Leadership Development

Can I just tell you we had a great OT meeting last night? (For those who may not know what the OT is, it is our Operations Team. They oversee all of the operations of the church.) We started working through lessons of leadership over the last few weeks and last night's discussion rocked. I was so excited a couple weeks ago to hand out Bill Hybels book: Courageous Leadership. We read a chapter a week, and then discuss it at our meeting. Last night we had to manage two chapters so it was about the first hour of our meeting, but the reason I let it go on so long was because it was some of the most basic parts of leadership that our young leaders had never embraced as their own.

I love pastoring this church because of our developing leaders. I discerned the spiritual gift of leadership in my life long ago, because a pastor/mentor/friend, Phil Foster, discerned it in me. About a week before I went to college he gave me the book Developing the Leader Within You by John Maxwell. Off to college I went with the only book I owned and I began reading it. It was a turning point for me. It began to frame the way I saw my life developing. Could I really be a leader? I spent the first couple years in college learning how to lead, and emerged as a leader on my campus. That's not to say that I didn't make huge mistakes in leadership. One summer I had a person hate me so bad they left the concert tour we were on. But I learned from that, and tried to improve. By the time I left school and went to work in Pasadena, I had leadership experience, but would learn over the next 6 years what it meant to provide pastoral leadership. I misstepped there too. My biggest error was not doing a more intentional job of raising up leaders. I had great workers along side me, that I led, and some of them had great leadership giftings, but I feel I did little to really develop them.

When I was preparing to launch the church, I assembled a team of leaders. They were "leaders-to-be". I think they probably viewed themselves more as workers, but I saw and see in them the potential of making significant contributions of leadership of their own. Most of them had never been in a leadership position in the church. That's why it's a joy to see them growing and learning about leadership. Leaders are learners. But they're not learners only. They have to take action. That's what takes courage. Last night one of the team said, "I never thought of my self as a spiritual leader...I never thought of myself as spiritual." What a fantastic step in leadership! To reframe your vision of what you see yourself as, and what God sees you as.

Another person on the team seemed to be feeling a lot of pressure under the weight of these discoveries. I remind her of what I told her the first time we talked after she agreed to the post she leads in. I told her, "I'm not the pastor that I will be tomorrow, or tomorrow. But I promise to improve." That's all it is. I'll nurture the gift God has given me a little more, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, I'll become what He wants me to be. The beautiful part is that God has already given us what we need to do what He's positioned us to do for the kingdom.

What about you? Are you leading? Are you learning? Perhaps you are not in a leadership position, or perhaps you would say that you don't have the spiritual gift of leadership. That's fine. Let me ask you this. Are you nurturing your gift as much as I'm nurturing mine? Are you investing as much in giving, mercy, administration, wisdom, etc. as I am in the gifts God has given me? The church needs you and the gifts God has given you to flourish.

--Ben