Sustainable Leadership

• We've had 2 top female leaders roll out of Hamilton and Westside altogether under similar circumstances
• I don't know if it's their personal choice, or whether our model of leadership here, our demands and expectations of their ministry and their leadership, was unrealistic
• Have we made leading here something that only singles would have the time and effort to participate in? Has our church culture discouraged some to never step up just because they don't want to dedicate their entire lives to Westside like everyone else?
• Have we truly honoured our leaders, their time, and their effort? (one example, sticking to meeting times rather than change them as our own schedule changes. In general, not surprising them with changes)
• Did we give them enough "off" time to recharge physically and connect with God personally? (corporate prayer and retreats don't count, they are rarely physically rejuvenating for our leaders who are usually more physically tired than spiritually tired at first)
  
• Did we ensure that they were in supportive, accountable communities? (1 on 1 mentoring is nice, but its mostly for teaching and coaching. Accountability and support is hard to achieve 1 on 1.)
• Along the same lines, do we promote ministry superstardom? This results in leaders being islands; no one feels they are good enough to support them.
  
• From what I found at Willow, what we top leaders do at Westside people get paid to dedicate their full -time to do everywhere else
  
• Again, in light of that, what are realistic expectations of ministry growth? Our own spiritual growth?
• I don't think it lies so much in the what of things, so much as it lies in the pace; how fast we are expected to move things forward.
• At what pace does challenging our leaders become simply a burden to them? Are we setting the bar too high? Are we setting the bar indiscriminately?
• Of course our leaders have a personal responsibility to set their own boundaries, to ensure their own sustained connection with God, to share about their tiredness and to do something about it (see next point)
• But we as overseers must dig and probe, and seek to protect them from damaging themselves, rather than just being ecstatic that they are doing more and more.
• Are we over-spiritualizing growth?
  
• That we always say we can do anything in the Holy Spirit.
  
• But because our expectations are not well discerned, and therefore unrealistic, even in the Kingdom sense, people never get there; a lot of times they physically can't.
  
• This also discourages people from sharing their ministry failures, because now those failures are directly linked with a perceived lack of growth (again back to the need for community for our leaders).
  
• They end up deeply discouraged because now they feel they don't have the Spirit, that they haven't grown because they couldn't achieve these unrealistic goals in the timeframe that we have set for them.