Unlocking the Potential of Future Church Leaders

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How do you ensure your church remains strong and impactful for generations to come? Imagine being able to cultivate a thriving community by training multiple leaders instead of relying on just one. In our latest episode, we unravel the secrets of effective discipleship and leadership training, inspired by Jesus' approach with His 12 disciples. We guarantee you'll gain actionable strategies to involve and nurture church members in various ministries, from Sunday school to financial stewardship, all while preparing them for potential leadership roles.

We challenge you to expand your vision and cast a wider net in leadership development. Learn from biblical history and real-life examples about the unpredictable nature of leadership emergence. This episode is a treasure trove for pastors and church leaders, packed with practical advice on mentoring, continuous training, and the importance of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Tune in to discover how you can maximize your ministry's impact by investing in the growth and development of multiple future leaders.

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Episode Transcript

W. Austin Gardner (00:01):
I'd like to challenge you to look for
several disciples, several mento train.
Now you remember, we've made adistinction between what a
disciple is.
I mean, jesus' disciples wereobviously the apostles.
They were obviously much morethan basically trained
Christians.
They've been through much morethan just the original basic

(00:24):
doctrine lessons.
They've learned much more thanjust the original basic doctrine
lessons.
They've learned much more thanjust about how to pray and how
to go to church.
Sometimes a missionary isplanning on leaving a guy in
charge of his church.
To put it in the fable way, heputs all of his eggs in one
basket and that guy turns outnot to be the guy.
I would challenge you to trainas many people as you can, take

(00:47):
them all as far as you can, andyou don't know who is going to
be the guy.
Now I'd just like to remind youJesus had 12, and one was a
devil.
You're going to have 12, justmaking up the number, and 11 of
them may be devils and you'llonly get one.
You don't know.
We're certainly not going to doas well as Jesus did.
Adam and Eve had three sons,who are named in the scriptures,

(01:16):
and one killed one Cain, abeland Seth right.
And so begin working with asmany as you can.
Train them all to be able torun the Sunday school, to be
able to run the nursery, to beable to do the them all, to be
able to run the Sunday school,to be able to run the nursery,
to be able to do the offering,to be able to count the money,
to train them all to do all theministries you've got to do.
And as you go along, let theLord point out who he's making
to be the one that will takeover the work that you have for

(01:37):
him.
So you're training as many asyou can.
You're looking for a lot ofpeople to train.
Jesus' only hope for worldevangelism was the training of
12 men.
He didn't have a backup plan,he didn't have another way he
would go about it.
It wasn't like, if these guysfail, I got 12 more coming up.
That wasn't the plan.
He picked some men, he trainedthose men and he depended on

(01:59):
those men.
So you must work at choosingmen that can go into the
ministry and you take them asfar as you can.
But I'd like to suggest to youthat you don't get one, get
three, get four, get five, getas many as you can Pick up new
ones all along the way.
As soon as you got one guyyou're training or two guys
you're training, someone else isgoing to want to come in.

(02:20):
Don't say no, you can work inthe next church.
Bring them in and starttraining them.
You don't know who's going tobe the leader, you don't know.
I would have put Peter as theleader of the church in
Jerusalem.
It turns out James was.
You know.
I mean it's just you don't knowwhat God has in mind for people
to do, and so I would justchallenge you to be careful to

(02:41):
train everybody as far as theycan, but get a bunch of people
to train, get every young personyou can, and your whole week
ought to be consumed withtraining men.
Be careful that you don't justwaste time.