After serving as both a professor and pastor, I had the privilege of teaching leadership to graduating students at an outstanding Midwestern seminary. They were weeks away from stepping into their first pastoral roles.
On the first day, I gave them a three-page list of everything it would take to lead a healthy church and asked them to check every item they had been trained for. Most of them turned in their surveys completely blank. They were prepared for two essentials—preaching and pastoral care—but completely unequipped to lead a church.
Yes, the church needs great preaching and compassionate pastoring, but we also need God-honoring, spirit-filled, mission-driven leaders who are trained to cast vision, build momentum, make disciples and create a healthy culture in which people thrive.
For decades, churches have looked to business leaders for these types of insights on growth, leadership and organizational health. Yet, many ministry leaders are leery of adopting principles from the business world, fearing it will compromise the church’s mission.
But here is the truth: Learning from business leaders isn’t the problem—bad leadership is. Danger can occur when business leaders are a pastor’s only model. But it’s also dangerous when we refuse to learn from their world at all.
Like my students, I graduated from seminary equipped to preach, teach and pastor, but I was totally unprepared to lead. I had to learn some difficult lessons throughout my ministry life, and have been shaped by, encouraged by, taught by, corrected by, challenged by and mentored by a host of great leaders along the way—many of them were in the business world.
Here are the five most valuable lessons I have learned that I hope will be helpful to you in your own leadership journey, starting with the most embarrassing and discouraging moment in my leadership life.
1. Mission and Morale Both Matter.
About a decade ago, the church I lead, Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California, had all the earmarks of a thriving church … except when it came to my team. They felt effective but were unhealthy and unhappy.
I brought in an outside organization to do a 360-degree review of my leadership. If you have never experienced this type of review, let me tell you, it is a great way to find out what people really think about your leadership style. The organization conducted confidential interviews with all the staff. The result was 40 pages of direct feedback from 140 people who all had complete anonymity and what seemed like a loaded gun.
The feedback was so brutal and embarrassing I wanted to bury it. As I turned each page of the report, my stomach tied itself into more knots. I had spent years casting vision and driving the mission forward, but somehow in the process I had neglected the people on the journey with me. I had seen the ministry grow, but I hadn’t recognized the low morale, frustration and unsustainable pace of the team. They were tired, frustrated and felt used. I cared deeply about each one, but I hadn’t realized what my leadership was costing them.
After reading the report, my first thought was I quit.
My second thought: I’m not quitting—I’m firing everyone.
My third thought: Maybe. I’m. The. Problem?
Then I decided to give the report to my wife so she could empathize with me. Instead, she read it and said, “I don’t know. Maybe you should pray about it.”
“Learning from business leaders isn’t the problem in the church—bad leadership is.”
Finally, I asked three of the sharpest leaders from the business world that I knew for help. We ended up going away for three days and poured over every word of that report together. Was it embarrassing for me? Yes. But those were three of the most transformational days of my leadership life.
The fog lifted for me when one of the men I was with said, “Ray, all leadership is about creating two essentials: mission and morale. Mission without morale is a leadership disaster.”
They forced me to see that I had been stepping on the mission accelerator (church growth and ministry expansion) and ignoring the morale accelerator (staff health). It’s a lesson the apostle Paul taught the Philippians, that we can have progress, but we dare not ignore joy. It doesn’t matter how great the mission is; if people hate the journey, they’ll eventually quit the mission. And over time, mission without morale will kill a church.
I once had thought that if we had the right vision, mission and strategy, all the other things would take care of themselves. I was wrong. How we lead determines how people experience the mission. Smart companies don’t just hire employees. They build leaders. Healthy churches don’t just gather crowds. They raise disciples.
Wise business leaders understand that leadership involves more than just making decisions—it’s about creating culture. I had to change how I led. It wasn’t just about fixing morale—it was about creating a new and intentional leadership culture that could sustain growth, impact and transformation.
When I came back from those three days away, I stood in front of the staff, choked up and apologized. We have been working at getting better ever since.
2. Nothing Great Happens Through You Until It Happens in You.
In the business world, the most effective leaders have one thing in common: They are always learning. They go to conferences and leadership retreats. They have coaches and invest in personal growth. They read widely and think deeply. They join cohorts and read everything they can get their hands on. Great leaders are growing leaders, and growing leaders are constantly learning. The minute I stop learning today, I stop leading tomorrow.
Pastors, on the other hand, often can get stuck in the trap of leading others while neglecting their own growth. A former president of an international company once looked at me over breakfast and said, “You are always so busy. I want you to think deeply about the question I am going to ask you: What are you doing to invest in yourself as a leader?”
When I got that 360-degree review I mentioned earlier, I realized that the church had outgrown my leadership level. The church was growing, but I wasn’t. I had spent so much time pouring into others that I had forgotten to invest in my own development. That moment forced me to change. I started reading more, learning more and surrounding myself with people who challenged me. And as I grew, the church responded.
The lesson here is simple: The best way to grow a ministry is to pursue personal growth. Healthy business leaders understand that great leaders lead themselves first. Ministry leaders need to understand that as well.
3. Having a Healthy Culture Must Be a Priority.
In the business world, leaders understand something that many pastors overlook: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. A company can have the best mission statement, the best product and the best business model, but if the culture is toxic, it will eventually collapse.
The same is true for the church. We can have the best vision in the world, but if our teams are exhausted, frustrated, cynical and disconnected, it won’t last. Momentum without morale leads to exhaustion, not transformation. Effective church leaders don’t just push people toward progress; they create a culture where people want to be a part of the journey.
“At the very time the business world now believes impossible things are possible, the church is mired in discouragement and defeat.”
That was a hard lesson for me to learn, but once I understood it, it changed the way I led. I realized that culture had to be intentional. This led to launching a process, and our entire staff spent six months together defining the culture we would all commit to living out. When the dust settled, we had our 14 Culture Statements, which we would commit to. Here are a few things we came up with:
• Humility. We are servants, not celebrities.
• Integrity. We will lead by example.
• People. They are the point.
• Faith. We are faith-filled, future-focused risk takers.
• Flexibility. Impact trumps process.
• Calling. This is more than a job; this is my calling.
• Passion. We dig holes in roofs.
We put these culture statements in a three-page handout, and to this day I personally read it line by line to everyone we are going to add to our team. Once a year, our entire staff reads it, signs it, and we all recommit ourselves to living out this culture. We are in the process of becoming who we believe God wants us to be.
4. Just Because It Looks Impossible Doesn’t Mean It Is.
Reading Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs was personally convicting and challenging for me. Jobs once told his team they could put an entire computer in a box. Everyone told him it was impossible—until the Mac was born. Later, he demanded that his engineers make the iPhone screen out of glass instead of plastic. They told him it was impossible. Six months later, they had what eventually would come to be called Gorilla Glass, developed and manufactured by Corning.
SpaceX did the same thing with reusable rockets. Everyone thought it was a ridiculous idea—until it worked.
I find it fascinating that at the very time the business world now believes impossible things are possible, the church is mired in discouragement and defeat. Churches should be the most innovative, forward-thinking, risk-taking, compassion-unleashing, change-ready organizations on earth. Instead, some houses of worship are risk-averse and stagnant. We serve a God who raises the dead, parts seas, and builds his church from nothing. But somehow, over time, many churches have become fear-filled and tradition-bound.
The business world has figured out something we have forgotten: Big vision attracts people. Dreams inspire people. Audacious goals ignite people. Bold faith moves people. Forward vision liberates people. Just like the book of Acts.
What if we started leading like we actually believe in the miraculous? What if the church became the next place where bold, world-changing ideas were born?
I’m not advocating taking risks for the sake of taking risks. But playing it safe shrinks our lives, our faith and the impact we could have for the kingdom. It leaves us with shrunken up, shriveled hearts. We will spend all of eternity realizing that a big God gave each of us one life to make a maximum impact, and we let fear, cynicism and doubt rob us of the privilege of conceiving and chasing great God-honoring dreams.
As Henry Ford put it, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”
5. Organizations That Resist Change Have a Shorter Shelf Life.
Religious institutions by nature tend to be change-averse organizations. A frustrated pastor once told me, “The motto of many people in my church seems to be, ‘As it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be.’”
Another pastor once said, “It would be easier in my church to change our theological statements than to move the flowers on the communion table.”
One of the biggest differences between churches and businesses is how rapidly they can pivot. When the pandemic hit, businesses adapted fast. They pivoted to online platforms, shifted workforces and created new ways to engage customers. Meanwhile, many churches struggled, waiting for things to go back to “normal.”
“The church needs great preaching and compassionate pastoring, but we also need God-honoring, spirit-filled, mission-driven leaders.”
Look at what has happened to businesses that didn’t change and adapt. Blockbuster didn’t take Netflix seriously. Kodak ignored the digital camera revolution. And we all know how those two business decisions turned out. The lesson is clear: Successful organizations embrace change, while declining ones resist it.
The church should be different. Our message never changes, but our methods have to. The way we engage people, communicate and structure must evolve with the culture we are called to reach.
I have seen too many churches decline simply because they refused to adapt. They held onto programs, styles and strategies that worked once but had long ago stopped being effective. I don’t believe in change for the sake of change, but I do believe in being led by the Spirit and willing to move when God leads.
A High and Hard Calling
Because nothing about leading a complex organization is ever simple, I believe the church needs business leaders, and business leaders need the church. The healthiest churches are led by visionaries who embrace wisdom from many sources while staying anchored in biblical truth.
I had breakfast with a Fortune 100 CEO who was interested in being an executive pastor at Bayside. Halfway though, I sensed he was thinking, I run a massive and complex corporation. Leading a church should be a breeze. I could do this job with half my brain tied behind my back.
I set my fork down and said, “Imagine that on Friday you have to gather your entire corporation and announce that as of Monday, you are going to stop paying all of them. But you need to do this in such a motivational way that next week they all show up and work and serve for free. And every Sunday they all drive to your headquarters, come in, sing songs, listen to you speak, and give you money.”
That is what we as pastors do. Leading a church can be hard because the church is complex. It is a family, and a body, and a spiritual enterprise, and an organization all at the same time, which makes leading it complicated. For example, in the past when I have had to move a staff person on, a number of them have had a constituency of people in the church who love them and decide to leave with them—taking their tithing with them.
At the end of the day, leadership isn’t about titles or strategies. It’s about stewarding God’s mission well. If we do that, the church won’t just survive, it will thrive. We would be well served to listen to some 2,000-year-old advice from Revelation 21:5 in the last chapter in the Bible: “Behold, I am making all things new!”
