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I planted Mountain Springs Church in 1994 with no start up team, little cash, a slap on the back, and an “atta boy,” “go get’em” from our sending church in southern California. At that time the idea of team leadership and starting a church with a core was spoken of in hushed tones. There were some church planting gurus who talked about it, but in most cases, they were only speaking in theory but had never done it themselves. So, I started Mountain Springs flying solo with a supportive wife, several kids, a not-so-clearly-defined vision and gallons of caffeine.
Fortunately, in God’s sovereign plan, the church took off and grew quickly. It didn’t take too long for me to figure out I needed a leadership team. But even with a strong leadership team, I was still the Senior Pastor and the weight of the ministry weighed heavily on my shoulders. I was nearing burnout and in our 5th year, I experienced a panic attack that really scared me. As the church continued to grow, I saw glaring weaknesses in my leadership. The weight of going it alone began to limit strengths and highlight weaknesses. To cover up the potential fallout, I worked harder than ever to disguise gift-mix through a combination of staff hiring and trying harder in those areas I wasn’t naturally good at. I was realizing that I was lousy at administrative details and couldn’t punch my way out of a wet paper bag in certain confrontational situations. You can imagine the result—more frequent headaches and panic attacks, a lack of joy and stalled church growth.
I joined Mountain Springs in 1999 as the Youth Pastor. I was bold, young and could be a bit of a bull in a china shop. Along with my pregnant wife, Laurie, we moved from quiet Suffolk, England to the noise of North America. We had little money, no job, one little girl, six suitcases containing all our acquired possessions and buckets of zeal to be used by God. We visited Mountain Springs for a baby dedication and as we walked into the lobby, immediately felt that we had arrived home.
Over the next eight years, Jesus used ministry to the group of young people and the leadership teams, to teach me how to handle ministry challenges with a balance of strength and humility.
Through seasons of honest and open conversations with Steve, a bond was formed that shaped a passion in me for collaborative leadership. As Steve and I worked more and more together, I saw how his strengths would accentuate my strengths and compensate for my weaknesses. During the first eleven years at Mountain Springs, I endured many a season of redemptive leadership heartache. These seasons taught me many valuable lessons in leading and building healthy teams. This was indeed God’s preparation in me for what He had in mind – a Luke/Acts team style partnership.
Jesus never intended us to go solo in leadership. It was through the study of Luke and Acts that we began to discover a new vision for leadership. Luke and Acts is a paradigmatic structure for team leadership. In a nutshell, from Luke 4 to Luke 9, Jesus recruits the team and models the mission. By Luke 10, Jesus sends out His leadership team two by two to carry on His mission. The results were extraordinary as the men came back with stories of miracles and mighty works flowing through their hands. It was obvious, to these men at least, that this was not going to just be the “Jesus show,” but a movement that would involve shared ownership and a new level of skin-in-the-game for those on the Jesus team.
The book of Acts continues the principles of Jesus’ team leadership. Even though Peter is the main spokesman in Acts 2, it is the “apostle’s teaching,” plural, that draws and builds the church (Acts 2:42). It is Peter and John that venture out and pray for a lame man at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3); it is Peter and John that are arrested and brought before the council (Acts 4).
In Acts 13, the Holy Spirit calls out Barnabas and Saul to take the gospel to the Gentiles. From Acts 13 through Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas work together with amazing results. Paul obviously experienced the synergy of this relationship, for, even in the midst of a disagreement with Barnabas, he quickly recruits a replacement in Silas. The Paul and Silas team continues through Derbe and Lystra, even adding Timothy to the team. This team leadership continues on with Luke joining the team in Luke 21. (It is noteworthy that the only exception to the rule is when Paul is left alone in Athens, and it is there that Paul has one of his most disappointing ministry experiences.)
In every situation of team leadership, two-by-two leadership and group leadership in Luke and Acts, we observe men with completely different styles and personalities working together on a common mission. Can you just imagine the differences between Barnabas (known for his inclusive encouragement) and Paul (known for his exclusively high standards)? Imagine the differences of Peter (the impetuous preacher) and John (the affectionate team player). We call this purple leadership.
What is purple leadership? Purple is not a primary color but a secondary color with a range of hues occurring between red and blue. In additive light combinations it occurs by mixing the primary colors red and blue in varying proportions. Purple leadership is the result of two primary leaders with different gifts, different anointing and different personalities—one being a red leader and the other a blue. The new color palette results in leveraging each other’s strengths while minimizing weaknesses. The result is new leadership – a purple leadership team.
It was in understanding this concept that God spoke to Steve about needing a key leader beside him. As a church family, we needed to move from a red-only leadership to a new form of synergistic leadership. Over the years, we learned that we each had a unique set of strengths and blind spots. Daniel’s giftings lie in the areas of team development, organizational health and communication. This complemented Steve’s strengths of teaching, visionary leadership and pioneering. As we worked closer together, it became evident to us that we would move the church forward towards life through a shift in leadership. Through our color palette merge, Steve became more gifted in organizational health and Daniel became a more accomplished teacher.
As we have seen growth, synergy and greater joy in working together as lead pastors, we have identified five key aspects of why our relationship and our team leadership approach works.
This is absolutely the starting point. Both leaders must know themselves and know what he or she brings to the alliance. When one knows their sweet spot, the shared leadership roles will merge with ease. The ease could be called synergy. The strength in one must minimize the weakness in another and vice versa. One of the tools that we used to arrive at our knowing was the Birkman predictive profile leadership assessment. This, coupled with mentoring and coaching, was powerful and enlightening. Through such assessments and coaching we discovered our ‘lanes’ and could see that the combination of Daniel’s blue and Steve’s red could form a vibrant new color of purple.
We came together over 13 years ago because we passionately believed in the mission. We wanted to build a family-focused Word and Spirit church that had a worldwide vision for raising and releasing leaders. As the years have progressed, the vision has been adapted as our shared commitment intensified. As both of us have worked more exclusively in our strength areas, the level of excitement and passion for the goal has been made more practical and more engaging.
We are not perfect at this by any means, but we are committed to believing the best of each other. We know that when one succeeds, both succeed. When one hits a homerun, the other is running the bases with him. We are different enough to experience the value of the other and the chemistry has resulted in great trust. With greater trust has come greater effectiveness.
We are on the phone, email and exchanging text messages at least a dozen times a day. The constant flow of communication and consulting has been crucial in connecting on the good and bad of ministry. We have been a couple of shots of espresso away from disaster at times, but our four eyes, two brains and mutual respect have averted many a disaster. It is very refreshing to rest at night knowing the other is also on guard.
Because of our different outlook on life, we often see and process things quite differently. This has served to our great benefit during those times where one has felt pain or disappointment in ministry. There have been many times when one of us has felt crushed over some seeming failure only to have the other actually excited over the same event or situation. Purple is much better than red or blue. We give courage to each other and that has made us courageous during tough times.
The color of leadership is whatever color God is painting in your ministry world. We would recommend a shared leadership approach. Primary colors do not have the beauty, complexity and depth of a blended hue. We believe that the color of the shared leadership approach will make you a better person, a more effective leader, and enable you to reach the mission God has planted in your heart. The veins of our leadership at Mountain Springs definitely bleed purple.
For questions about the Color of Leadership, email Daniel at DMR@mountainsprings.org
