How do we identify potential future leaders in the church? A lot has been made of the “Blokes Worth Watching” approach associated with Philip Jenkins, Sydney Anglicans and ministry schemes in the early years of this century. This has been seen both positively and negatively with on the one hand, many in conservative evangelical circles seeking to learn from and mimic the approach whilst on the other hand, others have critiqued it as encouraging and entrenching and old boys club.
2 Timothy 3 describes those aspiring to be elders and deacons in terms of their home life, is it characterised by godliness and self-control? Additionally, elders are required to be competent to teach. We might draw from this that leaders should be word centred and spirit filled. The working out of a spirit filled life and obedience to Gods Word will be seen in personal self control as the fruit of the Spirit is displayed and love and care for others. The focus is on character before charisma.
As well as how to spot potential leaders, we might be thinking about how we develop them once spotted. There are plenty of leadership training courses out there. There’s even one available here from Faithroots, so I don’t want to dismiss the place of focused training. However, there is the risk that people can assume that they are being recognised and trained up for leadership posts on such courses only to be crushingly disappointed if it isn’t realised.
My thoughts are as follows. First, that if we want to identify and develop leaders, then we should take a leaf out of Paul and Timothy’s book. I have no problem with identifying people worth watching providing we don’t constrain this by our own blinkers and providing we don’t create a hierarchy and inner circles. Instead, what we should be doing is recognising that each and every member of the church should be worth watching, not for one narrow role but to enable them to use their gifts. So, instead of asking “who is worth watching?” at your leaders/staff meeting, look at the list of all your members and ask: “what are we seeing in them?” This means looking at what their character is telling us about them and their walk with Jesus and it means looking at the gifts we are seeing displayed in them.
We will be looking at their relationships.
- How do they relate to God? What are we seeing in terms of their prayer life, worship, growth?
- How do we they relate to God’s Word? Are they engaged in it? Hungry to be fed and to learn more about Jesus?
- How do they relate to others? Is there a love and concern for other people in the church, for their own family, for the lost? Do they show a pastoral concern.
As I said above, I can see the place for leadership specific training, wouldn’t knock it and provide some material on this site. However, I am inclined to put leadership training and development focus on two things. First, I want to give time to train people to open God’s Word, to be good handlers of it, able to understand and apply it to themselves and then to others.
Secondly, I want to encourage people to get trained in pastoral care so that they are able to disciple others and walk with them through the challenges of life. I work on the basis that pastoral care best happens through whole body ministry and that the primary role of leaders in the church is to ensure that the body is equipped for this purpose. This means that there will be lots of people who want to be better at this and that’s a good sign in them. Not every person who is concerned about pastoral care and who wants to go deeper in God’s Word wants to be a leader but every leader will be concerned for those two things. This also means that we can develop potential leaders by developing them in these two areas without creating presumption that they are on a track into a specific role and responsibility.
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