Over my years in ministry, I’ve recommended many different structures be put into place to help us grow and multiply healthy churches: coaching systems, church planter training and assessment, networks/cohorts of people in similar ministry roles. Those have yielded...
If you’re putting together a training system, a coaching structure, a discipleship approach, a leadership development plan—almost anything—there are five core elements you’ll need to put into place to make a truly great system: Keep it focused. Have a clear...
Too many people in church leadership are not disciples or making disciples. No wonder we have the problems we have in our churches. When disciples are fully trained they become like their teacher. Is that really what we want? Are we modeling what we want people to do?...
I once asked a seminary dean the question, “When students graduate from your program, what can they do?” He later told me that question kept him up at night for a couple of months. When we look at the ways we’ve traditionally trained people, there isn’t a strong...
The more successful we are at recruiting, the more that has the inadvertent effect of diminishing our emphasis on the long-term development of others. Why invest in long-term leadership development when you can just use ready-made leaders from somewhere else?...
Street improvements in Mexico, I am told, happen like clockwork once every five years—the year before elections. Every five years they’ll have some improvements done, but not the rest of the time. Any additional road work will wait until just before the...
