Why is leadership development so important? The obvious reason is because that It was important to Jesus, so it should be important to His church and His leaders as well.
Jesus modeled it for us. Jesus could have done it all himself, He was God, but instead He called the unqualified, trained them, promised them the power of the Holy Spirit, and empowered them to carry on the mission when He was gone. Jesus was intentional about developing leaders and had a succession plan. So, if Jesus had a plan we should to.
Here are three keys to being intentional about leadership development:
1. Leaders need to keep learning.
As a leader it always starts with me (you). If you want to see disciples making disciples, leaders developing leaders, and the Kingdom grow through your local church, then you’ve got to be continually asking “how are we doing?” and “what do we need to do to prepare for the future?” This means you’ve got to keep learning new ways to reach and lead the people around you. You may have heard it said, when you stop learning you stop leading, think about it, you can’t giveaway what you don’t have. Leaders must be life-long learners.
2. Leaders need to develop other leaders.
I’m thankful that as a young leader I had a mentor that taught me the value of leadership development. As part of my discipleship he recommended books I should read, told me about conference I should attend, and connected me with other leaders that were further along on the journey than I was to help me grow. He knew that as a leader of leaders, it was his job to instill that priority in others also (2 Timothy 2:2). The same is true for you and me, you need to be developing yourself and the leaders that serve on your team. Each person on your team has a specific role and it’s important that they are continually learning new ways to stay effective in serving the people around them.
3. Leaders must always be preparing for the future.
It starts with self-leadership, then developing the leaders under your care, and then identifying and preparing the “potential-future leaders”. These are the people who are not leaders yet, but they have the potential to be a leader, some day. Why is this important? Because one day you will be gone and having leaders ready to step in is crucial for the health and sustainability of the local church.
No one knew that this year would be so challenging, and leaders were forced to learn new skills and ways to keep the church on mission. We live in an ever-changing world, so as a leader it’s crucial that you’re learning new skills and developing the leaders on your team along with developing leaders for the future.
