It is widely recognized that there is a leadership crisis in the Church around the world today – especially in regions of rapid church growth. It has been rightly observed that church planting is moving at the speed of a bullet train while leader development is following on a bicycle.

But how should we respond to this crisis? Should we try to pedal faster on our bicycles? Perhaps we should design a faster bicycle?

Of course, these solutions will not work. Faster bicycles will never catch up with the bullet train. The only thing that will keep up with the speed of the bullet train is the bullet train itself! Thus, our only realistic solution is to get on the train.

In other words, the only thing that will keep up with the speed of the Church is the Church! And the only way that leader development will keep up is if it gets back on the train of the Church.

When churches were planted in the Early Church, they had a culture of people-building from the very beginning. They followed Jesus’ command to “make disciples” (Matt. 28:19-20). Moreover, they simply did what they had seen Jesus do. He had built His disciples and they built others the same way, nurturing a deep culture of people-building in the nascent churches. This was the soil in which leaders naturally and organically grew.

Frontline Leader Development in the Early Church

In Paul’s first missionary journey, he established a powerful precedent for raising up leaders directly in the context of frontline church planting:

When they had preached the Gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:21-23)

When Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch during this first journey, the new churches there were very young (likely less than a year old), and yet there were emerging leaders ready to be appointed.

We see this also in Thessalonica. Notice Paul’s words to the young Thessalonian church:

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13)

The Thessalonian church was probably less than a year old at this point, and the new leaders in Thessalonica had not graduated from Bible school or been to a single leadership class. And yet here, Paul instructed the believers to recognize and respect the leaders among them. Early in the life of this church, they were already leading – and leading well!

This is not to suggest that these leaders were fully mature at that time. It takes a lifetime to build a leader. However, a strong foundation had been laid in their lives – a foundation they could then build upon in the coming years.

Where did these leaders come from? How were they built so quickly? And how were they built so well?

The answer is simple: the new church did what they had seen Paul do. Their lives were built through time with Paul as he taught them through his words and example, prayed with them and for them, empowered them, and gave them responsibilities and assignments. No doubt, Timothy spent further time with them doing the same things Paul had done while he was there (1 Thess. 3:1-2). This nurtured a culture of disciple-making in which leaders naturally emerged.

Jesus’ method of leader development was the same:

And He appointed twelve (whom He also named apostles) so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. (Mark 3:14-15)

The power of this nonformal “lifestyle” leader development was such that these leaders were identified and built deeply and rapidly right on the front lines.

Paul would have already seen these leaders at Thessalonica stepping forward to lead the church when he was there. Timothy would have seen the same thing in a more advanced state and reported this to Paul. Now Paul points them out to the people, but not by title or even by name. The people already knew who the leaders were – they were serving the people, equipping the people, protecting the people from false teachers, and guiding the people. They were doing the work – not because they had a pastoral job or title but because they loved the people and took responsibility and initiative. They were thinking and acting in ways that served and built the life of the church.

Moreover, what qualified these leaders was the life in Christ they displayed, the initiative they took to guide and equip the people, and their character, servanthood and vision. The whole process was natural and organic.

This shows us how leaders were established in the Early Church. They lived among the people, deeply engaging with them in the midst of their daily lives, serving them and working hard to equip them and guide them. They knew the needs, the problems and the opportunities of the church community and responded with care and persistence. They began doing the work first and were recognized later.

This is probably what happened in both Acts 14 and Titus 1.

And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:23)

This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you … (Titus 1:5)

Acts 14 was at the onset of Paul’s apostolic ministry, and Titus was written near the end. Clearly, this was Paul’s normal practice throughout.

Those whom Paul appointed as the new elders in the young churches were the ones who had already been doing the work and were recognized by the people.

Now I urge you, brothers – you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints – be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. (1 Corinthians 16:15-16)

Following Jesus’ example, Paul established a culture of people-building in the new churches, and in that culture the leaders naturally arose.

Consequently, the rapidly growing Early Church did not have the problem we have today. Leader development was not trying to catch up with church growth. Leader development was deeply embedded in the life of the Church from the start. There was no bicycle. Everyone was on the train from the beginning.

Conceptually, this is an extremely simple solution. Implementing it, however, is quite difficult, and is made even more so by our current methods of leader development. But we must do the hard work of returning to the biblical pattern of leader development that Jesus and Paul demonstrated. That is the only effective solution to our current leadership crisis.

Consequently, instead of trying to figure out how to make our existing seminaries and Bible schools incrementally work better or faster, the fundamental questions we should be asking are as follows:

• • How did Jesus build leaders in the Gospels?
  • How did the Early Church build leaders, as revealed in Acts and the Epistles?
  • Practically, what might that look like today in the Church around the world?
  • What are the necessary components of the initial foundation that must be laid in the lives of emerging leaders?
  • How can healthy leader development be embedded in today’s new churches from the time of church-planting onward – with the right people being identified as leaders and being given the spiritual nurture, relationships, experiences and instruction they need in order for their lives and leadership to be built well?

These are the kinds of questions that must be answered, and unless we do that, we are doomed to forever be chasing the bullet train.

Seven Paradigm Shifts

These are the seven key paradigm shifts required to transform the way leaders are built:

1.     A new goal

In the new paradigm, we focus intentionally on building the whole person. Of course, the healthy Christian leader needs strong biblical knowledge and the ability to teach but, by themselves, those things are not sufficient. The clear goal of leader development must be the development of the whole person – spiritual life, relational capacity, accountability, integrity, servanthood, vision, as well as complex thinking and acting competencies. Our goal is not only information but transformation. We must build healthy leaders.

2.     A new process

If we shift our goal from academics to building the whole person, it is immediately apparent that we need a new process. A purely academic process (desks, lectures, small group interactions, books, exams, papers and grades) will not effectively build spiritual life, servanthood, accountability, integrity and practical ministry capacity.

In the new paradigm, we implement a holistic process that gives strong and integrated attention to four dynamics:

• Spiritual Dynamics. Experiential union with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is the center of a truly transformational process. We must bring our emerging leaders to God!
• Relational Dynamics. Emerging leaders need more than lecturers; they need daily relationships with mature leaders, role models, examples and spiritual mothers and fathers – in the context of normal daily life and ministry. In the encouragement, support, challenge, correction, teaching, discipline and accountability of these relationships, character is built, marriages are strengthened, vision is clarified and spiritual life is nurtured.
• Experiential Dynamics. Leaders learn by doing, not only by listening to lectures and writing papers. They are stretched by challenging assignments and are transformed through the fires of suffering and pressure.
• Instructional Dynamics. The teaching of the Word of God – in an engaging way and woven into the ongoing daily realities of life and ministry responsibilities – is central to healthy leader development. Jesus taught theology this way. As a result, His disciples’ theology was so deep, robust and practical they turned the world upside down in a few years and then wrote the New Testament (from where we obtain our doctrine). But how did Jesus do it? He did not do it in an instructional vacuum; instead, He wove His teaching throughout a rich and deeply transformational context.

All four of these dynamics must be strongly present in an effective leader development process.

Many seminaries and Bible schools have recognized the value of a holistic process and are complementing their classroom agendas (information) with a variety of intentional spiritual, relational and experiential dynamics (transformation). But this hybrid method by itself is not enough to catch up to the train.

3.      A new design

Traditionally, we have not given sufficient thought to leader development design, often simply teaching as we were taught. Jesus, however, designed an extraordinary collage of diverse learning experiences for His emerging leaders.

In the new paradigm, we learn how to intentionally design learning experiences as Jesus did. Leader development is a somewhat disorderly, complex and multifaceted experiential collage of diverse people, relationships, experiences, responsibilities, opportunities, pressures, etc. that all work together to build the emerging leader. Thus, an effective leader development process is not a neat series of lectures but a fiery immersion in real-life, real-time experiences, reflecting the complicated and fundamentally difficult nature of Christian leadership, bringing deep heart issues to the surface to be dealt with and compelling the emerging leader to look utterly to God for victory and fruitfulness.

The best leader development design interacts with all this to build the lives of emerging leaders in a way that incorporates the transformational goal and the transformational process. Consequently, it is precisely designed for the specific needs of the specific people in the specific moment, and it is responsive and flexible. In our experience, in a well-designed and well-led holistic training program, the very deepest transformational opportunities come by being alert, and then wisely and skillfully responding to God’s design – serendipitous and providential opportunities that arise – not by rigidly following a linear set curriculum.

4.     Leaders build leaders

Given the heavy demands of ministry work, many leaders resort to sending their emerging leaders to academic institutions for training. However, ministry work should not be separated from leader development work. We must not allow ourselves to be too busy with leadership to build leaders!

We need to reconnect the two – leaders do ministry work and they build leaders at the same time.

This is what Jesus did.

And He appointed twelve (whom He also named apostles) so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. (Mark 3:14–15)

This is what the leaders in the Early Church did.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra – which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me … as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:10-11, 14-17)

Second Timothy 3:16-17 is often used as a proof-text for how we should build leaders: “We must teach them just as Paul taught Timothy.” However, the passage begins in verse 10! Paul was very purposeful in personally shaping a transformational context for his teaching – just as Jesus was. Paul not only instructed Timothy, but he took him along with him. Timothy’s life was changed through his relationship with Paul and through everything they experienced together.

Leader development was integrated into the normal daily responsibilities and experiences of the leaders in the Early Church. While they were doing ministry work, they were also building leaders. When they built leaders, they did ministry work. Ministry work and leader development went hand-in-hand and were united as one.

In the new paradigm, leaders embrace personal responsibility for building new leaders as a core part of what it means to be a leader. This shift alone has the potential to address both issues of quality and quantity. Quality is addressed as mature leaders walk alongside emerging leaders, deeply building their lives in long-term relationships – knowing them, praying with them, encouraging them, challenging them, holding them accountable, identifying their weaknesses and celebrating their victories – while at the same time imparting the vision, passion, courage and strategic perspectives of leadership. Quantity is addressed as every leader takes personal responsibility for building young leaders.

5.     Churches building leaders

Biblically, the primary context of leader development is the local church or cluster of churches. Just as Jesus built leaders in His cohort of disciples, so those disciples then built leaders in the early churches. They simply did the same thing the same way!

Accordingly, in the new paradigm, just as leaders personally embrace their God-given responsibility to build leaders, so local churches embrace their God-given responsibility to build their own sons and daughters. This means that while the leaders take primary and personal responsibility for building leaders, everyone in the church embraces the vision of building the next generation of disciples, everyone knows how to do it, and everyone does it!

In a healthy church everyone builds others:

• • Parents build their children (Eph. 6:4; Deut. 6:4-9; 11:18-21).
  • Existing believers nurture new disciples (Matt. 28:19-20).
  • The older women train the younger women (Tit. 2:3-5).
  • The mature men teach the younger men (2 Tim. 2:2).
  • Leaders build leaders (Mark 3:14).

This disciple-making culture in the church is the soil in which leaders naturally and organically grow.

This paradigm shift also has the potential to address both crises of the quality and quantity of leaders today. Some of the benefits are:

• • Multiplication. The inherent limitations of the institutional approach will be lifted as the church-integrated approach provides a model that can be multiplied virtually endlessly, with every local church or cluster of churches providing a learning environment for their emerging leaders. If every local church would build only one or two new leaders, the quantity crisis would be over!
  • Holistic development. The learning process becomes considerably more effective since the local church provides the spiritual, relational and practical context for the development of the whole person. In the local church there already exists a beautiful collage of people, relationships, friends, influences, spiritual mothers and fathers, mentors, coaches, good and bad examples, interactions with God, dependency on the Holy Spirit, prayer, worship, fasting, reflection, evangelism, experiences, tasks, responsibilities, pressures, duties, deadlines, opportunities, crises, blessings, sufferings, rejections, successes, mistakes, joys and sorrows. When our training initiatives weave prayerfully and strategically through this divinely-designed collage, they will always be immediately relevant and actionable. This is how disciples are made and leaders are built!
  • The right people receive training. The emerging and existing leaders who need training the most are usually those who are already engaged in ministry work and cannot leave their responsibilities for years at a time to go and study in a sometimes distant institution. Consequently, in the traditional approach we can end up training the wrong people. Moreover, in the life and relationships of the local churches, believers with specific leadership callings will be much more easily identified.
  • Flexibility. When it comes to leader development, “one size” does not fit all. Around the world, leaders from a vast variety of cultures, backgrounds, experiences, education levels, callings, etc. need to be built. Our approaches must be flexible and customizable. In addition, in many countries, the environment around the church is rapidly changing, again requiring continual flexibility in our approaches to leader development.
  • Self-support. The local church provides the financial support for the learning process, thus maintaining both responsibility for and control of the development of its own emerging leaders. To be truly self-governing, the community must be self-supporting. By being self-supporting, the local churches will be free from externally imposed agendas. Moreover, the costs of institutional theological education can be prohibitive; the money would be better spent on nurturing the capacity of the local churches to build their own leaders.
  • Security in restricted countries. In restricted countries large educational institutions are often not viable due to their size, visibility and the ease with which they can be closed down. Church-integrated learning communities, on the other hand, can be small, easily hidden and prolific.
  • Ongoing, lifelong leader development. The training is not limited to a certain period of time but continues throughout the emerging leaders’ lives. Leaders are built over lifetimes in the life, relationships and experiences of the churches.
  • Leader care. We may do a wonderful job of building leaders so they begin well, but if they do not receive appropriate care throughout their lives and ministries, many will not finish well. If Jesus and Paul needed friends and care, so do we!
  • Effective evaluation. Members of the local community who know the emerging leaders and who work with them on a daily basis are the best ones to help them establish goals for their development and evaluate their growth toward those goals. Moreover, evaluation is deep and rigorous, as the whole life of the emerging leader is evaluated, not only his academic competencies.

6.     Church planting through leader development

Jesus’ vision was for hundreds of thousands of churches around the world in every people group. He declared, “I will build My Church” (Matthew 16:18).

Jesus did not, however, personally plant a single church! Instead, He built leaders, and those leaders then turned the world upside down. We have done it the other way around by multiplying evangelistic efforts and planting many churches and then trying to address the need for leaders.

In the new paradigm, leader development is raised to the same level of priority and focus as church planting. Moreover, it is integrated into the life of the church from the very beginning, resulting in growing and sustainable churches.

7.     The centrality of the Person of Jesus Christ in Christian leadership

When Jesus described His own leadership, He said that everything He did and said flowed from His inner union with the Father:

The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this Man has learning, when He has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” (John 7:15-16; cf. Acts 4:13)

“I speak of what I have seen with My Father … [I have] told you the truth that I heard from God …” (John 8:38, 40)

“… the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” (John 5:19)

“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works.” (John 14:10)

In the new paradigm, union with Christ and dependency on the Holy Spirit are at the center of all our leader development initiatives. The Person of Jesus Christ is the Beginning and the End of all Christian leadership and leader development. We must build men and women who know God and live in continual dependence on Him, looking at Him, loving Him, abiding in the Vine.

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the Vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

This is how we can build Christian leaders who will, once again, turn the world upside down!

A Healthy Collaboration

More than 20 years ago, I was in a mentoring relationship with Ted Ward for several years. It was a great privilege. He was very affirming and encouraging toward our work. One of the things he repeatedly warned me about was, “Formal eats nonformal.” I have watched that happen many times as formal institutions and systems dominated and subverted nonformal approaches to leader development.

We now propose a different way of working together.

Fundamentally, we must return to the New Testament pattern of leader development – church-integrated leader development, where leaders are building leaders; where the leaders are built in the community of disciple-making churches; where the right emerging leaders are identified and then built holistically. This is the only effective response to our current leadership crisis.

This is the only approach that will enable today’s leader development efforts to keep up with the bullet train of global Church growth. We cannot catch the bullet train. We must get on board the train.

Today there are many ministries – both formal and nonformal – that are engaged in building leaders for churches around the world. However, much of the leader development work done today that is called nonformal is better characterized as “semiformal” in nature. The objectives (gaining of knowledge and skills), the process (classrooms, with lectures, small group discussions, etc.) and the outcomes (certificates) are scaled-down versions of formal – an example of formal “eating” what began as nonformal. Consequently, the vast majority of training initiatives around the world are either formal or semi-formal.

Relatively few of us are working on purely nonformal approaches to leader development that are deeply and entirely integrated into the lives of the churches. And we need help! We have learned a great deal and have made some progress, but we have a long way to go. There is so much work to be done, and on such a large scale.

We need the brilliance, experience, maturity and commitment to biblical truth and leader development that resides in the hearts and lives of formal practitioners. We need the help of our dear co-workers in the Gospel to serve the Global Church by thoroughly answering the questions of how Jesus and the Early Church built leaders, and then exploring and pioneering new ways of leader development that are consistent with those answers. This must be done around the world in a vast multiplicity of cultures and contexts.

Help us return the vision, responsibility and practice of leader development to the churches and local leaders! Help us build leaders on the front lines – informally and organically in the life of the church through the spiritual opportunities, relationships and experiences that are already vibrantly present there.

There are many specific ways in which formal practitioners can contribute directly to leader development in the local churches. Here are a few examples:

• • Envisioning and equipping local leaders and churches to build leaders.
  • Designing appropriate holistic processes and learning experiences that can be used in the local learning communities.
  • Developing contextually appropriate materials and resources to be used in the local learning communities.
  • Providing guidance regarding training quality.
  • Providing certain kinds of specialized learning.
  • Researching critical issues for the churches.
  • Building a few brilliant scholars. Every nation needs some! Of course, their whole life must be built; not only their head.

Clearly, some of these initiatives will require realignment and new learning.

The ultimate purpose of every training initiative for church leaders – whether formal or nonformal – must be to nurture the vision and capacity of the local churches to do their own holistic leader development work, and to weave it naturally into their life and ministry from the beginning. Thus, the main point of collaboration is not formal and nonformal collaborating together, but both collaborating with the local churches on the front lines. With everyone working together on the right things, God will help us to make major strides ahead in responding well to the current leadership crisis.

Our proposal is that we all – formal, semiformal and nonformal – in unity say to the Church with one voice:

“Dear Bride of Christ, we are committed to helping you do what God has called you to do, and what you deeply desire to do – to build your own leaders well in a way that is integrated into the life of your churches from the very beginning. And we will walk with you – praying with you, trusting God with you, serving you, struggling together with you, exploring with you – to do that!”

If we do this together, it will change the Church around the world!