I always recommend that denominational or network leaders focus at least 20% of their time on long-term capacity. That means raising up and developing leaders, coaching leaders, creating a leadership farm system. These are the activities that increase your long-term ministry capacity—and they are also the activities most likely to get pushed away by all the urgent needs that arise.
Twenty percent is only one day per week, but it’s the one that’s going to pay off 4 to 7 years from now. If you set aside one day a week to invest in long-term leadership capacity building, ten years from now people will be coming to you asking, “How did you do this?” Your answer will be, “We started ten years ago. And we consistently invested in long-term leadership development.”
As ministry leaders, we always want the quick fix. Instead, we need to sow the seeds and cultivate what begins to grow. By consistently building in time to increase our leadership capacity, we can raise up the next generation of leaders from the grassroots.