Leadership

Best practices for training up the next generation of church leaders

Whenever God’s people do the hard thing in the Lord’s way–when we love the unlovely, when we forgive our attackers, when we do good things to our enemy, when we soldier on in the face of adversity, when we maintain our joy in the midst of disaster and retaliate with love–twelve things begin to happen from that moment.

It would be many years before I began to realize how much I needed others. My failure to recognize the beauty of believers serving together cost me much in those early years.

Let God lead you through Scripture. Find passages that relate to your daily struggles. Many Bibles today have additional tools to help you. A simple study note or devotion can give you more confidence in your decision-making.

Leadership has to start with leading yourself well. You may be skilled, charismatic, or gifted, and those things may serve you well and advance your influence. Nevertheless, those abilities will only get you so far if you have not cultivated integrity.

While much power comes from formal positions with legitimate authority, a different kind of power is found in leadership roles with informal authority.

Flattery is like perfume, we’re told. It smells good but will make you sick if you swallow it. I’ve known too many preachers who swallow all the flattery they can find, then look around for more. Not wise.

When considering resources for our church, we must include the contributions of women. In recent years the hashtag #ReadWomen has surfaced to draw attention to this need.