Establishing Respect for Leadership

Recently I had a situation where someone wanted to sing a solo in church. This person showed up for the rehearsal and began singing. The problem was that the song was not up to par with my standard of music. I had to graciously tell this person that the song was not yet ready and that I wanted to help get it there. I tried to arrange to meet with the person in order to give lessons and perfect the tune-the person refused. After a few offers on my part I finally gave up. Today I found out that that person was griping and complaining about me and my decision. Fortunately the person who told me about it had corrected that person with a Godly rebuke that seemed to put the fire out.
This is one of the many weaknesses about the established church. It takes a lot of time to set the standard that you as a leader desires to uphold. Of course the standard should be set immediately; however, the respect for that standard and your decision is a long time coming. When multiple leaders come in and out of a church with different ideas of leadership it takes a long time for things to change. With the short stay that church leaders are averaging now a days it's easy to see why people don't think that they should change their views.
How do you teach people to respect the decisions of the leadership? How do you help them realize that those decisions are based on a genuine concern for their well being as well as the well being of the body as a whole? My time in the establishment is winding down now. I know that the best way to correct people is one on one! Talk to them! Love them! Communicate your vision for the church and begin making steps to see it through. If they buck than leave. Don't waste your life trying to change those that "don't need a doctor, or throwing your pearls before the swine."

Here's how I would do things if I went to an established church. These seven points should be communicated to the church when you are preaching in view of a call.

1. Don't touch the music for awhile.
2. Improve the quality of the facilities and youth/children's ministries.
3 Improve quality of family ministries as a whole.
4. During this time slowly change the service to be more conducive to everyone (if need be.)
5. Hire or let go anyone that's not on board by this point that needs to be.
6 Over all you should maintain direct communication with everyone so that they know where you are heading at all times. Talk to the perceived "Krap heads" first.
7. Quickly begin community outreach projects-helping/loving people that can't help back.
8. Teach the Bible-be topical and expository.
9. Jesus should always be the focus.

These seven steps will get the ball rolling big time!

Read "Developing the Leader Within You" and start climbing those five levels of leadership with everyone in a very intentional manner!

Many times the people that are ministry heads are volunteers. These are the people that you should spend extra time with: loving, teaching, casting vision, guiding...etc. Do not slide on anything that's below standard quality ministry (this point is hard because the music is typically really stinky-you should take a step to arrange the service in a better way as well as play prerecorded music that sets the mood well.) It will take you about a year to really make a huge improvement in the music. You need to treat the music side of things like you're baby sitting someones kid-it's that dear to every one's heart I promise! They have to be assured that you can and will take good care of it.