Designed to Lead: The Church and Leadership Development

by Eric Geiger

The Church is uniquely set apart to develop and deploy leaders for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel.

Leadership, apart from the work of God, cannot produce true flourishing or eternal results. If we believe that God created the world and handed responsibility for watching over the garden to Adam and Eve, then human leadership must be understood as God-initiated. He purposed to use humanity to steward and cultivate

If we believe that God has chosen to make His multifaceted wisdom known through the Church (Eph. 3:10), then the leaders that are developed through the Church are “at the center” of God’s design to represent Himself in all facets of life.

William Temple stated, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members,”

The full extent of discipleship is the development of disciples who are able to lead and develop others, not merely people who gather together for worship once a week.

God’s people are designed to influence others. God’s people have been purchased by His blood and are empowered with His Spirit to influence the world around them.

Notice we are not saying that the locus of the Church is leadership development, but that the locus of leadership development is the Church

The center of the Church is the gospel, but the center of leadership development must be the Church—meaning, that the leaders who will ultimately transform communities and change the world come from the Church.

Whether you are called to lead your home, in the marketplace, in God’s Church, or in your community—if you are called by God, then you are called to lead others to know and worship Jesus Christ.

The Church exists because our great death-defeating Savior went forth to die for us and, now, invites all who follow Him to die to themselves and truly live.

Reportedly, Buddha’s dying words were, “Strive without ceasing.”5 Work really hard for your own salvation! He died giving a pep talk, while our Savior died securing our redemption. No one has served the way Jesus has served us.

Any amount of time spent reading about leadership will tell you that you can’t have a strong and committed team without a deep sense of mission. But any mission that people are being invited to join pales in comparison to the mission God has given His people. No other people have been reconciled to God through Christ and been given the privilege and responsibility to reconcile others to Christ. God’s people are, therefore, His “ambassadors,” and God makes His appeal to others through us (2 Cor. 5:20).

Because a local church exists to serve her community, to bless the world, and to be a light to the nations, then the leaders developed in each local church are developed for much more than each local church.

No one should outpace the Church in developing leaders because no one else has the assurance that their contribution will last, that their leadership will eternally matter.

But sadly many churches are outpaced in developing leaders for the mission of God. In many churches, leaders are not being developed as fully and intentionally as they could be. The lack of leadership development among God’s people is the burden that has led to this book.

The word leader at this church means volunteer with the job of doing whatever everyone else doesn’t remember or want to do. Members with leadership skills outside the walls of the church are not expected to bring those skills to bear in the church because, well, “church is church” and “work is work” and “the two worlds don’t need to intersect.” At QCC, the work of the church isn’t a place for innovation, improvement, or creativity; it’s a place for duty and faithfulness.

Designed to Lead Framework Churches that consistently produce leaders have a strong conviction to develop leaders, a healthy culture for leadership development, and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed through the ministry of a local church.

While constructs are important, if you embrace and implement constructs without first developing a coherent and strong conviction and culture, you will only reap apathy or exhaustion.

A vision without a strategy is nothing more than a fun whiteboard moment that rarely results in anything significant.

Did you notice the significant difference in the legacies of Moses and Joshua? After Moses died, immediately God’s people were ready to move to the land the Lord had given them. After Joshua died, a generation rose up who did not even know what the Lord had done for His people.

Over time, our lives, not merely our words, reveal our convictions.

By culture, we are not speaking of the socioeconomic or ethnic makeup of the ministry you lead, but the shared beliefs and values that undergird all your church does. Thus a strong culture of developing leaders permeates the entire church.

Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Don’t miss this: In the midst of the famous delegation passage, Jethro tells Moses there are things he must not delegate. And the things “Moses must do” are all essential in building a healthy culture of development. “Instruct them about the statutes and laws, and teach them the way to live and what they must do. But you should select from all the people able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, and hating bribes. Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.” (Exod. 18:20–21)

In a healthy culture there is strong sense of identity, clarity of mission, and credible leaders with integrity.

A healthy culture that values leadership development has a strong identity, a clear sense of mission, and is committed to selecting and deploying godly leaders.

A healthy leadership culture doesn’t allow for tasks and assignments to be merely handed to people without connecting the responsibilities to the identity God’s people have as sons, daughters, and servants of our King. In a healthy culture, people are continually reminded who they are, that they are His people, rescued by Him, a royal priesthood, and a people belonging to Him. If people are not reminded of their identity, they will be burdened with lists of tasks and responsibilities without their hearts being refreshed and renewed by the Lord who loves them.

You can’t have a strong culture without a strong sense of mission. A healthy ministry cultivates a clear sense of “here is what we are going to do together.”

Biblical leadership development is to “find the faithful who will be able. Not the able that might be faithful.”

Someone who is faithful repents, displays the fruit of the Spirit, and lives a life directionally in submission to the Lord, not directionally in opposition to the Lord.

Thus a healthy culture—a culture that produces spiritual leaders—values the character and trustworthiness of the leaders, not merely the skills they can offer.

Credibility is one of the hardest attributes to earn. And it’s the most fragile of human qualities. It’s earned minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, month-by-month, year-by-year. But it can be lost in very short order if not attended to. We’re willing to forgive a few minor transgressions, a slip of the tongue, a misspoken word, a careless act. But there comes a time when enough is enough. And when leaders have used up all of their credibility, it’s nearly impossible to earn it back.

Building constructs, delegating and broadening the capacity of the ministry, is not only about the leaders having a lighter load. The burden will be lighter and the pace will be more sustainable, but the people will also go home satisfied.

A leadership construct provides a framework for leadership development, a pipeline for future leaders, and a path for people to walk in their own leadership development.

Leadership constructs should not only result in leaders developed for ministry within a church, but also for leadership in the home, workplace, and world.

Leaders, when embracing the enormity of the responsibility, keep an eye on the future. They develop others, not just for the comfort of life in the church, but also for life as a whole. They equip God’s people to serve, not feverishly attempting to do all the ministry themselves. Both parenting and pastoring must focus on equipping.

There is a holy cause and effect in ministry. If we will make the training of the saints our holy cause, the effect is a healthy church. A healthy church is not a perfect church, but she is a church that is being collectively formed more and more into the image of Christ.

We are joining the apostle Paul in making the latter statement; to have a healthy church, a church must equip believers. We are not hedging. We are not merely suggesting that equipping people is important. We are not merely suggesting there is a relationship between equipping and health. We are declaring that equipping causes health. Equipping is the work of leadership.

God has given pastors to His Church, and their overarching job is “to equip the saints [God’s people] for the work of the ministry” (Eph. 4:12 esv). Equipping encompasses preaching/teaching (1 Tim. 3:2) and leading/governing (1 Tim. 3:4–5), as the goal in all of healthy ministry is to prepare or train God’s people.

Pastors, and churches, with a biblical approach to ministry possess a deep-seated conviction that all believers are gifted for ministry, not just the “professionals.” The Scripture never uses the term “minister” to set aside a special class of people who serve other Christians. All believers are ministers. Thus those selected by the Lord to be pastors are to invite all believers to engage in ministry and view themselves as equippers of all the ministers, all of God’s people, within the Church.

Biblically both terms apply to believers. We are all laos, people of His possession, and we all enjoy the kleros, the inheritance, as children of God. Literally, your pastor is a layperson and you share in the clergy. Clergy and laity have been terms inaccurately used to create an unhealthy, unhelpful, and unbiblical division in the Church.

While there is no division between God’s sons and daughters, there is distinction. For example, Christian unity does not eliminate race, status, and gender. Instead, unity in Christ transcends those distinctions because Christ is so much better, and is what ultimately unifies God’s people. Christian unity does not eliminate our distinctions because God, in His providence and creativity, has made us distinct from one another.

John Stott, writing on the role of pastors, stated, The New Testament concept of the pastor is not of a person who jealously guards all ministry in his own hands, . . . but one who helps and encourages all of God’s people to discover, develop, and exercise their gifts. His teaching and training are directed to this end, to enable the people of God to be a servant people. . . . Thus instead of monopolizing all ministry himself, he actually multiplies ministries.

People are often ignorant to the biblical approach to ministry because in many ways it feels so counterintuitive. “So our church hires pastors not to do ministry?” Also, “Let me get this straight. We are going to pay pastors to train us to do their jobs?” But His Kingdom often feels very counterintuitive. Such is life in the upside-down Kingdom of God where the last are first, the weak are strong, and the poor in spirit inherit the Kingdom. Clearly people within our churches need teaching and reminding that they are priests. That as Jesus was crucified, the veil of separation was torn, and we are all able to enter His presence. We don’t need a priest to take us to God. We are priests.

In other words, when people are focused on serving one another, unity increases. When people are taught to sit and watch, murmuring and evaluating increases. Because we long for community, people will unite around something. Without equipping in a church, people are likely to unite on criticism instead of around mission. Of course this is what should be expected from consumers. Church consumers quickly grow disappointed when the religious “goods and services” don’t match their tastes or meet their expectations. Equipping changes a church from a mere consumption center to a gathering of people who serve one another and the world around them.

As Christ is proclaimed and people are taught with wisdom, they move toward maturity in Christ (Col. 1:28). As people are challenged and equipped, the false dichotomy between the “spiritual of Sunday” and the “mundane of Monday” is destroyed. They represent Him in their homes, their places of work, and in their neighborhoods. They are salt and light in the spheres of influence the Lord has placed them.

Being made in His image, our Father gave us an inconceivable mandate. Not only did God make us to thrive within creation, but He also commissioned us to lead this creation so that others in this creation would flourish and thrive.

All the precious gifts of God are now instruments for suppressing His glory and misrepresenting His nature. God’s entrustment of leadership has not escaped this fate. The great tragedy of our leadership is not the lack of leading, but the corruption of its noble purpose. Now, rather than bless others with leadership, mankind oppresses and uses other men and women for personal benefit. This distortion is so pervasive that people are wholly rejecting leadership, rather than the sin that has distorted it! We should hate sin for what it has done to the noble task of leading. Sadly, rather than hate the distortion of God’s plan for leadership, we are all, in our sinfulness, unrelenting in our hatred of any influence that attempts to redirect our stubborn wills.

It’s easy to forget that the failure of Adam’s leadership in the garden was passivity, not aggression. Adam failed to cultivate the garden. Adam failed to keep the weeds out.

The primary purpose for our leadership mandate is to make known the glory of God by leading others to flourish in God’s design.

To think that the invincible God would use frail men to show the world His glory is staggering. God determined that He would use broken men and women, redeemed by His Son, to become ambassadors to the world. God not only designed to save men and women by grace through faith, but He determined to use men and women to deliver this saving message. He had every method at His disposal for bringing His will to pass. Yet, God chose to use mankind to bring glory to Himself. He designed for men and women to reflect the nature and character of God. He has chosen you and the people in your church.