This week I’m doing a five-part series to help you critically examine and sharpen your own ministry. The goal is to create a template that will allow you to serve as a consultant for your own ministry… a way of reflecting, assessing and clarifying where you are and where you want to go.
Today is step 5: leadership starting point. No matter how big your goal, you have to start with where you’re at. In the same way, if you want to develop leaders, you need to start with people who are not yet leaders. Today we’ll think through the qualifications for potential or beginning leaders. Reflect on the questions below and journal your responses.
- What does a potential entry level leader look like?
- How do you identify leadership potential in someone who is not currently an official leader but could be?
- What needs to be in place for someone to begin learning to lead?
- What are the fewest things they need to have in place to start learning to lead?
- What are the knock-out factors that would disqualify them from entry level leadership?
- Thinking of some of your potential leaders, what do they need to develop in order to get to this place of beginning leadership?
- How can you help them put those things in place?
- What’s the fewest number of things new leaders need to develop during this entry level phase to be able to function well at a basic level?
- How will you help them as they begin discerning their calling and long-term contribution to the kingdom?
The outcome of step 5 is a clear checklist for evaluating the readiness of people to be developed as leaders.
If you have engaged in all five of the exercises described here on the blog this week, you will have come away with multiple templates to help you reflect on, assess, and clarify any ministry areas in terms of leadership development. You can take these tools back with you, share them with your leaders, and implement them with your team.