As the Executive Pastor of Operations for a church in Southern California, I am so thankful that certain areas in my volunteer-led organization chart are solid. These teams are engaged; they take their ministry seriously, come prepared to serve, and are ready to go at a moment’s notice. One of the teams that fall into this category is the security team. When I came on staff in 2006, this team had developed a culture of camaraderie, willingness to serve, and commitment to providing a safe environment to worship God. The security team leader invested time in creating procedures for safe evacuations, patrol patterns, communication processes, and team applications.
Succession
When it was time for this amazing leader to step down, she told me she spent time training and preparing the next person to lead the team. She was right, and he stepped into the role just a few months after I came on staff. Her successor led the team well for almost fifteen years. During his volunteer tenure, he recruited several new members, led evacuation drills, improved our process, revised plans, and ensured each event and worship service had a security team presence. Just as importantly, he took the time to train someone to take on his role when the time was right for him to leave. Succession is the reproduction of leadership. Without specifically defining succession as a goal for the team leader, the security team had this in its DNA.
Replace
The transition from one security team leader to the next made its second successful leadership interaction. But here’s where it fell apart. From all appearances, the team was still operating as it had been for years. Then when the latest security team leader unexpectedly decided to leave, it created a leadership vacuum. There was not a replacement trained and ready to go. Suddenly we needed a replacement, the opposite of a succession plan.
Replacing a leader is a lot like starting over and feels more like emergency triage. It required reviewing the team to see if anyone had a leadership gift. A replacement scenario requires cold calls, interviewing, and numerous meetings, not to mention onboarding a new leader and getting them up-to-speed on the team, its mission, and how it functions. It’s quite the opposite of reproducing a leader.
Reproduction
The first two scenarios show the intentionality of the security team leadership transitions. The volunteer leaders invested time in reproducing themselves; it’s proactive, not reactive. By reproducing themselves, they created continuity for the team and the organization. It’s biblical to invest in a succession plan. Moses took Joshua on the journey up Mount Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments from God (Exodus 24:13). In the book of Numbers, we learn that Moses listened to God and invested in preparing Joshua to lead God’s people (Numbers 27:18-21). Moses committed to training Joshua.
The role of every leader, volunteer or paid, must include a succession plan of reproducing themselves. As ministry leaders, we must intentionally prepare for the inevitable fact that we will eventually leave our position. Depending on the role, it can take years to develop a leader. Be proactive; make it part of the role description of every leader to reproduce themselves. Having a succession plan at every level within the organization increases continuity and avoids needless lapses in leadership.
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