In my last blog, I shared three ways it’s easy for pastors and leaders to fall into the pit of people pleasing. If you missed it, you can read it here.
So what’s the cure to people pleasing? Well, this is what helped me do what I was called to do instead of what I wasn’t called to do: I discovered what God really wants from me as a pastor.
1. He wants me to be an example. Peter said, “I want you to be an example to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2). Pastors and leaders who do everything for everyone in a way become like a lord over everybody else. Your opinions run everything. It’s such a joy to spend more focused on building good relationships with trustworthy people that you can delegate things to and know they’re going to do it 80% of the way you think it should be done.
If we’re going to be examples to the flock, we need to remember that people want us to be the kind of fathers they think they should be. They want us to be the kind of husbands they think they should be. They want us to live a kind of balanced life they think they should live. And a people pleaser isn’t capable of being that.
2. He wants me to pray. I think of Acts 6:3-4, where it talks about how the apostles were getting dragged into various church activities, such as caring for the widows. Particularly, in this case, it was Greek widows. I think it’s interesting that they asked people to give them suggestions on godly men to oversee these activities and didn’t just choose seven people themselves. They laid hands on the delegates and gave them the responsibility. And please notice, they didn’t fall into the pit of trying to please everybody. They didn’t let people think that they were the answer to the problem.
When I came here to pastor, my father-in-law, John Olsten, said, “Now, Jim, your church is going to grow, and when it does, people are going to ask Tamara to do so many things. They’re gonna say, ‘Pastor Jim, nobody does this like you. Nobody does this like Tamara.’ When they ask her to start doing a lot of counseling, and they ask her to start doing all the children’s ministry she’s capable of, you make sure you look at them and say, ‘Listen, I didn’t marry my wife because she could counsel or work in the children’s ministry. I married her because she could kiss real good and she could love me. If somebody else takes that job, we’re in big trouble in this church!’”
What he was saying is your job is to pray and to minister the Word. Don’t fall into the pit of being a people pleaser.
3. He wants me to cast vision. In a church where the pastor casts vision, everybody gets excited about the part that God created them to play. Habakkuk 2:1 has helped me a lot. It says, “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me.” As a leader, he was making it his goal to please God and to pray so that he knew what God wanted him to do. And God replies in verse 2, “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets.”
Our role as a leader is to pray, to have a clear vision, and then to make it plain to our people. At Faith Family Church, our overall vision is that we’re here to celebrate God and champion people. We live in a world where God is ignored, where God is tolerated. But when you come to Faith Family Church, everything about the service should say to you, “These people really are delighting in who God is in their lives.” We champion people. We don’t put people down. We don’t judge them. We care about where they end up in life.
There’s just something about a leader who understands he’s not called to please everybody, but he is called to be an example. This is the kind of Christianity everybody should live. He is called to pray, so when he opens his mouth, people know he’s speaking the very words of God. And he is called to cast vision and to get people excited about something we can do together that we can never do alone.
4. He wants me to recruit co-laborers. Vision without people who are working together is not going to accomplish anything. God said to Habakkuk, “Write the vision and make it plain so that the people can run with it.” You can gauge how good of a leader somebody is by how many people are following them.
Some people who are doers and not leaders, they’ll fight you on this. They’ll talk about how hard they’re working and getting burned out. Can I tell you, what you do as a leader – that’s not the issue. The issue is, are you praying? Are you an example? Are you casting vision? Are there more people involved in your department? Because if you’re learning to delegate to other people, you’re going to keep doing more and more and you’re not going to spend any more time doing it.
I have a vision to see pastors connected all across the United States. I have a vision to see small towns that are overlooked and underserved filled with thriving churches. I still have the same amount of time, but because God’s given the vision, he’s connected me to people who care about pastors and their families, who care about the people who are leading ministries within these churches, and together we’re doing what none of us could do by ourselves.
5. He wants me to coach. To coach means scheduling practices. To coach means dealing with the chemistry issues that that arise among people. I can tell you at Faith Family Church, I really don’t want to hire anybody who doesn’t bring excellence, but then in addition to that, I want them to want to multiply the ministry they’re good at through how they relate to others. As they multiply the ministry, I want them to create community with other people and I want them to disciple people. Their gift is a starting point; it’s not an end point. I’m not just paying somebody to come work, but I’m helping people understand that we’re here to build a community that pleases the Lord through how we use our gifts together.
6. He wants me to oversee the whole care process. We build a community of friends that work together. This is so much better than being a people pleaser! Peter put it this way, “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care” (1 Peter 5:2). Notice that not everyone is in your care. You’re not capable of caring for everybody. But like a hospital administrator, there’s a lot of great work to do if you want to make sure that the people in your flock receive the care they should receive. I love this because at the end of the verse with Habakkuk, God says “Behold, as for the impudent one,” (impudent means to not show respect for people), “His soul isn’t right within him.” In other words, if the servant of God won’t listen to God, if he’s going to do it his way, if he’s going to be a people pleaser instead of being a God pleaser, God says his soul isn’t right in him. “But the righteous one will live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).
This is living by faith. You are first a servant of the Lord, not a servant of people. Follow the way of Jesus in terms of leadership, and together let’s be God pleasers, not people pleasers, amen? Let’s be servants of the most high God!
This blog was created using content from the webinar Pitfalls of the “People-Pleaser Pastor”.
