What the Church Has Taught Me: Leadership
What the Church Has Taught Me: Leadership by Rev. L. John Gable
July 2, 2023
During the past several weeks you have been good to allow me to reflect upon my life of faith and ministry; perhaps indulge me would be a better word. I am grateful for the responses and encouragement you’ve given me for these messages, and will close this short series with one last season of my ministry experience and what the church has taught me before we turn our attention to the wonderfully unique church we know and love called Tab.
After having served two churches, first as an associate pastor in Mansfield, OH, and then as a first time Senior Pastor in Waterloo, IA, each for 6 years; I felt the time was right for another change. I have always felt my particular gifts for ministry might best be used in churches in need of renewal and revitalization, certainly true in both Mansfield and Waterloo. With twelve years of ministry experience under my belt my name was referred by a friend to Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Mequon, WI, a northern suburb of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. Mequon was, perhaps is, in one of the most affluent counties in the state, perhaps in the country. The church itself was 38 years old, my age at the time, so I would be following the founding pastor who had been there the entire time. I often said there wasn’t a brick or corner that didn’t have his fingerprints on it. When I told my friends about this opportunity they all advised me in the same way, “No one successfully follows a 38 year founding pastor”; but still I felt the call because, as I had experienced in my previous two churches, Crossroads was in need of renewal and revitalization.
I quickly came to realize that my leadership style was different than my predecessor’s, and perhaps different than many senior pastors, in that my style is “permission giving”. I am by nature, and by intention, an “encourager”, my first impulse is always toward “yes”. I had learned to trust that God uses a wide assortment of people to cast vision and come up with really good ideas, so I adopted this motto for my leadership style, “There go my people, I must follow, for I am their leader”. We hadn’t been at Crossroads more than about 6 months when one of our active members came to me and said, “John, I have no idea where you are leading us.” I replied, “I don’t know either. I came with two good ideas – Bethel and Youth Club and I’ve gotten both of those started, now it’s up to you.” That “permission giving” approach to leadership spread like “lightning in a bottle.” Youth Club took off and young families started returning to church. Ideas for new ministries, and the enhancement of existing ones, started to flow and all I had to do was say, “Yes, that sounds like something we should be doing” and off they’d go and get it done.
Within about 18 months worship attendance had reached capacity for the existing sanctuary and talks were started about expanding. During the ensuing 13 years we were at Crossroads we led two very successful capital campaigns, first of a new sanctuary and office complex, then followed by a new Christian life center and fellowship area. During those years every conceivable measurable doubled, tripled or quadrupled: worship and program attendance, number of new members, giving, outreach and the like.
One of the really fun ministries we started then was suggested by the same fellow who had wondered if I had any ideas. He realized no one was offering Christian concerts in the Milwaukee area and our new sanctuary could accommodate them: lights, sound, seating. So he approached the Session with the idea and they offered a $50,000 safety net to give it a try, and it worked. Over the next several years we hosted Christian concerts and welcomed the very artists we were listening to on the radio. A precursor perhaps to what we are doing here at TabJams.
During those years I came to realize that all of the experiences and skills I had gained during my previous 12 years of ministry in Mansfield and Waterloo were coming in to play at Crossroads. Both Kris and I were teaching 3rd grade Youth Club classes, becoming Old Testament characters each week, which I then took in to worship and started doing first person presentations of Biblical characters. The contemporary worship service I started in Waterloo took hold at Crossroads. So for about a decade I led worship every Sunday singing and playing my guitar. It was the overwhelming response to that worship style that drove the decision to build a new sanctuary. I continued to be coached and mentored by wonderful women and men who tried and tested and shaped my leadership abilities, but I also honed my own leadership skills to guide and shape that fast-growing ministry.
Reading through the characteristics Scripture lays out describing those called to pastoral leadership in the church they sound almost unreasonable and unattainable; yet I also realized these were the very gifts for ministry I had been developing and aspiring to. I realized my leadership style of permission giving aligned with Peter’s instruction about “exercising oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, not for personal gain but eagerly.” I did not “lord my position” over anyone, but tried to “be an example” to those I served as a “servant leader.” Humility is not an attribute that comes easily to any of us, but I recognized my gifts for ministry and leadership were only companion to the gifts and commitments of so many who were serving alongside me.
One of the challenges of any affluent suburban church, which Crossroads was, was how to keep it from becoming isolated and insular, serving only its own needs and not those of the larger community around it. Located 20 miles north of Milwaukee, we had a mission committee that was passionate about sharing our resources to address inner city needs, as well as global outreach. As you might expect there was an inherent tension between resources spent on us ie the demands of expanding bricks and mortar and programs, and those spent on serving the needs of others. We reached something of an impasse one year, so during a Session retreat I was given the idea of having every committee of Session, each of which was bartering for more money in their budgets, to listen to and then advocate for the requests of another committee. It was fascinating to listen to the facilities folks arguing as to why the missions folks needed more funding, and vice versa.
During those years at Crossroads, having been mentored for so many years by so many wonderful mentors of my own, I began being offered opportunities to mentor others. Young pastors in the community would call and ask if I could spend a little time with them (I always said yes!). I was asked by our denomination to serve as a mentor in a program they were offering called “The Company of New Pastors”. Twice a year I would lead a group of newly ordained pastors on a three day retreat, supporting, encouraging, mentoring them. I served in that ministry for 5 years.
For the first time I was asked to serve on a national board of the church and became active in a group called “Presbyterians For Renewal”, a good fit for me since renewal and revitalization of the church was in my wheelhouse of ministry skills. That opportunity led me to serve on the board of a ministry out of Chattanooga TN called Youth Conference Ministries which offered outstanding summer camps for middle school and high school aged students. We sent hundreds of kids to those camps every summer. I was also asked to join the board of Trustees of Carroll College, now university, one of our Presbyterian institutions.
At some point during my decade in the 30’s I read a book by Bob Buford titled “Halftime”, and I hated it. His premise was, or at least my take on his premise was, you spend the first half of your life gaining success and the second half of your life looking for significance. I rejected those priorities thinking one should strive for significance in every season and opportunity of their lives, you don’t have to wait until you’re successful to “make a difference.” Well, for some strange reason, I reread the book in my fifties and it spoke to me in a different way.
Ever since my first call to ministry I realized that my pastoral gifts are for renewal and revitalization, helping to get a church up and running again. But I also realized that once a church was up and running at full stride I didn’t really know what to do next, so after 6 years in Mansfield and in Waterloo I moved on, and at the six year mark at Crossroads we started sequential building campaigns, which reset my six year clock.
Looking back on those years of ministry I would liken it to being a ring master in the circus. It was high energy, full engagement, every day something new. I felt like I was constantly juggling 12 balls and spinning plates. But at about the 13 year mark, for some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I got the feeling that something was missing; that I had done the work God had called me there to do; that there was something else that God had in store for me; that perhaps “I had one more in me.” All of which was counter intuitive to me. We were well settled in a beautiful suburb of Milwaukee, we had just bought a new home, Kris loved her job teaching middle school math, and both of our kids lived in the region. The church was staffing around my skills, supporting and supplementing, and we were geared toward retiring there.
And then we heard about an urban church in Indianapolis that was in need of renewal and revitalization that was looking for a new pastor. We had known about this church and the importance of its ministry in the city for decades, Kris since childhood. And for reasons, perhaps known only to God, I wrote a letter introducing myself to the Pastor Nominating Committee and we started a conversation.
Kris and I are both reading a book right now by Arthur C. Brooks titled From Strength to Strength. The opening chapter is an eye catcher in which he argues that “in every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties… On average, the peak of creative careers occurs about twenty years after career inception.” I was 51 when we heard about that church in Indianapolis, 25 years in to my professional career. Did I still have “one more in me” or was I past my creative prime? This new opportunity would have to call on a different set of leadership skills than those I had used at Crossroads. Whereas Brooks calls the skills used early in a career “fluid intelligence”; he calls those needed in one’s later seasons “crystallized intelligence” which he defines as “the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past.” If we were being called to move, it would have to be to a church with wonderfully unique possibilities for ministry and mission that would call on my “crystallized intelligence.” And we discovered it was.
I’ll close with this one story. On the first Sunday after I announced we were leaving Crossroads the sanctuary was absolutely packed. They wanted to hear me explain why we were leaving, you see no one leaves that community unless they have a much better offer elsewhere. I explained, as best I could, the ministry opportunity in Indianapolis and they listened intently. Walking out of worship that day one man said to me, “Now I know why you are leaving. You are just doing what you’ve been telling us to do for the past 13 years. You’re just following Jesus.” We believed that to be true.
About the wonderfully unique opportunity that awaited us at that church in Indianapolis we will talk more next week and in the weeks to come.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN