Volunteer Centered Leader: The Leader Max

You keep pushing, doing more and more. You refine your processes as much as you possibly can. At some point, you eventually reach your maximum impact as a leader. In fact, the more you do the more you seem to go backward and get less done.

The problem we have is that we are too focused on what we can do, not what God wants to accomplish. Let’s illustrate this through the concept of the “Local Max”:

Step A: Getting Started with your Ministry

This is the step where things are first getting started. You have a great idea about how you can make a serious impact in some area of your church or community. You find a few things to start doing, assemble the needed resources, and make it happen. It may be just you, or you may have a few others helping you out, perhaps some team members from your last team. Everyone is excited and you are now making an impact in some way.

Step B: Leadership at The Local Max

Your Local Max is the point in which you start to peak as a team leader. Working harder doesn’t help when you reach this point – in fact it can make things even worse. The problem is that success demands a lot of time and energy from leaders. This can cause some of your team members to leave, as you can’t spend the time or energy with them as you once did.

Fortunately, there is way to overcome this. It means turning the corner from an “I, Leader” to a “We, Leaders” approach as we talked about in the last article. I call this the focusing on “The Leader Max”:

Step C: We, Leaders – Making a Change

This is the most difficult step to take as a leader striving to be volunteer centered, as it requires sacrifices:

1. You will have to sacrifice what you do today for what your team can do in the future
2. You will have to sacrifice your team desires for God’s desires
3. You will have to learn that doing less for a season is sometimes best

During this step, you will be required to stop doing and start spending time with your team. You will move from being the hardest worker in the field to the hardest worker for your team. You must spend more time with God and your team than performing job duties.

You will have to:

1. Develop processes and procedures to enable your team to train new volunteers
2. Spend time praying and teaching others to do your job
3. Become a leader of leaders

In the end, you should have a greater heart for developing your team and what God wants to do through them.

Step D: The Leader Max

The Leader Max is an amazing place – God is using you to build teams of people with a passion to give their time and energy to a variety of needs. It is no longer about what you can do, or how well you perform a task – it is about ministering to others, cheering for them when they succeed, and being used by God to accomplish amazing things! It takes time, effort, and a huge shift in your approach, but the payoff is worth it.

How are you going to reach your Leader Max?

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