The challenge of team leadership

In the past few months, I have learned a great deal about leadership. A few friends and I started Community 4 Christ (C4C) at Barton College which has been a very bumpy ride. This community aims to bring Christians together to learn His teachings, worship, and love God in a college setting. We want to support and affirm Christian growth and living on Barton's campus. We currently have approximately 25 members from various cultures and backgrounds. We feature Bible studies, worship, prayer, and outreach in order to both teach and do the works of God. There are four leaders for the four areas of the group, which consists of both commuters and on-campus students. This group is a lot of work, yet it is very rewarding and fulfilling.

At first, everything was going well. We were all excited about the potential for the group. I personally saw this group becoming a family based community focused on God. We all knew that God was moving within us, especially when we gathered together with the same idea about starting this group. We leaders signed confidentiality forms and dealt with a large amount of private information passed along from other leaders and members. We recognized that this group would be big.

A few months later, we hit a really difficult turning point, and the leadership group fell apart. Decisions were made without all of the leaders being notified; in some cases, leaders were left out of the decision-making process for their own area. To add to the confusion, leaders were given conflicting information from different people. To sum it up, the ensuing turmoil and disorder caused the entire group to be torn apart.

After a week of taking time apart and praying, we discussed what God was calling each of us to do. We felt that God was telling us to not give up and to clean up the disorganization and address the issues. It was quite time-intensive and very tough to do, and still is. We concluded that each of us was chosen and led to form this group. Although dissention caused us to momentarily lose our focus, the main goal is to be learning and growing in the faith.

After several leadership meetings and even more prayer, we are finally trying to move past this massive hurdle. The good news is that after all of this problematic drama, we are all now closer than ever. We are more open with one another and are on a much deeper connection with God, both individually and overall as a group. God definitly works in wonderful ways! We are still a work in progress, but at least now we are truly unified as one body of Christ.

Being a leader is about taking the good with the bad. It is about working together to fix and work through the rough patches. As a leader, sometimes you have to readjust your thinking and mindset. You especially have to keep your personal business private and not let it interfere or influence the decision making process. I thank God that He has led us to work together, love each other, start this wonderful group that connects us with other brothers and sisters of the faith, and spread the Word.