What Does It Mean For

What Does It Mean For A Church To Be “Laity Lead”?
Ok, the mantra of the modern day church has been “our church must be lay lead”. In other words, the concept that the members of the church must be the driving factor in the church as opposed to the traditional “staff lead” model. In theory the whole thing sounds good. After all… empowering people to do the work of ministry is a totally biblical concept that I think many churches miss out on. However, I’ve also come to believe that many churches swing the pendulum too far the other way.

Some churches mistakingly equate the concept of empowering members with dis-empowering staff. They think the only way to accomplish this is to take leadership as opposed to responsibility out of the hands of staff and place it in the hands of laity. Understand the consequences of this philosophy. We compromise the leadership of individuals who are (in many cases but not all) educated and professionally trained for ministry, who have years of experience and serve in the church 6 days a week. To think it wise to take leadership out of the hands of these people to place them in the hands of individuals who have no formal training, no professional experience and are only serving the church possibly 2-3 hours per week is just silly. Yes, God empowers all believers… but that includes the staff.

Having said that, we as a body of believers must realize that the breadth and scope of ministry needs in our churches FAR exceeds the mere capabilities of “staff” to meet. Many Pastors with over inflated egos refuse to release any responsibility or authority to laity at the expense of needs being meet.

The biblical principle on this, I believe is clear. 1) Pastors are to lead the church. 2) The Biblical mandate of Pastors is to train laity for ministry themselves so that the “net” of service may be widened. I think we’d see amazing things happen in our churches if we could grasp this concept without going to either extreme. Just my thoughts.