A Systems Approach to Leadership: A Car Story

Spiritual Leadership Team Series

This is first in a series on spiritual leadership teams. Although the specific context is church leadership, many of the principles apply to leadership and teaming generally.

I bought my first car when I was a second year university student. It was a very small older car with a soft covered sunroof. I loved driving that little car, especially with the windows and sunroof open to the fresh Virginia air. It ran pretty well. The only issue was a small oil leak. I didn’t want to spend the money to repair that. Instead, I kept a jug of engine oil in the trunk and just added some every time it was running low. That worked fine, until it didn’t.

At the end of the school year, I was driving home to Maryland when the oil light came on. I had used all the spare oil so I had none to add. I was only about 20 minutes from home, however, so I made the decision to just keep driving. A few minutes later, the engine shut down. I pulled off the road and called a mechanic, who towed the car to his repair shop. The news was not good. The engine had completely seized up—the pistons were fused to the engine block. It was beyond repair. The car had to be scrapped. And so ends the short life story of my first car.

Why do I share this story? There are lessons to be learned.

1. An engine is a system that relies on many parts operating together. Each part has a purpose, but that purpose is only realized when it is properly designed, fitted and calibrated to work with all the other parts. If one part suffers, every part suffers. Wait, where have we heard that before? Church leadership teams are also systems that must be designed and built well to work effectively. Too often, however, they are pieced together without understanding what parts are needed, how they should work together, and what performance looks like.

2. An engine needs regular preventative maintenance. A small problem can grow into a big problem if it is not addressed quickly. If we wait for something to break down, it can create much more damage. It is the same with church leaderships. We have seen a lot of breakdown in leadership teams, some with issues that have festered for years. Too often we find out too late, only after it has become an emergency and much damage has been caused. We need to find ways to build stronger connections, have better insight, get earlier feedback, do preventive maintenance, and provide support sooner, before small issues become larger.

3. Relationships and trust are the oil of teams. Oil keeps the moving parts from damaging each other while the engine is powering the car. If the oil leaks out, the engine will fail. It’s one thing to lose a car that way. It’s another thing to lose a church.

Jesus taught these same concepts using different metaphors—bodies (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12), fields (Mathew 13), households and homes (Ephesians 2). We need to see church leadership in a more holistic sense, as parts working (or not) together, as a system designed by God to power and support the church. This will require a shift in how we support churches and church leadership teams.