Leadership scarcity is one of the most significant lids that prevents growth in churches today. While many churches are providing great leadership content and training in the form of conferences, classes or coaching groups, few are actually producing more leaders. There is more to developing leaders than providing good leadership content. It doesn’t happen without these five key underpinnings.
1. Humility
It takes a certain amount of humility to develop young leaders. It’s a choice you make to give tasks and responsibility away and allow others to gain experience knowing they won’t do it as fast as you would, as well as you would or the way you would.
2. Believe in People
You have to believe in people in order to empower them and develop them through coaching. If you’re like me and you have a tendency to see opportunities to strengthen organizations and people, then believing in people is not going to come very natural to you. You can’t approach developing people from a negative or pessimistic viewpoint. You have to choose to look for and see the best in people, encourage them, and help them build upon their strengths.
3. Take the Time
Leaders can’t be microwaved. It takes
getting people practice and preparation, encouraging them while they’re on the field and then coaching them up afterwards. In other words it doesn’t magically happen in a moment but in a series of moments up close and over time.
4. Shift Your Focus
If your church is going to produce more leaders it means you’re going to have to shift your focus from doing ministry to developing people. Churches that build leaders don’t pay their staff to do ministry (outside of specialty skill roles), but rather to invest in people, build teams and lead people to do ministry.
5. Scout for Talent
Most
churches are anti-leadership organizations. They have a tough time attracting, developing and keeping leaders because most churches are consumed with preserving the past while leaders are consumed with moving toward the future. That’s why you have to work hard to become a talent scout. Leaders see leadership in others; they can smell it, because they understand it at an intuitive level. It’s their job to constantly be looking for small glimpses of leadership in people and fuel those by celebrating them. Because what you celebrate gets repeated.
