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leadership missional community

Two Ways to Identify Leaders

In this series of posts, I am going to unpack the strategy and structure of leadership development we have implemented at The Austin Stone for missional communities.  I’ll be looking at:

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Identifying Leaders

One of the biggest challenges that most pastors face is finding new leaders.

There are the traditional church answers of “faithful, available, teachable”, there are the current business models based on skill competency, there are those with the simple intuition of identification who would say, “it isn’t that hard!”, and there are the organic/movement types who argue “anyone can be a leader”.

That’s a sea of ideas to sift through, but most are primarily rooted in theory rather than practice. Those things are hard to apply when you’re having a conversation with someone at a lunch.

I want to help you understand how we think through leadership identification, how we consider those leaders and whether they are a fit, and finally, what are the steps we have in place for leaders to move forward in ministry.

Two Ways To Identify Leaders

The two predominant means of identifying new leaders are based off selection or self-identification.

Selection

Identifying leaders through selection is typically a high-bar form of leadership.  It hinges on a previous leader looking for a new leader, and typically there are a set of criteria that a leader is being evaluated against.  Churches who typically practice this kind of leadership identification have fairly involved training processes, and often practice a form of apprenticeship before someone is permitted to lead.

I practice this kind of leadership identification in my personal discipleship, and I have found there are some pros and cons to it:

  • Pros – alignment with your ministry convictions and philosophy, establishes a relationship based on mutual submission.
  • Cons – slower rate of leaders developed, contingent on the individual capacity of a leader

Self-identification

The other system for leadership identification is a willing person letting you know they would like to lead.  Typically, these are low-bar environments for leadership, and the focus is on developing someone into a role over time.  Generally speaking, churches who practice this have a low bar of entry for leadership and tend to have lower expectations for the kind of ministry or group that is being led.

I utilize this form of leadership as well, but I have a different set of expectations and process for it.  There are benefits and challenges of utilizing this kind of system:

  • Pros – higher rate of leaders, identification of those “in the cracks”
  • Cons – no guarantee of quality, leaders outside the bounds of orthodoxy

Synthesizing the Two

I’ve landed on a philosophy that utilizes both kinds of identification, but in different contexts. For my personal discipleship, I focus entirely on selection. I spend the best of my time and energy on folks whom I have personally selected, and who desire to learn from my life and ministry.

For our ministry, I want to ensure that we give people interested in leadership the opportunity to step up, as well as a clear process to follow to become a leader.  We extend an open invitation often for leadership, and then do some training and basic steps of leadership before we deploy someone into ministry.

I’ll spend the rest of my time in this series unpacking the “self-identification” method we employ.

Which method do you primarily employ as you identify and train leaders for ministry?

Categories
discipleship leadership missional community

Discipleship and Leadership Development

In this series of posts, I am going to unpack the strategy and structure of leadership development we have implemented at The Austin Stone for missional communities.  I’ll be looking at:

  • Introduction
  • Discipleship and Leadership Development
  • Identifying Leaders – Two Different Methods
  • Questions to Ask When Considering a Leader
  • The Basic Qualifications for Leadership
  • Basic Training for Leaders
  • Ongoing Training for Leaders
  • Caring for Leaders

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Discipleship and Leadership Development

The Austin Stone is a large growing church. It would be impossible for us to have a leadership development system that relied entirely on a few individual’s capacity to find and train them. At the same time, we have a fundamental conviction that the primary means by which leaders are developed is through intentional, missional community-centered, life-on-life discipleship.

So what’s a guy to do when what is best can’t accomplish what is needed? What do you do if you have 500 people wanting to jump into missional community yesterday, 50 who want to lead, and one person to train them?

For me, I had to grasp that what is ideal isn’t always the most fitting. The simple reality is that we can’t disciple everyone that comes into our ministry scope. Should that prohibit us from sending people out, even if we can’t be fully confident of their character and competence?

I’m guessing Jesus faced some similar issues in his ministry.  He preached to thousands while investing his best into twelve men. Even still, he sends out the 72 in Luke 10 to go proclaim the kingdom of God.

I wrote some of my thoughts on this topic in the post “The Difficult of Balancing Ministry and Discipleship” – the idea that it’s a struggle to maintain focus on discipleship and we often favor ministry.

For The Austin Stone, we’ve actually built into our job descriptions the expectation of discipleship. For my staff team, I actually assess more often their investment in a few than I do their overall coaching of their region. They should be investing the best of their time in a few, then the remaining available time on coaching and leadership in other areas.

Discipleship is the foundation for leadership development, but there is also an element of leadership development that is more “ministry”.

Any time I talk about leadership development, I’m predominantly considering two different lenses:

  • Primarily, leaders are made through intentional discipleship.
  • Secondarily, leaders are made through the systems and structures that help you accomplish ministry.

People make disciples, systems and structures predominantly aid you in accomplishing ministry. We must remain faithful to the foundation of discipleship, but leadership development systems can help a lot!

Categories
leadership missional community

Leadership Development Systems for Missional Communities

In this series of posts, I am going to unpack the strategy and structure of leadership development we have implemented at The Austin Stone for missional communities.  I’ll be looking at:

  • Introduction
  • Discipleship and Leadership Development
  • Identifying Leaders – Two Different Methods
  • Questions to Ask When Considering a Leader
  • The Basic Qualifications for Leadership
  • Basic Training for Leaders
  • Ongoing Training for Leaders
  • Caring for Leaders

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When I mention the phrase “Leadership Development Systems” my organic/missional church friends generally want to gag, and my mega-church friends typically light up with interest.  I tend to be a systems-oriented thinker with a passion for movements, so I have done my best to learn from both worlds, and synthesize my learnings into something that utilizes the best of both.

One of the most critical things I communicate when I’m talking with people is that systems don’t make disciples, people do.  Systems are helpful to reinforce key ideas, provide structure and accountability, and give tangible next steps, but they are never a replacement for the investment of your life in a few.

In addition to that, systems cannot create a healthy culture, but can be very helpful in reinforcing it.  I have found that what most people think is a “systems” problem is actually a culture problem.  Their church doesn’t have a value for discipleship, stories aren’t told about the lost being saved, and leadership development is not holistically practiced at every level of the organization. A killer system, when practiced in an unhealthy culture, will not produce effective results.

We certainly don’t have everything figured out at The Stone, but I think God has been kind to grant us a healthy culture of reproducing discipleship, and systems that reinforce that culture to continue replicating those values on a broader scale.  My hope is these posts give you some insight into how we have created those systems.

What would you say about systems in the missional church?