14. Strategic Leadership Team
Starting from this year, LT (Leadership Team) will change its name to SLT (Strategic Leadership Team). It really is a a simple name change but the real intent is to highlight the “functional” role of our leadership team, which is to provide strategic input for our ESC (English Speaking Congregation). As someone said, leadership is a “verb”, not a “noun”. With this name change, we also changed the qualification for SLT to anyone who is a shepherd (including youth shepherd), serving as a team leader. Commitment will be renewed every year. There are two reasons for this change.
First of all, Jesus made it clear that biblical leadership is “servant” leadership. Churches that have problems often have people who care very little about people but have positions of leadership. There is no greater sign of servant leadership than committing to serve as shepherds. They are the people who are in the trenches, praying and serving people daily. And since our church’s main ministry is house church, without experience in leading a house church it will be a difficult challenge to provide strategic direction for our group.
Secondly, in order to provide strategic leadership and guidance for our church, you need someone who understands how our week-to-week team ministries are run. This is crucial because when leadership team have people who have no reponsibilities of actual ministries, you will have a leadership team who tells other people to carry out the decision they came up with. This creates unncessary hierarchy and it is a bad sign of leadership.
Our goal in leadership team meeting is simple: To discern God’s will for our ESC TOGETHER. Bible says there is “safety” in multiple counsel. There is no “perfect” leadership but those who are actually serving “people” and leading “church ministries” would have a better understanding of where we are and where we need to go. Our smooth transition into intergenerational ministry and youth house church implementation was not possible if not for our leadership team’s collective strategic guidance and support.