After three weeks in my work as a leader in the establishment/revitalization of churches, I was able to put words into something that bothered me Our group of 15 people was made up of some who came with me to help me at work and others that ?of the existing congregation that we were trying to revitalize. Some members of the group were happy and satisfied servants, others were skeptical that he would “walk,” but they wanted to try, and others were distrustful and unhappy.
But the unpleasant feeling I finally managed to put into words is that, no less than some of these people, my wife and I had no one else in the church who cared as much as we do.
- This is not a criticism of others; is simply the reality of church establishment.
- For a church implanter.
- Work may be close to exhaustion.
- This work combines his religion with his career and his livelihood; What is at stake may seem very important and it would not be realistic to expect many other people to feel as involved as you do in the viability of the emerging church.
- I know from my own experience and by talking to other church implanters that this discovery can increase feelings of isolation and loneliness.
What I wanted at the beginning was for others to come up to me and carry the weight of leadership, responsibility and attention, now, 12 years later, I no longer feel alone at work. As I write this article. I am in the middle of a sabbatical. In my absence, other elders, church leaders, and deacons led the congregation quite effectively.
So, if you are a church implanter, you must first and foremost focus on preaching the Word, week after week; without it, no matter what you raise, it will not be a church; but after that, you should focus on the development and culture of other leaders. This has an impact that goes far beyond their own personal need for others to share the burden of caring for the church. Here are three other benefits of developing leaders in your church:
The most important way to help church members grow is to faithfully preach the Word of God week after week, but pastoral ministry also involves many individual investments in people’s lives, and even the most diligent church implementer will have limits on the number of people. He can take care of you. By developing other leaders who can teach, train disciples, evangelize, counsel, and shepherd the flock, you raise others who can care for the health of all church members.
Having all the leadership focused on an individual is certainly not healthy for that individual, but it’s also not healthy for a church. A plurality of leaders means that a congregation is not hostage to decisions that have been made without regard to the prejudices, weaknesses, and ignorance of the church implanter. When more people are involved in church leadership, each member is less likely to become dependent on the gifts and personality of the church implanter (who, after all, may not be with them forever). and each member is more likely to integrate into the life of the Church as a whole.
I do not know your experience in space-time continuum, but I have discovered that I can only be in one place at a time at a given time, and that means that there are many places where I cannot be present to proclaim the gospel and the believing disciples. Assuming the same applies to you, then you’ll have to invest in other people who can go to places where you’re not.
Establishing new churches locally and internationally requires leaders who can initiate and supervise work. These leaders have to come from somewhere, so we have to invest in their development.
Church implanters have a million things to do, many of which seem urgent. Investing your time in training new leaders may seem like slow work that doesn’t produce immediate, measurable results. But in the long run, it will help strengthen and expand the reach of your department.
Here are three suggestions on how to find and develop new leaders for your congregation and others:
Many church implanters are controlling. I don’t know if the nature of work attracts people like this (because it’s easier to run a church that you start than the one you inherited from someone else) or if setting churches makes people look like this (because many seem out of their control). But he will never be able to form new leaders if he is unwilling to allow others to share the responsibility of teaching, making decisions, and caring for the flock.
Some say it’s dangerous to let unqualified people run the church, and I agree. I suggest you don’t do that. First, look for people who have the relevant biblical skills (Titus 1. 5-9; 1 Timothy 3. 1-13) and give them the opportunity to lead, even if they do things a little differently from you.
Sometimes a person’s skills and gifts are obvious and obvious, but when I look at the leaders our church helped shape, I would say that many of them were people they would not have immediately considered to have a “leadership potential. “because of personality (maybe they were? Quiet, introverted, and modest) or culture (I learned that leadership is sometimes different from people from different cultures), but I know I was guilty of ignoring people who eventually became effective leaders. did you hear about these people? Look around and ask questions such as:
This is where the ‘tire meets the road’. Once you are committed to training new leaders and identifying potential candidates, you should begin training them. Can this happen in different ways [1]? From individual meetings to large group classes, but you should start investing intentionally to help develop the character and skills every potential individual leader will need for the specific service they will do for the body.
1: For example, can you find the program of the first leadership training course I took in our church in an appendix to my book?(Faithful Editor).