More on Leaders Who Teach vs. Teachers Who Lead

Since several of you have asked for more information on this issue, I thought I’d share another post on this critical issue because it can be so easily misunderstood.  You see, once a church exceeds around 150 people per week in attendance, a pastor’s primary duties become to lead and to feed.  It’s not that the senior point person can do just one or the other, he/she has to do both.  However, based on one’s natural tendencies, there’s almost always a natural inclination toward one or the other.  It’s not that one is right and one is wrong or one is better and the other inferior, they’re just different.

Now, if you’ll suffer me to be a bit reductionistic, here’s how I’d break down some of the differences between leaders who teach vs. teachers who lead.

Leaders who teach        Teachers who lead
Favor simplicity             Favor complexity
Decide                         Deliberate
Act                             Ponder
Focus on leading            Focus on explaining
   people somewhere              the text to people
Make sure people           Make sure people
    do it.                               get it.
Want to inspire             Want to inform
Use regular words          Use well developed words
See the whole              See the individual
Church growth              Personal growth

In other words, the whole orientation of leaders and teachers is radically different. Now, this doesn’t mean that leaders can’t teach well or that teachers can’t lead well.  It simply means that each one will have a natural inclination toward one or the other.

However, to be the best church leaders we can be, we need to be masters at both the leading and feeding sides of our jobs.  In other words, leaders who teach need to learn from teachers how to be better teachers.  And teachers who lead need to learn from leaders how to be better leaders.  Or to put it another way, if we want to be the best church leaders we can be, then we need to learn how to augment the other side of our job so that we become more complete church leaders who both lead well and feed well.

Some of the better known leaders who teach would be Ed Young, Jr., Bill Hybels, Wayne Cordeiro and Rick Warren.  While, some of the better known teachers who lead would be Chuck Swindoll, John Ortberg and Andy Stanley.  In fact, Andy Stanley is probably the best example of a classic teacher who has learned to be a great leader.  So, it’s not impossible to do both.  In fact, it’s quite possible.

So, let me ask you, “Toward which side do you lean—the leader side or the teacher side?”  Whichever one you lean toward, make a conscious decision to learn from the other side.  For example, this year, since I’m a classic teacher first leader, I’ve been studying and learning a lot from watching and interacting with pure leaders like Ed Young, Jr.,
Dale O’Shields (the pastor of the largest church in our county—Montgomery County, MD) and my Executive Pastor, Dan Cotter. So, as you look at your leading and feeding abilities, where do you need to do some augmenting in order to be a more complete and effective senior pastor/leader?

Comments

[djchuang]

Your disclaimer to not be "reductionistic" is a classic bias-for-compexity comment! :) Yes, I'm discovering too that most people prefer simplicity, and that a task of the leader is to create alignment for people, and people need something clear, concise, and simple to hang on to, and to get into action. That's why marketing slogans work too. That's why Rick Warren's quite the communicator, and leader first then teacher. (I had deconstructed his Purpose Driven Life book into bullet points; take a look at the first centence of each chapter.)