Category: leadership

Discipleship is the backbone, but it does not scale to everyone. For the leaders we cannot disciple personally, we run a rotating annual rhythm of training on the gospel, on community, and on mission, paired with twice yearly assessment and monthly coaching. One thing we learned along the way is that curriculum does very little.…

After five years of trying nearly every training method available, the most useful thing we learned was to train the whole community rather than the leader alone. Leaders trained by themselves struggled to pass the material on. Our basic training runs four weeks and covers the gospel, gospel motivations, missional community values, and missional community…

Our bar for leadership is five things: attend the four week training, tell your story to an elder or deacon, name who you want to reach, gather three or four people to that mission, and launch. There is no doctrinal exam beyond a clear grasp of the gospel and no covenant to sign. The best…

Before placing someone who has volunteered into leadership, five questions need answers: what our ministry is for, what we are asking of a leader, what that person actually wants to do, whether the two visions are compatible, and what the next step is. Getting incompatibility into the open early ruffles feathers and prevents harder conversations…

There are two ways to find new leaders, and most of the advice on offer is theory rather than practice. Selection sets a high bar and produces alignment at a slower rate. Self-identification sets a low bar and produces more leaders with no guarantee of quality. I use selection in my personal discipleship and self-identification…

Systems do not make disciples, people do. What most churches diagnose as a systems problem is usually a culture problem, and a good system practiced in an unhealthy culture will not produce results. This introduces the leadership development structure we built at The Austin Stone for missional communities.