The Malphurs Goup | Current Edition

Leadership Development

(October 1, 2008) Bill Hybels once said, “The church is the hope of the world, and leaders are the hope of the church.” Who among us would disagree? I’m not aware of any church that would post a sign out front announcing, “No leaders needed!”

As your leadership goes, so goes the church! Yet how many churches have in place an intentional process to develop leaders at every level of ministry? Can you name one? However, it's difficult if not impossible for the senior pastor to find the time or have the expertise to develop and maintain such a vital process-especially in a large church. And if you leave their development up to the leaders, it may be sporadic at best if it happens at all. So what’s the solution?

I’m convinced that someone will need to take responsibility for equipping leadership if it’s going to happen. And I believe that this is the role of the ministry staff. If it doesn’t happen at the staff level, where else would it happen? The solution is to train your ministry staff to equip your lay people to lead,

I would go so far as to argue that leadership development is a primary responsibility of all your ministry staff and a requisite for hiring them! However, some of you are thinking, that could never happen here-we have some staff who don’t have a leadership bone in their bodies? But maybe the problem is that they’ve never been trained as leaders! After all, where would they get this kind of training?

A good strategy is to focus on staff development that, in turn, will lead to the development of your lay leadership. First train the staff, and then let them train the leaders, because the staff development process should serve to mirror and model your lay leadership development process.

How does this work? You begin by designing a unique but consistent development plan for each staff person in the four developmental areas of character, knowledge, skills, and emotions (EQ). First, you ask what kind of character does the person need to display? Second, what do they need to know to lead and train leaders? Third, what kind of skills will they need? And finally where does he or she need to be emotionally?

Next, someone on the team such as the pastor in the small church and the executive pastor in a large church or better a trained consultant would meet individually twice a year or quarterly with each staff person to see how they are progressing and to coach them in their professional development in general and their equipping of lay leaders in particular.

One reason why I would recommend that you use a trained, experienced consultant is that such a person would head off a number of potential problems with your staff, because the staff will listen to and trust someone from the outside when they may not be as open with a pastor for fear of losing his/her job. They tell consultants things they would never share with their pastor.

If you’re interested and would like to investigate this further, then see Aubrey Malphurs’ Maximizing Your Effectiveness (Baker Books) and Building Leaders (Baker Books).

If you’re interested in more information on the Malphurs Group or would like to work with an experienced consultant in designing an intentional leadership development process, contact the Malphurs Group.

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