It's been said many times by many different people that everything rises or falls on leadership. I don't think that's ever truer than in ministry.

Charles McKay, a former professor at California Baptist College, used to tell us if you want to know the temperature of your church, put the thermometer in your mouth. That's a good statement. You can't ever take people further than you are yourself, spiritually or any other way.

When I was interviewed by Jimmy Allen on the ACTS Television Network, he asked me about starting new churches. He said, "How important is location?" I said it's very important, the second most important thing. The most important thing is not location but leadership in a church. I see churches in great locations that aren't doing anything, and I see churches with good leadership in poor locations doing great things.

Leadership is the key. You don't have to be a charismatic leader (in the emotional sense) to be a great leader. It's not the charisma of the leader that matters, but the vision of the leader. No matter what your ministry concentration may be, your No. 1 responsibility of leadership in that area is to continually clarify and communicate the vision of that particular ministry. You must constantly answer the question, Why are we here? If you don't know the answer, you can't lead.

As a senior pastor, my job is to keep us on track with the original New Testament purpose of the church. That gets much more difficult as the church grows larger and larger. When we were very small, the only people who wanted to come were non-Christians. We didn't have a lot of programs. We didn't have a children's ministry or a music ministry or a youth ministry. The people who wanted all those things went to churches that had them. Now I meet people coming over from other churches every week. This new dynamic presents an acute problem. Every one of these people carries in a load of cultural baggage. They expect Saddleback to be like the church they left. The first words off their lips can be, "At our old church, we did it like this."

But how can I politely say, "We don't care how you did it at some other church"? I don't mean to be rude, but the vision of the church someone just left isn't the key issue. Our vision in this church is the key issue. Therefore, I must continually communicate Saddleback's vision to everyone who walks through our doors.

Vision is the main difference between leadership and management. Management consists primarily of three things: analysis, problem solving and planning. If you go to any management course, they'll be composed of those three things, but leadership consists of vision, values and the communication of those things. If you don't clarify the purposes as the leader, who's going to do it?

Most churches are over-managed and under-led. Your church needs to be managed, but it also needs to be led. You have to have both. When you only have management in the church, you get the problem of paralysis of analysis. It's like "Ready ... aim ... aim ... aim ... " and they never fire. Management without leadership results in constantly analyzing and looking but never actually doing anything. Don't get me wrong. You need managers in the church as well. Without them, you end up with a church that says, "Ready ... fire!" without ever taking the time to aim. You need both.

Some people have dreams but not vision. There is a difference. A vision is a dream that can be implemented. It's specific.

Every Easter Sunday I stand back and marvel at all God has done in our church. We started on an Easter with a handful of people. Now, every Easter, we have even more than the year before as thousands upon thousands gather together. That's incredible to me when I think about how it all started with a little vision, and from that, we've watched a movement happen. That's the power of a vision.  

Used with permission of the author. For more Ministry and Leadership insights from Pastor Rick Warren, go to pastors.com. Founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, Warren is author of the New York Times best-seller The Purpose Driven Life. His book, The Purpose Driven Church, was named one of the 100 Christian books that changed the 20th century.

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