It's 2025. The world is shifting. We are facing changes all around us: politics, technology, climate, artificial intelligence, family dynamics, and more.

As leaders, while holding tight to our core convictions, we must never stop changing and growing and learning. Every day we wake up, the world changed over night. We won't get the same results tomorrow doing the same thing we did yesterday.

Here are five shifts I believe every leader should consider making in 2025:

1. Shift from Having the Answers to Discovering the Answers

It's no longer possible for one person to hold most of the knowledge and be able to guide an organization to success. You can't hire a leader who has experience and knowledge and knows what is needed for success in every situation. The best leaders know how to bring great people on the team, and then ask great questions to discover the best solutions.

Peter Drucker said it this way: "The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask."

2. Shift from Hiring Doers to Hiring Leaders

Every church needs scores if not hundreds or even thousands of doers. There is so much that needs to get done. But when you are hiring staff, you must focus on hiring leaders rather than doers.

Because of the pace of change and limited resources, you need leaders on your team who are paying attention to trends, quick on their feet, unattached to their own ideas, and able to galvanize (and even redirect at times) their teams to the most effective work. 

I’m not saying leaders are more valuable than doers. It is not about value; it is about role. When you have limited dollars, you need every penny to count. If you hire a staff member to do something, you get forty-five to fifty hours of productive ministry done every week. But if you hire people who can multiply themselves through recruiting volunteers and building teams, you might get two hundred, four hundred, or a thousand hours of productive work done every week. 

3. Shift from Celebrating Growth to Pursuing Health

Healthy things grow. Growing things aren't always healthy (hello cancer). This is really difficult for church leaders. The church beauty (size) competitions are real. Pastor conferences are headlined by pastors who saw their churches triple in size overnight or grow by 4,000 people in a year. When is the last time you heard a keynote from a pastor who had 60 people three years ago, and then 75 people the next year, and this year has 100 people--and who achieved the growth by pursuing health. 

Yet I believe pursuing health will both grow your church and have longer staying power.

Joey Foster, lead pastor at The Fresh Church in Florida, said it this way: "A healthy church may not grow as quickly, but it will grow in ways that matter—spiritually, relationally, and in its impact on the community. This reminds us that while numbers can be an indication of growth, they do not necessarily reflect the depth of a church’s spiritual life or its effectiveness in fulfilling the Great Commission."

4. Shift from Training Your Values to Hiring FOR Your Values

It has never been more difficult to hire staff. That makes it tempting to settle for the wrong person. And yet, because it takes so long to hire the right person, it is more expensive than ever to hire the wrong person. 

We can be tempted to hire someone who isn't fully living out our values. We convince ourselves we can train them after they get here. We can infuse our DNA in them over time. 

Maybe. Probably not. Even if you can, you don't have time to get this wrong. The risk isn't worth it.

While it's a fantastic strategy to continue to place an emphasis on your values with your existing staff, including in the onboarding phase -- you must hire people who already live out your values, who already deeply embody every facet of what it means to be a healthy contributing player on your team. 

5. Shift from Developing a Leadership Strategy to Focusing on a Leadership Culture

I think far too many leaders get to a place where the ministry has outpaced the ability of their staff to get it done, and they panic and begin to look for a silver bullet to solve their leadership development issues.

Don't get me wrong -- I am all about plugging in good systems to solve problems. But when it comes to leadership development, we often look for a easy fix to what is a cultural problem. 

I've written much about this over the years (including this article), but I believe great organizations have a culture where leaders multiply themselves; look for the genius in the room; bring diverse voices around their most important tables; are values-driven; never do ministry alone; continually work themselves out of a job; and take the blame while giving away all the credit.  

I know this list isn't exhaustive. I'd love it if you send me an email (yes, I personally read every email) and let me know additional shifts you believe leaders will need to make this year. And if I can help you or your team, don't hesitate to reach out and set up a call.