Building Leaders

Discipleship is messy. I would love if it were a simple upward trajectory of growth, but that’s not reality. Sadly, my own laziness and selfish desires did not fit well in some of my discipleship efforts. As a result, I learned a few lessons about leading others closer to Christ.

You've heard of “buyer’s remorse” ‒ that feeling of regret just after you put your money down for something. But whether money is involved in a decision or not, there’s always a price of some kind. Every decision risks something.

I remember one leader admitting to me, “I would never want to work my way out of the job.” At the time, I was shocked. On reflection perhaps he was just being more honest than most of us dare. To create forward momentum we constantly need new people to step into greater responsibility. Cultivating leaders is critical.

"If only my people would just do what I ask!" I've heard too many leaders utter those words and then, in their frustration, implement solutions that don't seem to make things better. Maybe leaders can sharpen their approach with a simple shift in the question they ask themselves.

Instead of trying to create a single curriculum for everyone to use, we should nurture leaders’ capacity to design their own leader development. Some will emerge as specialist designers for complex design, while everyone will be able to do simple design.

Anyone can do simple design, and we need to nurture the capacity of every leader (and believer) so that everyone does it. In this way, across the life of the church everyone will understand that they need to build the whole person and everyone at a simple level will know how to do it. Consequently, across the life of the church everyone will nurture and build others. Parents will build children, disciples will build new disciples, leaders will build new leaders. This is a healthy church – a place of continual nurturing of life, where everyone takes responsibility for building others.

Recently I ate a very nice dish when I was in Asia. It was a famous seafood dish for the region – one dish with many different ingredients. There were noodles, water, seafood, ginger, sugar, rice wine and other things. There were a lot of unique ingredients but they all went together to make one tasty dish. This is how to design training! When the chef prepares the dish, he knows what he intends the final product to look like, smell like and taste like. He starts with the goal and then he determines what ingredients need to go in, in what order, how they should be mixed together and how it should be cooked – all the details of the design.

Chinese Christians have become adept at finding solutions by relying upon the Lord. Partners with them should be encouraged to bring tools rather than providing solutions. These tools in the hands of Chinese leaders may provide the means for devising suitable approaches to the challenges they face. Brent says mentors that model godly character traits help to build solution-finding leaders.

To reach the unevangelized of today and tomorrow we should focus on “reaching the group” – by planting a church that will endure and will reach this generation and all of the future generations that will be born.

Without followers, leadership does not exist. It’s the first followers who “transform a lone nut into a leader.” Or as the Malawian proverb beautifully puts it: “A leader without followers, is simply someone going for a walk.”

What makes a better teacher: the ability to ask the right questions or having all the answers? Is it better to be the “Bible Answer Person” or the one who encourages the learner to think? Remarkably, Jesus only answered three of the 307 questions He asked. Why was that?

We all know that the most effective leadership development takes place in a true mentoring relationship, where life impacts life on a frequent basis. However, I have found that stories of real people can be powerful instruments in God’s hands.