What is your motivation?

Every large church, like the one I work with, has an organization to make it work and achieve the work of the Lord. This concept applies on a smaller scale to smaller congregations, too, but a larger church that has thousands of people who attend its services weekly has challenges its smaller counterparts may not have. Our leadership is borrowing models from the world of business to make our organization stronger, more financially responsible and ultimately better. To this end, our team has attended workshops that center on the motivations of our leaders, including me.

The individual leader, our head minister, has a leadership team who works with the leader to achieve our desired goals and objectives.  With the economy still in recovery mode and many churches in this country seeing decreased attendance, we have models from business that can be adapted to do more than just keep the church financially viable.  We can serve the needs of the expanded congregation spiritually.

In a business models we studied, the key factors for our organization reflected what businesses are doing to survive, even though they may be over 100 years old. One word tossed around was change, and another was flexibility.  Better use of available resources was needed to take advantage of new technologies and opportunities.  What is our motivation, individually and as a group? This is what the workshop was all about, because the motivations determined the management styles.

One consulting group we studied, The Clarion Group, Ltd. from Seattle, put leadership styles into four categories. I have the tendency to be in charge and want to exert authority through enabling others.  Some of our team had the tendency to focus on relationships with others and felt fulfilled to be in service to others. A third motivation style centered on achieving outcomes measured in specific deliverable standards while getting things done.  A fourth fulfillment through authority was to exert control and have a tendency to be in charge.  All of us on the team use these motivations to some extent, but favored one over the others.

Throughout the experience, we discovered who we were individually, and how to work better as a team to make our church better, for the ultimate motivation, to serve Jesus, our Savior. I have the children of the church as my focus, and my motivation, and the reason I go to work every day of the week.

Peace be you with always,

Rev. Paul Abernathy

“Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” -2 Peter 1:2

Contact Paul Abernathy at paulabernathy@gmail.com.

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