Toni Romero is the Creative Pastor for our Hillsong Church campuses in Latin America. He oversees the worship, production, tv, etc teams for these campuses, and has grown these teams from scratch over the past few years. He leads these creatives teams that are in different countries, different languages, and different time zones, and is passionate about building the Church.

Leading the creative team in a brand new church plant is an amazing journey but definitely also a stretching one. Although you probably feel like you’re just starting to figure things out yourself, you still need to put on confidence and work with others to raise them as leaders at an accelerated speed. With this thought in mind, here are a few lessons I’m still learning about leading a brand new creative team.

1. Lead through empowerment.

Releasing and empowering the right people to help you carry the weight is absolutely key. Leading is not about doing everything, but about fulfilling a goal together. The right people will carry not only the responsibilities but also the culture of your team.

To entrust responsibility is different to simply delegating a task for completion. Raising leaders and carriers and not just doers of tasks is paramount for the sustainability of the team.

2. Replicate yourself

When we talk about replicating ourselves, many times what we meant is teaching someone to do what you do, which is totally great and valid, but in this case I’m referring more to replicating your heartin others. When the team of volunteers and leaders that you are raising can understand your heart and the “why” behind the “what”, they’ll become the biggest asset to help you build a healthy team.

Invest into the key people that “get you” and what you are about and then release them to run with the vision of the team.

3. Bring it back to the basics.

Our creative team exists to serve the vision of our church, which means I don’t have to come up with a new cool vision for our creative team. Our vision is as simple and as powerful as loving God, loving people and loving life. We can sometimes overcomplicate things, systems and structures. Those elements are necessary, but they exist to serve us, not the other way around. Let us bring our work back to the basics of what we stand for. Let’s place Jesus at the centre of everything we do!Pointing people to Him is something that can’t ever be overemphasized.

Toni Romero