The Myth of High-Capacity Leaders in Church Staff Culture

A common term buzzing within church circles is ‘high-capacity leaders’. While this term sounds inspirational and indicative of spiritual growth, it can sometimes lay an unhealthy trap. Today we want to explore why this label might be causing more harm to your leadership culture than good, leading to burnout, unrealistic expectations, and imbalance within your team.

High-Capacity Leaders: A Noble Term?

Undeniably, high-capacity leaders are known to be reliable torchbearers in most church staff cultures. They're always the first to volunteer, stay late, and rarely complain. They move mountains and make things happen. However, the drawback is that ‘high-capacity leader’ often becomes a justification to overburden staff members, inadvertently skipping conversations about bandwidth, boundaries, and burnout.

The Hidden Costs of High-Capacity Leadership

Associating high-capacity leadership with constant activity can create unhealthy imbalances within your team. This often results in the same two or three individuals shouldering most of the responsibility. This constant expectation to perform can foster resentment, and worse yet, make rest seem like a failure. An unspoken guilt starts to encroach when high-capacity leaders take time for themselves, inadvertently turning a culture of enthusiastic leadership into a dreaded cycle of burnout.

Rethinking the Approach to Leadership

What if instead of judging capacity by how much a person can carry, we judge it on how well they steward what truly matters? Here are some steps to rebuilding a sustainable leadership model:

• Broaden job design: Distribute responsibilities more evenly among staff.
• Establish boundaries: Foster a culture that values balance and holistic growth.
• Redefine hero behavior: Avoid glamorizing burnout and unhealthy work habits.
• Develop others: Branch out beyond the usual volunteers and encourage more people to play a part.

The goal of a healthy team shouldn't be to lionize high-capacity leadership but to nurture a team of humans who can thrive in the long haul.

Sustainable Leadership: An Upgraded Approach

Discarding the label of high-capacity leadership doesn’t mean lowering expectations or deprioritizing rigor. Instead, it means adopting vocabulary that supports a more sustainable, humane approach to leadership. By investing in sustainable leadership, you can build a healthier, more balanced church staff culture that thrives over time, fueling growth rather abolishing it.

For more insights on creating a sustainable leadership culture within your church, tune into today's Healthy Church Staff Podcast episode and let's further explore this vital conversation together.