This week we had our All Leader Gathering. This is a time when we get all our volunteers and staff together for encouragement, training, and to have a good time with one another.
To create a healthy culture in any organization, it’s so helpful to get to know the people you’re serving alongside. There’s something special about getting almost 100 people in one room together, sharing a meal, and connecting over our united passion for serving our city through GPCC.
At the Care Center, we believe that leadership development is crucial to the health and growth of our organization. If we don’t have healthy leaders—and lots of them—we can’t grow.
Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean you have a leadership title. Instead, it’s more of a posture or a mentality you have as you serve wherever you are. And when you have team members thinking like this—like leaders—only then will the culture of the organization thrive.
All Leader Gathering Recap
So at our All Leader Gathering this week, we pushed our volunteers and staff to start thinking like leaders in two specific ways: Personal Growth and Growth as an Organization.
1. Personal Growth
Any healthy organization has team members and leaders who take care of themselves first. Every member of the team has to be growing personally before an entire organization will grow.
We often think of serving and leading others like a cup being poured out. We pour out, and we have to get filled back up. But really, healthy service and leadership is more like a cup that’s getting poured into and is overflowing. If you keep pouring yourself out for others, you always come up empty. But if you allow the overflow of your life to be what pours out to others, you’ll remain full while you’re filling up someone else!
Priscilla, our Advancement Director, gave us 8 ways to remain personally healthy:
1. Get your priorities straight
2. Pray and read the Bible daily
3. Know who you are in Christ
4. Love your spouse well (if you’re married)
5. Find your people (those you can trust for accountability and friendship)
6. Know the difference between selfishness and stewardship
7. Dare not to compare yourself with others
8. Rest well (physically spiritually)
2. Organizational Growth
Once we’re growing personally, we can think about how to grow a healthy organization.
Bobby, the Treasurer on our Board of Directors and Lead Pastor of Operations at Mercy Hill Church, laid out 3 Organizational Myths and 3 Personal Myths about leadership development.
Organizational Myths
Myth 1: We just need more volunteers. If we don’t have leaders to lead new volunteers, the organization can’t grow. An organization must have healthy leaders if it’s going to grow, not just “more volunteers.”
Myth 2: What got us here will get us there. Just because something has worked in the past, that doesn’t mean it will work to propel us into future growth. We have to be willing to change, as needed, in order to continue growing.
Myth 3: We just need to focus on the mission. Yes, the mission is our central focus in all we do. But if that’s the only focus, we probably won’t grow. Starbucks didn’t focus only on making great coffee; they also had to focus on how to replicate that mission, in order to expand their reach.
Personal Myths
Myth 1: I’m right where I want to be. Sometimes leadership requires you to get out of your comfort zone. We can’t always use our personal desires (i.e what’s most comfortable) as the measure for what’s best for the growth of the organization.
Myth 2: I can’t be replaced. In a healthy organization, this needs to be the last thing we’re worried about. Often, whenever a team member moves up in an organization, it creates a vacuum that sucks another leader up into it. We need to be willing to move on for the good of the mission.
Myth 3: I’m unqualified to lead people. This is like telling someone you’re a humble person. You may feel unqualified, but if your leaders are calling you into greater responsibilities because they see leadership qualities in you, be careful that you’re not just using this myth as an excuse.
Final Challenge
We hope you’ll visit our Facebook page for the video that includes both Priscilla’s and Bobby’s full talks. We’re going to keep holding our All Leader Gatherings so we can continue our growth as an organization. I want to challenge you to ask yourself these questions:
How am I growing personally?
How am I helping the Care Center grow?
Growth is never easy. In fact, it can often be downright painful. But when we consider what’s at stake, we can say with confidence that every moment of growth—every painful, so-outside-of-my-comfort-zone moment—is worth it.