Every ministry faces the same challenge: finding a way to focus on the primary goals while keeping up with the challenges of every given day. Ministries commonly fall victim to being reactive and jumping from the demand of the day, or even the hour, to keep up with the demands. Unfortunately, this is often to the detriment of the goals and vision that are truly important. This is called sacrificing goals for the whirlwind of the day job (McChesney et al., 2012). The whirlwind has a tendency to be urgent and acts upon ministry leaders while goals, despite their importance, are passive and requires ministry leaders to act upon them intentionally (McChesney et al., 2012).
For senior leaders, this is an area that requires their attention and consistent leadership. One of the primary responsibilities of a leader is to cast vision and keep his followers focused on the important items (Northouse, 2012). This means managing the culture is vital, and keeping the primary goals in front of everyone (Schein, 2010), but too often the demands of the day and the urgent calls and tasks that need attention steal time and energy from what is most important.
This is one reason a scoreboard is necessary for senior leaders to help their ministry leaders stay focused on what is most important and steer everyone toward them (McChesney et al., 2012). The scoreboard needs to have all the measurable tied to the key issues of the ministry so that the ministry leaders are able to focus on what is most important rather than the daily demands (McChesney, et al., 2012). This will also help senior leaders insure their ministry leaders do not become siloed and focused on their own individual goals rather than the overarching goals of the church as a whole.
References
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2012). The 4 disciplines of execution: achieving your wildly important goals (1st Free Press hardcover ed). New York: Free Press.
Northouse, P. G. (2012). Leadership: theory and practice (6th ed). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=36500
