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When our churches begin to see the opportunity for ministry as truly bound only by our willingness to walk in obedience, and not bound by space, the scope of ministry changes dramatically.
Our passion to send leaders out is inextricably linked to the belief that God’s power goes with them. If churches really believe that the people of God are empowered not only when they meet but also when they live scattered, then a conviction for developing leaders infects the culture of the church.
When church leaders see their lives as undeniably fleeting, it ignites an urgency to make more leaders for God rather than to make more platforms for themselves.
Desperate and Dignified (nature of humanity):
For a church to have a culture of leadership development, the church must see mankind rightly.
“For the problem with people is not just that they commit sins; their problem is that they are enslaved to sin. What is needed, therefore, is a new power to break in and set people free from sin—a power found in, and only in, the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Making leaders in the local church must be an activity of training leaders to be humbly dependent, not willfully independent.
A local church must not look at
people through the same lens as the world.
As a local church hopes to build a culture of leadership development, it will be forced to extend its development horizon and expand its faith in God’s power to renew.
For any organizational culture there is a set of beliefs that tells members who they are, how members ought to interact, and who is a part of the group.
The results in church culture that embraces the beauty of belonging to God’s household will be expressed in oneness, ownership, and accountability.
The most impressive organizations in the world at developing leaders develop them out of a deep sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.
Every believer in the local church ought to feel the weight of belonging to a unified family serving as ambassadors.
Advancing the rule and reign of God is not just something some believers do; rather it is a part of the identity of what it means to be His.
The local church is to make leaders, as a family, to be ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:17–20).
Paul’s concern is for their unity; but there is no such thing as true unity without diversity.
For developing leaders, if the most important words don’t point to equipping and developing saints for ministry, no amount of structure or programming will overcome it.
We rarely think about things like this, but we cannot have a cohesive, reproducing culture if we don’t have shared language.
Common language, with common understanding, is essential for oneness. Oneness is essential for a culture developing leaders.
There is a power for developing leaders that comes with believing that we belong to one another. Can you imagine if someone were to develop you as if you were “one” with him or her? The mystery of our union with Christ is that we now belong to Christ and to one another. Like no organization in the world, a church’s care for emerging leaders is founded on a relationship of sacrifice and love.
This binding covenant between the members of a local church propels them to consider the community over self. This dedication and loyalty in the body of Christ creates the environment for spending oneself in an effort to bless future generations with new and capable leadership.
We love God, so we love His Church. We love His Church, so we want to provide her with the best leadership possible.
This chain of love creates the most powerful platform for leadership development in our societies.
Without an abiding conviction in members as powerful agents of the Kingdom, leadership development will only be a task in delegation rather than empowerment.
Without ownership, our leadership development will be subjected to the futility of begging people to “step up” and minimizing the expectations to make sure it “isn’t asking too much of people.”
In the local church, leaders are not leading “their people,” they are leading “God’s people.” This understanding creates accountability between the local church leaders and God Himself. We lead God’s people how He wants them led. If God wants His people trained and equipped to lead according to His design, then the Church is beholden to obey.
However, if we are to build leaders according to God’s design, we must bring acute clarity to our convictions.
A necessary theological conviction for the leader-developing church is a people deeply devoted to the glory of God and dedicated to multiplication.
The faith of the saints under pressure, suffering, and persecution brings attention to the worth and value of King Jesus.
Our perseverance on this long road to glory honors Him. Our joyful obedience to Him magnifies His worth to a watching world.
Leaders filled with pride fail to develop others as they fear others surpassing them, others receiving credit, or others “stealing the spotlight.”
As the local church embraces the glory of God, new leaders can rise up, new leaders can pass their mentors, and old leaders can step aside in dignity and delight.
There is nothing so liberating, so freeing, as replacing your own leadership as an act of worship to God.
Namely, His particular mission is “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). A church joins in that mission or she is no body of Christ.
How will the local church know when it has accomplished or is succeeding in its mission?
Churches must measure leadership reproduction because if leaders are not being made, the church has been unfaithful.
If churches are to build a healthy culture for developing leaders, they cannot simply correct behavior and change programs.
They don’t merely say they value leadership development; they actually believe the Church is responsible to develop and deploy leaders, and they align their actions to this deeply held conviction.
Culture ultimately begins with the actual beliefs and values that undergird all the actions and behavior.
Leaders create culture and culture shapes leaders and churches, even without recognizing it. Ministry leaders must understand the transformative power of culture if they want to have mature communities of faith.
You often can’t see culture, not in the same way you can see the doctrinal statement (the expressed convictions) or the leadership pipeline (the expressed constructs), but it holds everything in place. For better or worse, culture impacts your church more than you often realize.
A strong culture has, according to Collins, a fervently held ideology and indoctrination of that ideology.
If something is really valued, it is declared. Language and words help create the culture one lives in.
The artifacts of church culture are the visible, tangible expressions of a church’s actual and articulated beliefs.
The artifacts are often what people latch on to most in a church, though they are expressions of so much beneath the surface.
While changing actual beliefs is the most difficult task, changing artifacts often creates the most pain.
The truly embraced convictions of a local church are written in the lives of believers as they interact with one another and the world.
Culture is formed by what we truly believe and value over a sustained period of time.
In order to become churches that embrace the call to produce leaders, we have to take a hard and thoughtful look at our church culture.
