In more than a quarter century of issues, Preaching magazine has dealt with a variety of issues of concern to pastors and church leaders, but one of the most significant has been the relationship of preaching to pastoral leadership.
The topic of leadership has been addressed frequently in interviews with outstanding preachers. For example, two different interviews with John Maxwell addressed the issue—no wonder, given Maxwell's profile as a leadership guru.
The relationship between preaching and leadership is a natural one, Maxwell explained in an interview in the January-February 1998 issue:
"All great leaders are effective communicators," Maxwell asserted. "It is the vehicle for the vision. For me to know where I want to take a group of people and not have the ability to cast that dream, preach that message, communicate that heart, makes the dream impossible. The vision won't be accomplished.
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"One of the reasons I have committed so much time, not only in teaching leadership but communication, is I think they are so compatible. You show me a great leader, and I'll show you a person who became a great leader because of his or her ability to communicate effectively. You can be a good preacher and not a good leader, but you cannot be a good leader without being a good preacher or a good communicator. You have to be able to communicate the vision. What I love about it is they all do it differently—there is not a certain style or a certain method; they all have the ability to get their hearts into the hearts of their people. That always is done through preaching and through communication."
For Maxwell, one of the keys to successful preaching and leading is the recognition that one must be an effective communicator. He observed, "As I look at communicators with different styles, different methods, they all have one thing in common. I've seen this; I've watched it; I've observed it. All great communicators have the ability to connect. They can connect with their audiences. You know, when I was a kid, I used to love to go down to the railroad tracks and watch the workers switch train cars. They'd back the engine up and bang the cars so they'd have a little ripple effect if there were seven or eight cars. I learned early just because you banged the car didn't mean you coupled with it. You could bang a car and that old engine could pull out without it; you had to couple it.
"A lot of preaching is banging with the people. You're banging them and hitting them. A lot of pastors think when they have done that, they have communicated: ‘I've told them, I've told them.' But they never connected with the message. They never had that relational, emotional, spiritual connection. All great communicators, regardless of style or method, understand the connecting principle; they have the ability to connect with people, know where they are and connect there."
In a second interview—this one appeared in the July-August 2004 issue of
Preaching—Maxwell spoke more specifically about the place of change in pastoral leadership. He said, "Thirty years ago when I taught leadership, I would have said wrongly by saying leaders like change and are out there paving the way and that followers dislike change and are the drag and resistance to change. I no longer think that. I think most leaders dislike change as much as followers do, unless it's their idea. In fact, I think when change does not occur in an organization or church, it is not because the followers resist change but because leaders resist change.
