2/19/24 by Larry Barker
Leadership development is the natural outflow of your discipleship pathway. It has been referred to as a leadership pipeline but we must be careful to make sure this is a mobilizing of leaders to the mission of Jesus first and foremost. It is more than raising workers for the Sunday experience and the ministry teams in your church. The goal is not completion or reaching a goal but living missionally by multiplying disciples, multiplying, leaders, and multiplying churches. Lead yourself and then begin to lead others but do not forget it must start with your relationship with Jesus as He builds Godly character within you.
First, you must be motivated by the mission of God. BMA Global defines this specifically as “making God’s glory and love known to the nations. This aspect of the nature of God is expressed in the expansion of the kingdom to all peoples and is the primary motivational piece in all we do.” This requires living your life as if the Truth is the truth by training disciples and leaders to own the priorities of our founder, Jesus Christ. Will your church and ministry resemble the church in the book of Acts? Will you exist for yourselves and your services or will you exist to fulfill your King’s mission? Have we made the focus too much on us?
Who is going to reach those who do not even have Jesus on their radar? Who will be willing to stop focusing on scooping up the already church-attending market share and intentionally build relationships with those who are far from God? The need to raise leaders is real but they need to be trained and challenged to daily live on the mission of Jesus to seek and save that which is lost. Equipping disciples and leaders to be Jesus and share the gospel in their everyday work world. Have we become so enamored with the ninety-nine in the sheepfold that we have forgotten about the one lost sheep?
Getting back to His mission is a must and requires moving past our own comfort, self-interest, and pet projects. If Jesus truly is our Boss, then we must be about His business and that is beginning a movement that obeys Him in every area, not a select few. It is easy to be deceived into thinking it is “our” church but if it is, then it is not “His” church. Has your church become more of a business than an army attacking the gates of hell by living radically for Him? If you and I are not careful we begin to build our kingdom instead of His. The reality is that if your motivation and goal is to build our kingdom, it will require killing His.
BMA Global’s second value statement is; “The entire context of the New Testament is one of multiplication. All healthy believers and churches will multiply. The multiplication of disciples is the most important factor in the formula for multiplication.” If the discipleship pathway is broken then rest assured the leadership pipeline will most likely be non-existent. Developing leaders who are following Jesus requires that you are following Him and obeying Him. Are you learning reproducible skills through discipleship that can be passed on to the next generations? Discipleship is teaching disciples how to grow their faith and follow Jesus.
Do you have a reproducible way (discipleship engine) to teach others how to study their Bible (S.O.A.P; Discovery Bible Study, etc.), pray (P.R.A.Y; A.C.T.S, etc.), share their faith (Evangelism in 1 Verse, Good Soil, etc.), the importance of worship individually and corporately, and how vital it is to be part of a church family? Teaching them that it is not “shopping” for the best church but being led by the Holy Spirit to be a functioning productive member of a local body of believers. Our concept of church being something you either “opt” in or “opt” out of is foreign to those who have been willing to die because of their connection with His church.
The first three values of BMA Global are; Motivated by the Mission of God, Discipleship Based Multiplication, and Local-Church Driven which states: “While multiplication is the process that fulfills the mission of God in the New Testament, local congregations are both the source (sending) and the goal (planting) of that multiplication. Missions offices do not reproduce, churches do.” Your church does not decide on its mission because God’s mission has called your church to faithfully fulfill His mission. Unfortunately, all too often our present structures stifle or even oppose His mission being accomplished by our church.
The discipleship pathway builds Godly character and should lead naturally into a leadership pathway. The time should come when you move beyond basic discipleship and begin teaching leadership competencies such as team building, problem-solving, managing time, resolving conflict, communication, and executing God’s plan. The need to plan and develop a leadership pathway is crucial and it will take time and hard work. The old leadership axiom states, “Plan your work and then work your plan.” The nature of the beast is that working in the ministry is so time-consuming there is little time left to work on the ministry.
What is your strategy for developing leaders in your church? How will you pour into the one or two who have shown that they are ready to take the next steps? Mac Lake encourages us to change our focus in this area. He states the need to clearly understand your why, “We don’t start with the position that needs to be filled; we start with the person that can be developed. When helping other people maximize their God-given potential is our foundational motive, we are far more likely to succeed over the long haul…The big win is not filling a leadership position; it’s seeing the potential of his or her leadership giftedness.”