In an article about leadership in a small membership church, Lovett H. Weems, Jr. offers this principle:
Keeping sights on both the heritage and the future can be hard. You may know of churches (of any size) who are so much the same church they were a generation ago that they aren't reaching their potential for this or the next generation. Rarely is the cutting edge technology or methodology of one generation sufficient for the next. The same is true for the church.Leading "in the middle." To be a leader is to live in the middle – in the tension between a future vision and the current reality. This tension is inherent if a leader becomes the steward of God's vision for the congregation. One cannot give in to the current reality and abandon the vision to which God is calling the church. Nor can one simply lift up the vision and ignore the realities. To be a leader means to stay with the tension. It also means to stay with the people. Remember, people in the small membership church often are people who are living on the edge – geographically, economically, theologically, and culturally. They know whether you are living with them or not.
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