Need Better Leaders? You’ve Already Got Them.
The Gap Is an Empowerment Problem, Not a People Problem: The question isn't who you can find. It's who God already brought, and what He put in them.
Fear Is the Real Obstacle: The threat of being outshone keeps more pastors from developing leaders than any shortage of talent ever has.
Ownership Thinking Has a Cost: When you treat the congregation as yours to protect, gifted people drift, the next generation never gets reps, and you end up isolated and tired.
Stewardship Changes Everything: You're an undershepherd, a steward holding temporary responsibility for your people. Will you be faithful with who God's given you already?
"I wish I had better leaders around me."
I've met with dozens of church leaders over the past months, and I've heard variations of that statement time and time again. The words and tone vary, but the sentiment is consistent: "I'd give away responsibility if there were people I could trust to take it."
Dan Zimbardi is the Executive Pastor at Sandals Church in California, where he's spent 14 years helping grow the church to 14 locations and tens of thousands of attendees. Before that, he was a corporate executive who worked with companies like Google, Facebook, and Nike.
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He has a clear-cut diagnosis to the 'not enough good people' issue:
The problem isn't a shortage of capable people. It's a shortage of empowerment.
The wrong approach to leadership development:
Most pastors, Zimbardi argues, default to a marketplace model without realizing it:
- You identify the gaps
- You build an org chart
- You look for people to fill the boxes
That works in the corporate world, but it is the wrong approach for the church.
That shift sounds simple. It isn't. It requires a different kind of attentiveness, different conversations, and a different theology of how God works through a local congregation.
When looking for new leaders, the right question is NOT ‘what do I need, and who can I find to fill it?’ Rather, ask ‘who has God given me, and what has He put in them?’
Fear often holds us back from empowering others.
There's an uncomfortable reason most pastors don't develop other leaders.
Sometimes, keeping the responsibilities to yourself feels safer. Empowering others seems like a risk to your job, your income, and your standing in the church you've given your life to.
- What if you pour into a younger leader, and they thrive... and surpass you?
- What if you work yourself out of a job?
- What if you teach and train a young preacher – and folks prefer them to you?
Zimbardi is not dismissive of those concerns. Some of the fear is legitimate. Churches don't always protect their pastors well. There are real stories of leaders being pushed out after raising up a successor. The system has genuine failures.
But fear doesn't solve those failures.
It just guarantees a different kind of damage, one where gifted people in the congregation never get a real shot, where the next generation of leaders quietly drifts away, and where the pastor ends up more isolated and more overwhelmed than ever.
You’re a steward, not an owner.
The reframe Zimbardi keeps coming back to is stewardship:
The role of the pastor is shepherd and steward of the resources, the people, the talent God entrusts me with. I’m just a steward for a period of time. And that really guides a lot of how I go about my day-to-day work.
Temporary. That word changes everything. The congregation doesn't belong to you. The talent in the room doesn't belong to you. You're holding it for a while, and the question is whether you'll be faithful with it.
- If you're an owner, a leader who might eventually outperform you is a threat.
- If you're a steward, developing that person is the job.
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There are gifted, capable people in your congregation right now.
They are most likely simply waiting to be given a task that suits their capacity and heart. Each week, they show up faithfully after spending the work week solving significant problems with real-world consequences. Sure, they'll fold bulletins, but they are capable of so much more.
You don't need to find better people. You need to give the people you have bigger problems to solve.
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