Léonce Crump Jr: Church Culture Eats Vision

Pastors remain tired, and Léonce B. Crump Jr. agrees with Ed Stetzer that the cultural division that followed COVID has not peaked. The two discuss what a leader needs in reserve, and what a leader has to stop avoiding to stay in the work.

The conversation

How do pastors build resilience that lasts?

In the face of perpetual exhaustion, Crump names his reservoirs: the vision God gave him, a practiced Sabbath, a local community of pastors, and a coach, a counselor and a pastor. He argues that leaders need a place to say anything without recourse, and that the higher a leader’s profile, the smaller that place becomes. Grit, he says, comes from choosing difficulty, and the first hard thing he names for pastors is rest. 

How should pastors lead through a divided culture?

Crump preached a series from the Book of Daniel with the tagline “Living under leadership you didn’t choose,” arguing that most people in most of history lived under rulers they did not select, and that God’s people have lived through conditions like these before. He says the church, like Western education, tends to be ahistorical, and that a leader who panics will lead a congregation in panic. 

From the conversation

“In order for us, I believe, to function and thrive healthily, we have to have a space where we can say anything and everything without recourse.” – Léonce B. Crump Jr.

“The thing that you are avoiding, the thing that you don’t want to do, is probably the doorway to your next level.” – Léonce B. Crump Jr.

“We have developed a culture that is averse to suffering. And unless you have purposefully put yourself in athletics or the military or some other form of voluntary suffering, it’s very hard to develop grit in your life.” – Léonce B. Crump Jr.

“If God is truly sovereign, then we can’t live in panic. And if we live in panic, then we’re going to lead our people in panic. We have to lead them with a steady hand.” – Léonce B. Crump Jr.

About 

Léonce B. Crump Jr. is co-founder of United Church in Atlanta, which began as Renovation Church in 2008. He is the author of The Resilience Factor and Renovate: Changing Who You Are by Loving Where You Are.
 

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