discipleship

Becoming Less Pastor Centric

May 24, 20222 min read

 “Men and women are not ordained to this ministerial priesthood 
in order to take priesthood away from the people  
but in order to nourish and sustain the priesthood of the people.”  
Lesslie Newbigin

Clergy centric led churches limit ministry potential when we become dependent on one person. When every detail of every ministry must flow through one person, we become very limited on the ministry capacity and even the rate at which we can run the ministry.  Organizations tend to be operated from the top down. Many organizational charts look like a pyramid instead of a bar graph and churches are very similar. Often the pastor(s) are bottlenecks to the organization. The organization is limited to the abilities and/or capacities of the pastor(s) or leadership teams(s). 

John Ritner in Positively Irritating shares, “New expressions of church require that pastoral leaders identify and renounce elements of the existing culture that foster dependence on professionals, and instead encourage a culture of permission granting, power sharing, and dream awakening.  We continually remind our staff that our role is not to do the ministry of the church, but to equip others to engage in God’s mission in the ways he is leading them.”  

Not only does the church need to move away from being pastor centric, but also move away from being staff centric.  Too often church leaders want a ministry area to grow so they hire someone to “do” the ministry for them.  This is not the intended purpose of staff.  When the staff does the ministry for the disciples, the growth and maturity of disciples is stunted and they become dependent and privileged instead of developing a servant’s heart, attitude, and maturity.  Otherwise, the dependence cycle is perpetuated.

Whether it is the pastor, staff, or ministry team leaders, the focus and primary task is to identify, recruit, equip, and deploy disciples into ministry.  Each one of these leaders needs to have a lay person with them each time they engage in ministry so they can utilize it as an opportunity to equip, nurture, and encourage a disciple in ministry.  This also eliminates the expectation that it will also be the pastor or staff member who will be the one out front.  The pastor and staff become the model/equipper in the areas of congregational care, stewardship/fundraising, and building new relationships in the community.  For most churches, this will require a dramatic shift in culture. But without this shift, the cycle will not be broken and a new movement of deployed disciples will not take hold.

“The moment you hand power over to other people, 
you get an explosion of curiosity, innovation, and effort.”  
Joshua Cooper Ramo
The Age of the Unthinkable

Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry.
Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community.  Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging.
She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy.  As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years.  Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade.  She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron.
Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up:  Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Cry From the Pew, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape,  as well as the co-author of the books titled:  IMPACT!:  Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders:  Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters:  Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible:  Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness.  

Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ.  Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.

Kay Kotan

Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry. Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community.  Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging. She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron. Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up: Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Cry From the Pew, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape, as well as the co-author of the books titled: IMPACT!: Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders: Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters: Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible: Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness. Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ. Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.

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