Every Great Leader Duplicates Themselves

When a communications director leaves for any reason, someone else typically picks up the work pretty quickly if there wasn't an exit plan. The church will find a way to keep going, it has for centuries. What the interim or next creative doesn't get handed along with it is the strategy: where the assets reside, which login goes with which account, how the request process is supposed to work, and what was already in motion for the next few months. None of that was written down because it didn't need to be while the person who built it was still there to hold onto it. Whoever's left is reconstructing decisions that already existed, one best guess at a time.

Who is your church documentation really for?

It's tempting to think of this as a legacy question, leaving something behind that reflects well on the work you did. But that framing makes it about you. The real reason to document a process, write down where things live, and build a system someone else could pick up is that you care about the church and the people in it more than you care about running the show as the only one who knows how things work.

A communications director who builds systems nobody else can use, whether on purpose or by accident, has made the church dependent on one person staying forever. That creates a dependency the church is carrying without realizing it, a risk inherited by whoever happens to be standing there when that person leaves, usually a volunteer or staff member who didn't sign up for it. A good executive pastor will safeguard against rocky transitions, but they can't plan for every situation.

How do you grow the people you lead?

There's a second purpose to building something that outlasts you, and it's more precious than documentation. If you lead a team, even a small one, even just one volunteer, the question isn't only what happens to the systems when you leave. It's what happens to the people you're leading. Are you concerned with their personal and spiritual growth beyond just what they do in service of your church?

If the same person is doing the same tasks at the same skill level five years from now, with no growth in their craft or their walk with God, it's a sign that your leadership stalled out somewhere along the way. Leading people well means helping them grow, even if that growth eventually takes them somewhere else. A volunteer who develops real skill and gets invited to lead at another church, a staff member who outgrows their role and moves into something bigger, that's the leadership working, even if it doesn't feel like a win for you personally.

What does faithful stewardship of your role look like?

The systems you document and the people you grow point to the same leadership qualities. Faithful stewardship of this role means building and investing in things, both systems and people. Be the leader people can depend on as they grow, and don't leave your church in a lurch if you're called somewhere else.

Being a generative leader is worth taking seriously before it becomes someone else's emergency, or someone else's glass ceiling.