THE ART OF INFLUENCE
and his family were moving to a dryer climate while he battled with Parkinson’s. Then he told me he had recommended to the board that I take the place as interim pastor in the transition between senior pastors.
WHAT!?!?
I was twenty-three years old. I was about to enter into the next four months in a level of leadership that takes some people years and years to obtain. I didn’t ask for it. It was one of the final lessons in influence and leadership Pastor Coetzee was giving me on his way to retirement.
I went from the church members and leadership looking to me to guide their youth, to guiding them through the transition of leadership. I was petrified, to say the least. I had guys fifty years my senior calling me “Pastor Danny” and looking to me for leadership! However, because of Pastor Coetzee’s influence in their lives and in my life, they trusted I would follow God first and lead with His wisdom, not my own.
Influence requires humility.
Influence and Authority Are Different
When you don’t know what to do, you can take two paths—try it on your own strength, or in humility look to God and to the counsel of others to walk you through it. The natural tendency is to use your own strength and plow through. It was this natural tendency that I had allowed to overtake me just before Pastor Coetzee was about to leave. I will never forget that night. It was a Sunday night right after a service at the Lighthouse.
For some background information, about a month after he had announced his retirement and the transition began, I was making decisions as if I was the senior pastor. This doesn’t sound too bad; however, I was making decisions that should have been made with the board and leadership of the church. Even worse, I was acting as if I didn’t need their approval, after all, I was the “interim senior pastor.”
Not so fast, Sparky.
Instead of using the “influence” I was taught, I had shifted to using the “authority” of the name and position. That Sunday evening after service, Pastor Coetzee asked me to join him in the church office privately. We sat down across from each other in office chairs. He looked at me and said the following,
“What is this I hear about the decisions you have been making and overstepping your authority? Let me remind you that I am still the senior pastor here until I leave. Remember that these