Step One of Leadership Development

Intro

What‘s stopping your church from fulfilling the Great Commission? What is stopping your church from sharing Christ with your community, building small groups or Sunday School classes, from staffing children’s ministries?

You might say, “I don’t have enough people. I’m boiled down to just a faithful few and we’re doing all we can. And we can’t do any more than we currently do.”

But here’s another reason. And I will use myself.

The reason we were falling short...The reason we were not fulfilling the Great Commission is that we were just doing church and not intentionally developing leaders.

 

This is Mark Jones and I help pastors create leaders.

Now is the time to get intentional and begin to create a system that will develop future leaders.

In the last episode, I presented a biblical foundation for Leadership Development. I shared with you three Scripture passages:

• Matthew 28:19-20
• Ephesians 4:11-12
• And 2 Timothy 2:2

I discussed that God has commissioned you to Make Disciples, ;that God has gifted you to Equip the Saints for Ministry, and God has entrusted you with the responsibility to train Multiple Generations of Leaders.

If you have not listened to this episode I recommend that you do so.

Today we will build upon this simple foundation and begin to construct a simple Leadership Development System.

Today is that first step.

Here are a few ground rules for ME as we go forward.

1. Anything I share with you on this podcast must be simple and actionable.
2. The system we create must be attainable by both small churches and large churches.
3. I want to keep these episodes short and give you something you can easily do before the next episode drops. So I will give you a bit of homework.

With that said, let’s get to work.

Step One - The What

Here is our first step in creating a Leadership Development process.

You need to determine the What and the Why of this system.

Let me explain.

You are going to start creating a Leadership Development system by looking at the end of that process, the finish line. I want you to determine the finished product before you determine the system to get there.

To do that, you need to know What you are developing and Why you are developing it.

Here’s an example.

Remember in the last episode I shared with you that my elders were concerned. They felt strongly that we needed some new elders and some new Sunday School teachers.

That then is my What.

What do I need to develop, what kind of leader do I need to develop? I need Elders and Teachers.

Truly my church needs more than that. I could use some new deacons and deaconesses. I could use some new workers in our Children’s Ministry. I could really use someone to develop an outreach team. On and on I could go.

That might be your case as well. You might need all types of leaders. But no church and no pastor can develop all of these at once. So we need to make a choice based on an immediate need. And this immediate need, if developed, will lead to the development of other leaders.

Here is what I mean.

Let’s you and I answer the first question:

What Leaders Do You Need to Develop?

Take a minute to brainstorm and then write down every leader you need to develop.

I’m going to write down Elder, Sunday School Teacher, and I’m going to write down all the others I mentioned – Deacons, Deaconesses, Outreach Team, Children’s Ministry workers.

You do the same – Write down every leadership position you need. Answer the first questions -What Leaders Do You Need to Develop?

So you have before you a list of the leaders you need to develop. 

Out of that list, you need to pick just one. I know you want to develop all but that’s not practical. Choose one.

How do you choose the one? For me, I’m going to listen to my elders. They pointed to the need for new elders and Sunday School teachers. But that’s two, not one.

Then I’m going to think about this – If I develop one of those will that process lead to the development of another. For me the answer is yes.

Here’s what I mean. For the most part, our adult Sunday School classes are led by our elders. If I develop elders I am also developing Sunday School teachers.

I can pull back and look at this another way.

If I develop men I can then begin to identify those who would function well as elders and those who may function better as deacons.

That idea takes in the direction of discipleship. I’ll have more to say about how to use discipleship to develop leadership in a future episode.

But going back to the idea of first developing men, I