ignoring it.

It goes like this:
What got you here (to your present level of effectiveness)
Won’t get you there (to the next level of growth)

If your church is going to grow, the way you spend your time and the activities you perform as a leader should be constantly shifting.
If you keep doing the stuff you did in order for the church to grow from 0 to 100, the church won’t likely grow to 200. If, after the church grows to 200, you keep fulfilling the same functions as a leader, you’ll never see 500. Same for 1000. And 2000. I hear it works this way as you grow to 10,000, 20,000, and beyond.

The idea of letting going and changing positions is particularly hard for founding pastors to digest and apply.
Because when our churches were starting, we did a little bit of everything.
In my case, everything included leading worship, eating breakfast and lunch with prospective members and community contacts (at my own expense) up to five or six times a week, even writing personal thank you notes to every first time guest, just to name a few.
All of this was necessary for our “fetal” development.

But what if I still made the chord charts and posted the mp3s and led worship and preached for 3 services per Sunday?
What if I still wrote personal thank you notes for every first time guest? (There are hundreds every month)
What if I still ate lunch with everybody who emailed the office asking me to? (I’d weigh 400 pounds)

Elevation’s growth and development would be paralyzed from the neck down.

I wouldn’t be able to give priority to prayer and preaching.
I wouldn’t be able to reflect, dream, and receive vision from God.
I wouldn’t be able to devote myself to leadership development and critical decisions about advanced strategic plans.

If I kept on doing what I’d always done, we’d keep getting what we’d always had.

If you want your church to grow, the way you lead must change.
Often and dramatically.

This includes:
The number of meetings you’re in.
The number of emails you see.
The number of phone calls you take.
The number of phone calls you make.
The level of access you allow.
These things must change. Constantly.

This question should filter every decision about how to invest your working hours:
What is the highest and best use of my time at this stage in our church’s development?

But the shift is not just about the way you spend your time. It’s about:
What’s worth the investment of your emotional energy?
What things will you and won’t you mentally obsess over?
What functions do you need to release in order to reach for something higher?

I know it’s counterintuitive, but I swear it’s true:
If you want the church you lead to grow more, you’ve got to do a lot less.

Warning: Taking the steps I’m talking about will result in serious withdrawal pains.
Because you trade the instant gratification of “productivity” (hitting send and receive on your email 50 times a day or approving a purchase order for a microphone)
for the long term benefit of shaping systems.

But don’t you owe it to those you lead to make the shift?
What shift do you need to make in this season of your leadership?
Get your team together, figure it out… and expect an explosion of growth.