Facilitators and leaders

On Saturday, Charlie (Justin's brother) led a worship workshop for the musical guys in St Pauls and The Lab which went pretty well I think. What got me thinking was a discussion at one point about the role "worship leader", when someone suggested the term "worship facilitator" would be a better one - which raised all the usual questions along those lines about leadership and authority.

The whole "facilitator" vs "leader" thing was something that came up before in a Lab team meeting last week when we talked about it a little - and so this concept of a "facilitator" is something I'd thought a little about and then today suddenly went into a kind-of reflective overdrive after that short discussion.

So, in trying to pursue the role of a new kind of church leader whose mission is to grow a more organic church community should we be looking to through out the term leader altogether and use a less forceful term like "facilitator"?

I 've talked a little before about how I believe a new breed of leader needs to be much more about pursuing conversation, rather than trying to maintain control - so this concept of a facilitator is really important - but that doesn't necessarily mean that in order to pursue this we have to give up a leadership role altogether.

I believe that there will always be some people called to give the majority of their time to serving the community of God. People who have the time to do all the admin work, and to sit in meetings and talk about future and direction - that leadership role will probably always be a part of church and of the way the world works. But the nature of that role I think needs to change and is changing from providing direction and managing, to provoking conversation, listening and facilitating.

So the role of a facilitator is a vital part of what the leader should be doing - but does not limit him/herself to that single role in itself.

As "leaders", we need to be friends - brothers and sisters to those we are serving, counsellors to an extent, discussion provokers and facilitators, challengers, subverters, and also guides. The difference between this and a conventional concept of a leader is that this kind of leader will be about constantly trying to discern through conversation with the whole community the direction they should take next and then be about guiding the process of bringing that into action - instead of choosing a direction and pulling the church after us in that direction.

So at leadership meetings and in the Lab, I try to facilitate rather than to lead in the conventional sense - to draw out common goals and aims, and to ask difficult questions and test ideas - and to play devil's advocate when needed, even if the idea I am criticizing is one I'm fully behind.