Enabled to Lead

Posted on: Apr 16, 2010 | By: PennDel

An Interview with Doug Clay

 

 

• If someone wrote a book about your leadership style, what would they title it?

 

“Influencing others the Jesus way.”  Hopefully my leadership style reflects the nature of Christ in pulling out the best in others.

 

• What is the personal mission statement for your life and how did you develop it?

 

My personal mission statement is:  “Giving myself fully to the cause of developing people and investing in leaders for the sake of church health.  This was developed when I first went into full-time ministry.  I was influenced by a book I read by Laura Beth Jones called “The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life.”  I have kept this mission statement active in my life since 1985.

 

• What has given you the greatest feeling of accomplishment in your ministry?

 

Being able to assist in helping unhealthy and dysfunctional churches back to health and growth.  This, next to leading somebody to the Lord, is the most fulfilling accomplishment in ministry.

 

• How do you go about communicating your vision so that others will remember it?

 

Repetition!  Starting every meeting with a verbal reminder of mission, vision and value.  Also, I think it’s important to corporately pray together for the fulfillment of the vision with your leadership team.

 

• What are some of the tools that you have found helpful for strategic planning?

 

The Malphurs Group led by Dr. Aubrey Malphurs.  This group helps train leaders to strategically envision tomorrow today.  They are great thinkers who constantly assess the effectiveness of current models.

 

• What are some of the things you have learned when it comes to raising significant funds and mobilizing people to accomplish a major undertaking?

 

Raising funds starts with having a believable cause for which you can represent with passion.  Mobilizing people comes as a direct result of you, the leader, earning their trust.

 

 

 

• How do you maintain a hectic, demanding schedule and still remain highly energized?

 

I am still learning this.

 

• What are the tools that you depend on to help you with time management?

 

Right now, I attempt to review my schedule at the beginning of each week with my executive assistant.  In addition, I try to build in time for the “unplanned” or the “spontaneous” or the “interruptions” that are a part of any minister’s schedule that can lead or turn into divine appointments.

 

• How have you managed to prioritize your time with your wife Gail and your daughters?

 

Well, they are my priority!  So their events and activities have always been a priority in my schedule.  Obviously, with the girls out of high school and involved in less activities, this is easier now than when they were in junior high and high school.

 

• What boundaries have you established to prevent your ministry from having negative consequences on your family?

 

Good communication.  But, in addition to having good communication, there must be a willingness to change or to reschedule and/or restructure if your wife or family points things out that are lacking.  So, we have tried in our family just to be open and honest about our schedules and to have fair expectations for each other and then to adjust accordingly.

 

• How do you stay motivated over the long haul? 

 

I sincerely feel called to what I am doing and the passion to continue resourcing churches for health and growth is stronger now than ever.  So honestly, my motivation is tied to my call.

 

• Who is a person that you have coached who is now coaching others and what did you do to influence that reproduction?

 

Chad Gilligan, lead pastor at Toledo Calvary comes to mind.  He was the children’s pastor with me.  When I transitioned to the district superintendent, he became the lead pastor of Toledo Calvary.  While the children’s pastor, I regularly gave him opportunities that would expose him to functions and duties of the lead pastor.  Consequently, I feel that Chad was more than ready to accept his responsibility and is doing a great job in taking the church places where I could have never taken it.

• What are some of the qualities have you looked for when you have hired staff?

 

Attitude.  It’s all about a healthy proactive attitude.  I suspect that 75 percent of the questions I use in interviews deal with determining someone’s attitude.  People skills and attitude are so important to me.  There are a lot of resources that can help staff do their job well, but attitude is something that they control, and I really try to find out a person’s capacity of having a good and healthy attitude.

 

• How have you instilled in others a sense of personal responsibility (ownership) for the growth and success of ministry?

 

Allowing your team to operate in the realm of their giftings.  I believe it’s vitally important that your team and your staff feel both valued and needed.  It’s also important that those team members, who are better gifted or stronger suited in some areas than you the leader, that you let them flourish and that you allow them to truly function and grow in the area of their giftings.  That takes personal security on the part of the leader.

 

• How have you continued to intentionally build relationships with non-Christians while you are in full-time ministry?

 

This is my greatest weakness right now and it is really bugging me.  Prior to the role that I am in now, I was active in the high school where my kids went to school.  I was active in our neighborhood and our community, but being in this position, being so mobile and living in a smaller neighborhood where neighbors on both sides of me are born again Christians, I’m finding it very hard to build those relationships with pre-Christians.

 

• Do you have a group of friends that you can go to when you are dealing with personal heaviness? How did these friendships develop?

 

Absolutely.  I truly believe that isolation in the ministry is lethal.  Good friendships are not optional for ministers; they are very essential, and yes, I have two or three persons in my life that I feel I can be vulnerable and honest and they can, in the same way, ask me the hard questions and I do feel comfortable in sharing with them the personal heaviness issues of my life.

 

• What are some ways that you constructively handle criticism?

 

First of all, listen to it and then act on it if it has merit.  I think it’s very important for us to not disregard criticism, but rather use it to make us a better leader or more effective in our ministry.

• Tell us about an idea that you were absolutely sold on, but it took you several tries to accomplish that idea? How did you overcome the roadblocks?

 

Both in my pastorate and district superintendent roles, early on, I had come into those positions with some new ideas that I was very excited about, however, when I presented the ideas to our leadership team, I could tell they were cautious.  The one for the church had to do with establishing some backyard barbeques on a Sunday night during the summer.  The one for the district had to do with the role and the function of our sectional presbyters.  I decided, instead of just pushing my idea through and saying I really feel strong about it, I backed off and waited.  It was my desire for them to feel comfortable and to have buy-in before the ideas were implemented.  I learned that if I had pushed my idea through, out of respect they would have accommodated that idea because I was the new pastor/district superintendent; however, I’m not sure I would have had as much buy-in as I did by waiting and letting the Lord allow the idea to grow on them.

 

• What growth principles have you used to move a plateaued ministry or group to the next level? 

 

There are several personal and church spiritual health assessments that I have used.  I encourage you to find one that you are comfortable working with, but the issue here is, what do you do once you realize where you’re at?  I discovered that the assessment part is not as difficult as what you do with the information that the assessment has provided.

 

• What steps did you take in leading a group from low morale to building positive morale?

 

First of all, you have to get everyone to agree about where the level of moral is at.  Then after we are in agreement with our moral, we begin to collectively paint a picture of the preferred future.  What do we want the ministry to look like?  How do we want to function as a team?  What values do we want to see drive us in ministry?  And then, you have to hold yourself accountable and hold each other accountable to the development of arriving at that preferred future.

 

• What has helped you to bounce back from loss or discouragement?

 

The call.  Again, I go back to the call in my personal mission statement in life and the motivation that there are still many many souls to reach and to bring into the kingdom of God, and so there are times when in the ministry you are discouraged, you feel like you don’t have the skill-sets to be able to accomplish it, but I come back to the fact of my calling—that God has called me and put me on a journey to strengthen the health of the church so we can take as many people to heaven as possible.

• What spiritual discipline do you regularly practice in your life and how does it help you?

 

I am currently trying to listen more carefully to the whisper of the spirit—even on a daily basis.  I am discovering the ministry can get real noisy and it’s a discipline just to try to eliminate some of the unnecessary noises.  I’ve found this to be especially helpful in allowing my public ministry to be more prophetic in nature.

 

• What are the things that have helped you to take significant faith risks in your life?

 

It starts by making sure that my motives were pure and right.  Then it’s ultimately a leap of faith but having a confidence in my heart that what I was about to do had the approval of God.

 

• What is a prayer you have been praying for a long time?

 

Lord help me to grow in humility; give me wisdom beyond my years of experience; keep my motives pure; and let your anointing be fresh and evident.