Creating a Leadership Development Environment

The Church as a Leader-Breeder?

Great organizations and great teams are “leader breeder” movements. Show me a successful coach in sports or business and I will show you someone who is a great leader recruiter and developer. Show me a great organization and I will show you leaders who are actively being developed to step in to any crisis, vacuum or area for expansion.

Great organizations have fanatical followers. These followers are excited about boldly boasting about the greatness of their beloved team or organization. They pay good money to wear the team jersey with pride, providing free advertisement. They know the key players and statistics and study the odds for winning the championship or at the stock market.

What if?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a church that was so excellent at developing world class leaders that everyone in that church couldn’t stop talking about the world impact being made by those that church produced? The children’s department is so excited because the next Billy Graham was groomed by them to be a leader, right from the cradle. The youth department was taking odds on which of the twelve interns would solve the world hunger problem. Which of the 10 graduating seniors in the church are the most likely to succeed, surpassing Bill Gates as the world’s greatest philanthropist? No one drifts into greatness. Hope is not a strategy for developing great leaders. Greatness is the result of intentionality of purpose.

Potential?

Doesn’t it seem that the church would be the best place for world class leaders to be cultivated, with the focus on character and honesty and integrity in leadership? Have you noticed that on the show “American Idol,” there is a large number of contestants who were groomed to sing in the church, including Katie Perry? How exciting it would be if the church was known for producing world class leaders, not just world class singers!

Churches Are Missing the Target!

While many churches excel in producing incredible worship services in an hour. The preaching and the videos and the attention to detail are exceptional. But that is not the target! I served on staff at a church with 6,000 attendees on the weekends, they helped people find Jesus, but were horrible at helping people follow Jesus. They are missing the target! Jesus didn’t command us to make converts, but to make disciples who can change the world.

That church struggled to find anyone who was Biblically qualified to serve on the Church Board. Why? Because they were missing the target of making fully devoted followers of Jesus. The consequences of that kind of church are reflected in the Bible, when you study the church of Corinth with over twenty major sin areas that Paul addressed in the letter of 1 Corinthians.

Spiritual maturity, developing character, equipping leaders was not something that was valued in Corinth nor is it common in today’s church circles. It is shortsighted at best and sinful in responding to Jesus’ clear call to teach people to “obey everything Jesus commanded.”

Dead Beat Churches?

Helping people discover Jesus while failing to develop them to maturity in Christ is like a “dead beat” parent who brings children into the world, but doesn’t want to discipline the children, pay for clothes, or school.

Churches need spiritually mature leaders to parent the spiritual babies in the church or spiritual immaturity will result in gossip and selfishness and sin that will disrupt long term growth and vitality.

Jesus Cares About Life Transformation

Jesus didn’t “use” people or take advantage of them. He delegated and directed people for their benefit. He loved them first!

Jesus didn’t come simply to “inform,” He came to transform lives.

Jesus practiced incarnational, life-on-life Leadership development. His life was a model of what he expected of his disciples. He didn’t just tell them what to do he showed them. He modeled what it meant to walk with God.

When Jesus developed leaders through life-on-life training, he transformed lives in three areas:

Minds

• Transformed through the word of God.

Hearts

• Transformed by developing character in suffering.

Hands

• Transformed as servant leaders.

Without effective Discipleship, equipping and developing minds, hearts and hands, Christ followers cannot become world impacting leaders. When God wanted to change the world he didn’t send a program or a manual, He sent His One and Only Son to develop leaders who could lead the church.

As Paul the apostle said

"follow me as I follow Christ,” that’s how Discipleship works.

Jesus taught us by his example to “think big by faith,” to “start small with a few” and to “go deep in developing character”.

Jesus went “BIG” by choosing a few who would provide the leadership necessary for the church to grow and expand. Jesus invested deeply in the lives of a few chosen men, who would carry on the ministry long after he was gone and returned to heaven.

As Paul said we

“share the gospel with you” and ”our lives” as well (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

This is the lifeblood of Discipleship when people have been transformed by Christ, then lead others into a transformed way of living. They pass on the life that Jesus modeled.

DL Moody a great evangelist of the previous century commented that

God did not give us the word of God for our information but for our transformation.

True discipleship is not just fellowship or knowledge or doing good deeds, but it is seeing lives changed to become more like Jesus.

Imagine what our world would be like today, if our world leaders had been cultivated by an intentional process that prepared them by leading them to develop the character, integrity and selflessness of Jesus!

Life-transformation discipleship is what we are talking about! It happens best in a small group setting where members are invited to enter into a spiritual growth process of developing highly committed followers of Christ.

The Target is to make More and Better Disciples.

At the very core of what it means to be a disciple is making another disciple.

As each leader reproduces another leader, those leaders reproduce other leaders, starting an ever expanding movement to impact the world with the life changing message of Christ.

This kind of movement is exponential and explosive.

This is nothing new. This is how the Gospel reached to our side of the world, after being passed down from generation to generation. It is an old method with new people.

Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations he didn’t command us to make converts.

By helping people discover life transformation in Christ, we then develop them in the faith before we deploy them into activity we see that there is a constant flow of new believers, congregations are being impacted and new leaders are emerging that has a ripple effect around the world.

Discover, develop, deploy… That the agenda for hitting the target of making more and better disciples of Jesus.

The result is life transformation for families, neighbors, communities, cities and nations. This is Jesus' model, his method, his mandate and mission for His church that He promised to build, a church that the gates of Hell cannot stop. Won’t you join the movement by being a disciple of Jesus, by making a disciple of Jesus and doing it for an audience of One?