The Difference between
Preaching and Leading
from the Pulpit
Part 1

Preaching

Leading

Preaching tends to lean toward a pastor's shepherding qualities. It encompasses a caring, nurturing and encouraging flavor.

Leading from the pulpit intentionally presses toward vision, direction, and progress toward a clear picture of a preferred future - in alignment with the mission.

The art of preaching focuses on a text with careful consideration on how individuals will respond to God's prompting. For example, using the Ephesians 4 passage of "growing up" in Christ, the emphasis would be on each individual maturing in Christ.

Leading from the pulpit most often taps into a particular scripture with the "whole body" in mind. Using the same text in Ephesians 4, the emphasis would be leading the body to get along with one another in one mind and one spirit, building up the corporate body in love.

This is a question of personal transformation empowered by the Spirit of God. The pastor challenges each person to examine where they are and to take responsibility to grow accordingly. Spiritual maturity is the goal.

The pastor's sermons continually include and occasionally takes the entire message to ask and answer questions of direction. Where are we headed? Why are we going in that direction? What has God made clear to us? What part is up to us? What is the next step for us as a congregation? Perhaps church planting, or a second service, or a satellite campus, or a foreign mission work, or in-depth discipleship...the possibilities are endless. Listen for your "God prompts" to know what is next for you.

Preaching carries with it a high degree of immediate connection, relevancy and impact. The message is about what God is doing in a person's life today.

The very nature of leadership places its message into the future. Far enough to require faith and vision to get there, but not so far that the people cannot comprehend the idea and personally connect.

These preaching topics are almost too numerous to even begin listing, but for sake of example they could be things such as: marriage, intimacy with God, and faith. The gospel is a good example to compare. Preaching focuses on an individual's personal response and commitment to the claims of Christ.

The leader goes after issues that impact the organization, such as: leadership qualifications, vision, values, strategy, problems and solutions, opportunities, encouragement from mission set-backs, attitude and atmosphere. Going back to the example of the gospel message, the leadership angle is to leverage the text toward evangelism and inspire the congregation to intentionally carry that message outside the church to those who are spiritually unresolved.

By atmosphere, I'm referring to the overall climate of the church. Whether things are going well, morale is high or low, whether relationships are good in general, etc. A good communicator reads these things well and adapts his or her message to be contextually relevant in that teaching moment.

A leader goes after that same atmosphere but with an intentional effort to shape it to a more positive bent, or sustain morale and momentum if it is healthy and strong. (Note - this is not all accomplished in the pulpit.)

Effective preaching is measured not by how many people show up, but by how many lives are changed for the good of the Kingdom.

Effective leadership from the pulpit also embraces personal transformation as an element of measure, but includes the progress of the organization as well. In other words, a leader rejoices with the growth of each individual, but is not satisfied with that alone. The efforts of personal growth must be orchestrated into progress for the church as a whole. For example, the leader delights with a person's decision to tithe, but doesn't stop there. He or she will then want to leverage that toward an organizational goal such as a building project.