I'm working on some new ideas with regard to the way that preaching can be seen as a form of leadership. I thought that it might be interesting and helpful to try this as a wiki project and so I am inviting others to participate in the process. My hope is that this will end up being a brief article that can be published and shared with others. You should know that the end product will probably appear in various places under my name, but that I intend to clearly indicate that the article has been the product of a collaborative process. So, if you have some thoughts, please feel free to weigh in.

You are free to add to the piece or to subtract from it. Change whatever you like, as long as your intent is to improve the piece. We may end up changing your contribution, but that's all right. We're all going to participate in the piece as collaborators. Enjoy the process and we'll see if we can learn together.

Theme Statement
Preaching is a significant means by way that preachers lead their congregations.

Occasionally I have heard about churches where the "lead pastor" is not the primary preaching pastor of the church. Usually this arrangement derives from a biblical sense that there is a difference between the gifts of leadership and proclamation and one cannot readily assume that both necessarily will exist in the same person. There may be, for instance, some who are leaders who are not preachers and some who are preachers who are not leaders. Such a view may appeal to 1 Timothy 5:17 pointing out Paul's distinction between elders "who direct the affairs of the church" and those elders "whose work is preaching and teaching." (NIV)

At least this is the theory. In practice, it seldom seems to work this way. Preaching, if nothing else, provides a ready means by which a leader can extend her or his influence (See John Maxwell for "Leadership Is Influence"). In other words, preachers lead through their preaching. They cannot do otherwise. People listen to preaching and they are lead by it. Leaders who don't have access to the pulpit are going to have difficulty leading, simply because they don't have the means to speak and inspire the congregation on a disciplined and regular basis.

On the other hand, preachers who use their role in a purely instrumental way, seeing the pulpit primarily as the means by which they help the listeners achieve their corporate mission, may not have a deep enough appreciation for the spiritual nature of proclamation. Preaching is about mediating the Word of God so that people who engage it have opportunity to hear what God is saying and to be motivated to change as a result.

Yet, is this not still leadership? Does exposure to the Word and voice of God not require a sense of reckoning? Does God not lead us by his Spirit and by the direction of his Word? Of course, this kind of leadership goes beyond simply preaching through the church mission statement.

Perhaps it might help to remind ourselves of who it is the leads. Preachers understand, or ought to, that they are subject to the leadership of God who is speaking to them through the Word. Preachers merely facilitate the work that God is doing to lead people in the way that they should go and they understand that they must be the first to follow. "Follow me as I follow Christ," Paul said.

So how then does one lead through preaching?

One foundational element in leading through preaching is helping the congregation establish an ethos - a set of values that identify the congregation and its sense of mission. This is done less through the actual instructions in sermons than through preachers sharing their passions and their own sense of mission in such a way that their congregatione "catch" the vision and begin living it out for themselves. Congregations tend to become like those who preach to them. If the goal of helping a congregation find its ethos is central to the preacher's work, that ethos can be intentionally developed to glorify God.

Preaching creates culture...

Preaching creates change...

(You know, Kent, if people start using this thing for preaching, you're going to hear people talking about producing "really wikied sermons.")

__Links__

• Listen to a preview of an interview with Jack Hayford on this very topic

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