Most ministry leaders don't think about the dreaded word "successor" until it is
too late. They act as if they will live forever. Or they stay in control of
their church or organization until they are so old that it's too late to train
their replacements.
Naomi Dowdy, a veteran church planter who has worked in Asia for decades,
decided to buck this trend. She selected her successor, Dominic Yeo, several
years ago, trained him and then set him in place in 2005. Yeo's installation at
the 5,500-member Trinity Christian Centre in Singapore was an impressive
demonstration of the way church leadership is supposed to work—and it gave Dowdy
an opportunity to share her secrets with leaders all over the world.
Ministry Today asked Dowdy to download her secrets to us. We think you'll
benefit from her refreshingly practical wisdom.
For nearly two years I've been trying to frame a set of statements, which I've
called, "The Essentials." This byproduct of more than 25 years of refining my
focus addresses one question: "What are the essential teachings a pastor/leader
must cover in order to shape a ministry-minded believer and a spiritually
maturing congregation?"
Here's where the list stands right now. But I'm open to input from pastors or
leaders who might want to read through, think through and provide feedback on
the following outline. My outline's brevity may seem to omit something my
expanded version would include, but maybe I've missed something you can help me
with.
I've never been one to take the obvious path. When I was a teenager, my father
gave me the simple job of stacking some firewood as he left for work one day.
There was a part of me that resisted facing such a labor-intensive job, but even
stronger was the part of me that resisted doing it in an ordinary way.
So as I started moving the wood around, I was gradually overcome by a desire
to create something that had never been done before. What should have been a
mundane chore soon became a quest. For hours I stacked and restacked,
cultivating the vision in my mind. By the time my father returned home, he was
greeted by a masterpiece that surprised (and probably baffled) him.
Leading through and to change may be one of the most important and difficult
things leaders do. They must discern the areas most in need of change—and how
much—while balancing the capacity to assimilate and gravitate toward that
change.
We’ve all seen leaders who did too much changing too quickly, blowing up
their organizations with their lack of finesse and inability to pace well. Other
leaders never did more than make slight variations, and then stood by helplessly
while the organization lost its effectiveness and ultimately imploded. A healthy
median keeps the following in mind:
After more than 15 years of working with youth groups, sifting through what
works and what doesn't, I have identified 20 tips to help churches effectively
reach teens:
1. Be creative. The No. 1 reason teens stay away from youth groups is
because meetings are boring. Never let your group know what's coming next. If
group programming is predictable, change it.
2. Change the setting. If your group is not coming to you, go where
they are.
