Hope-filled Leadership

If you are a pastor of a plateaued or declining church – vibrant church renewal starts with you!  One of the things our congregations need more than anything else is hope-filled leadership.  Are you a leader who fosters hope in your members?

Leonard Sweet writes, “The annual meetings of most churches are like that of the swimming coach who made a difficult speech at an awards banquet after a disastrous year.  'We didn’t win a single meet this year,' he admitted, 'but we had a good time and nobody drowned.'” 

I personally have been to too many District Assemblies and heard too many pastor’s reports that reflect the low expectations of this swimming coach.  Alan Roxburgh writes, “We encounter many congregations and church leaders functioning out of low expectation and hope…But the Biblical stories that lead to the Incarnation keep telling us these are the very places where God’s future emerges.  This is what God does and how God acts, most clearly in Jesus.  When leaders bring this imagination to their congregation, they foster hope.”  We need leaders who will dream again of the life and vibrancy that that God wants to bring to where they are currently serving.

Hope-filled leadership doesn’t mean we don’t deal in reality or that we look at things through rose-colored glasses. It means that we look at all of those circumstances through the lense of the resurrection.  As I once heard William Willimon say, “When we’ve got a resurrected Christ, we always have more future than past.”  Hope-filled leadership believes that no matter how bleak things look at the moment, we serve a resurrected Christ who has a hope and a future for our congregation and its members.  

Vibrant church renewal starts with you.  It starts with restoring hope where hope has been lost.  Let’s be hope-filled leaders today.

For more help on raising the morale of your congregation, check out this resources from Vibrant Church Renewal:

Raising the Morale of a Plateaued Congregation