Leaders are Learners

By Pip Witheridge
March 2026

There’s an old quote that says, “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”. The point here is not to guilt leaders who struggle to read, or haven’t been in the habit of reading lately. The point here is to challenge leaders to take an interest not only in getting their tasks done, but in getting their thoughts sharper.

Leaders should be working not only in their ministries, but on their ministries. To do so, we must step outside our ministries and explore other peoples’ ideas. This is particularly important if your leadership role is new to you personally, contains a lot of freedom to try things, and has not existed for a long time in the life of the church.

No matter what your leadership role is within your church, there are always things you can learn to help you think through issues at play. There are a world of resources at your feet: books, articles, videos, podcasts. There are several areas of study that will improve you in your role if you invest time in them: theology, Christian living, ministry principles, team leadership.

So, what should you actually invest time in? One way to stay motivated to read/listen/study is to take a problem-based approach. That is, begin by asking the question: what is a problem you want to solve?

Perhaps your problem is a theological one—you don’t know what God thinks about X. For example, say you lead a team of Bible Study leaders who are approaching a notoriously tricky passage with their groups in a few weeks, and you want to help them in their preparation and be ready to field their questions. The problem is, you have little clue what the passage means either! What can you do? You can study ahead of time to be ready to help them. You can read articles and commentaries to help leaders ahead of time wrap their heads around a tricky text.

When I began my role as Mission Pastor, my first problem was simply not knowing what a Mission Pastor should spend their time on! So, what did I do? I spent a lot of time in the first few months of my role: a) visiting other Mission Pastors at other churches to ask what they do and what things they find most effective, b) reading a bunch of articles and books about local church mission, and c)  talking to people at church about what was working (and what wasn’t working) in our current programs. I was comforted to discover that many mission pastors take essentially the same approach to local mission because they’ve seen it work: create a regular time and space for people to bring their non-Christian friends to explore Christianity, ensure a follow-up system is in place, and promote it! This gave me a good baseline to work off, and the confidence to develop it and expand into new areas.

I have a friend at another church, new in his ministry role, who is responsible for what happens on-stage during their Sunday services. He told me that after church every Sunday, he goes online and watches other churches’ services on YouTube to see how others do things. He doesn’t do this because he wants to copy them, or because he thinks what his church does isn’t good—he simply wants to learn more good ideas, so that he can better serve his church. What a wonderful thing to strive for!

It matters what you learn, but perhaps more important is that you learn. If you develop a weekly (and perhaps even a daily) habit of reading things (or listening to things) related to your ministry role, you are far more likely to develop as a leader, and therefore your ministry is far more likely to flourish under God.

If you don’t know where to start, ask a pastor if they have any advice, or go online and start browsing. And remember, a problem-based approach is particularly motivating, because there’s something very satisfying about figuring out answers to questions you actually have right now. So—what’s a question or a problem you’re facing?