There is a marvelous pattern in the book of Proverbs:

Someone said the most interesting thing to me at lunch this week. Perhaps you've heard it before, but I found it helpful:

Most leaders manage by exception. Good leaders manage by expectation.

Leaders who manage by exception are unclear in their direction and often absent in their supervision. They only shift into "management mode" when some exception occurs, such as when the person who reports to them underperforms.

If it sounds like I know what that's like, it's because all too often I've done it.

On the other hand, leaders who manage by expectation are vivid in their direction and present in their supervision. They lay out clear goals and then follow up to ensure that those goals are getting accomplished.

I am learning this kind of leadership. I've started systems with some of the new members of our staff team that would have never occurred to me five or ten years ago.

Perhaps in managing by expectation I'm learning to manage the one staffer who continually gives me the most trouble: me.

Pastoral leaders are supposed to help people navigate change. It's part of the territory.

Sometimes I do it well. Other times I don't.

But someone said something a few months ago that has stuck with me: People don't fear change. They fear what they'll lose in change.

How true.

When you change a church's structure, some people might lose a ministry they enjoyed.

When you change a music style, others might lose selections that made them feel comfortable.

When you change pastoral leaders, still others lose a person around whom they had grown to feel safe.

When you change a facility, still others lose that sense of "coming home" each Sunday to the familiar and the predictable.

Some leaders discount the very real feelings of loss people feel when change happens. I've done that.

Healthy leaders acknowledge the loss inherent in change and become relentless in pointing out what new things will be gained. I'm learning that.

Best line uttered by one of the teaching team members at Christ Fellowship Church:

"It's not what you do; it's what you do with what you do."

In other words, it's not enough simply to pull off a big event -- that's what you do.

The heart of ministry lies in the follow up to that event -- that's what you do with what you do.

Whether it's a rally for students, a party for kids, a seminar for adults, or even a Sunday worship service, the key to effective ministry is all in the next steps. Thanking volunteers. Calling first time guests. Providing discipleship material for those who make commitments of faith.

I confess: after we host a large event at Good Shepherd, I'm usually so glad it's over that I rarely take the initiative to have excellent follow through.

But as I travel home today, I do so with a personal challenge to do more with what we've already done.

As you read this, I am with 25 other United Methodist pastors from Western North Carolina receiving in depth training from the leaders of Christ Fellowship Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

It's part of a year-long leadership development program sponsored by the Royce & Jane Reynolds Foundation in North Carolina.

Christ Fellowship is a pretty remarkable place: a 25-year-old congregation with 20,000 weekly worshippers in five different locations throughout south Florida.

Most unusual about its story? For the first five years of its existence, the church hovered at around 100 people in worship.

In general, when churches stay that size for that long in their early days, they never progress any further. United Methodism has scores of churches that long ago settled at 100 people or so in worship.

But I love the explanation given by Tom Mullins, Christ Fellowship's founding-and-still pastor.

"God was seeing if I could be trusted with a little," he said, "before he trusted me with a lot."

Evidently he could be trusted with both.

Could you? Can I?