A very short pep talk: "I know it’s hard, but that’s why you’re the leader. It’s your job to make the difficult decisions no one else wants to make." - Cooke
"In the past six years we’ve lived in four different cities and served at three different churches in various roles.... I can’t speak to the challenges of staying in a single place for a long period of time. I can, however, offer four lessons I’ve learned about staying from our going." - TGC
By Micah Colbert. Reposted from Rooted Thinking.
Leadership development is one of those things that churches frequently talk about but rarely plan for or actually do. According to Ephesians 4:12-16, every church is responsible to train its members for gospel-advancing, church-building ministry. But how do we do that? Below is an example of the process our church uses to develop leaders for ministry:
Our prayerful desire at Community of Grace Church is to cultivate a culture where ministry leaders are encouraged and equipped to use their gifts to serve the body of Christ. For this to happen, we recognize the need to be intentional about ministry leadership development. As elders, we have identified a three-step process that we will use to choose, train, and equip potential leaders for gospel advancing ministry:
The elders seek to identify servants who are teachable, able, faithful, and fruitful (STAFF) to lead and serve in the various ministries of Community of Grace Church. Below are questions we use to help identify STAFF people:
"The youngest pastors (ages 18-44) are most likely to say they deal with stress in ministry (78%), while the oldest pastors (ages 65 and older) are the least likely (47%)." - C.Index
"Balance matters, because if you only deal with what’s in front of you, you’re not necessarily a leader – you’re a manager. However, if you get so distracted by your big ideas that you take your eye off what’s in front of you – you’re not a leader, you’re a failure." - Phil Cooke
"Leaders should be readers. Here are some ways for busy Christian leaders to do more reading" - Chuck Lawless
"In this modern era, this is all the more reason to stop ourselves, be 'slow to speak' and 'slow to anger,' and perhaps go to a trusted friend and ask, “Should I send this email/post this blog? How would you recommend I change it?'" - Alcorn
"Chances are, your emails never go away. If you use Gmail for instance, Google has stated that they still keep the emails you delete. With other email apps or servers I don’t know, but if I was you, I would think about email as something that lives out there beyond my 'delete' button." - Cooke
