As a Christian leader—regardless of what type of ministry—you know you need to be intentionally developing and training new leaders. They won’t just show up ready to go, and the future of the ministry depends on it. But it can feel overwhelming to consider all the components that go into effective leadership development. Even if you knew it all, how would you have time to incorporate all that is needed for their learning?  3 Essential Facets in Leadership Training Initial training: How do you give them enough of the very basics in order to get started?  On-the-job training: How do ..read more

If you’re at all familiar with marriage, you know people don’t generally marry someone just like themselves. They often marry someone who is quite different from them in significant ways. The life-of-the-party guy person marries the “Can we just have a small wedding with only family?” person. The ultra-organized person marries the poet with their head in the clouds. You get the idea. If you have a spouse, you can probably think of multiple examples right off the top of your head.  3 Keys to help your marriage thrive in ministry So what happens when you put those differences into ministry ..read more

If you’re a big-vision kind of leader, you know the excitement of getting people on board, excited, and moving together toward a vision. You also know you need to identify your obstacles beforehand so they don’t derail your plans. Identifying those obstacles and proactively addressing them also goes a long way toward helping more hesitant people get on board. Because we all know that if you don’t raise and address the obstacles, someone in your congregation certainly will.  Discovering obstacles I remember being in the early stages of leading my congregation toward a vision of church pla ..read more

Spiritual warfare is a reality. We may use different images or metaphors to describe it—war certainly doesn’t work for everyone—but there’s a constant struggle in this life between the powers of good and the powers of evil. Ephesians 6:12: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. What is our part? Scriptures like this raise so many questions for Christians: What is our part in that conflict? How can we resist? How can we ..read more

Today is part two of an interview with Dennis Bachman, who works with younger leaders. If you missed part 1, check out last week’s blog entry.  What are some common stumbling blocks more experienced leaders run into? Impatience and making premature assumptions. Because older leaders often have busy schedules and many responsibilities, we’d like to see progress made quickly. Investing the kind of time necessary is hard, and we get impatient. As a result, we often oversimplify, quickly reading and categorizing people—which leads us into the second common problem: making premature assumptio ..read more

It is possible to mentor younger leaders and make a difference. What strategies are really the most effective? We sat down with Dennis Bachman of ViaCordis, who spends a good deal of his time working with younger leaders with success to find out. Here’s Part 1 of our interview: Dennis, tell us a little bit about yourself and your current ministry. After 30 years at New Song Church in a variety of staff positions, including Senior Pastor, I have now assumed leadership of ViaCordis, a group of disciple-making cohorts. ViaCordis began as a house church movement that Bob Logan helped to found, an ..read more

What’s one of the biggest pitfalls experienced leaders fall into as they mentor and develop leaders from the younger generation? Defaulting to methods instead of principles. It’s so easy for us to think that what worked well for us will work well for someone else. But there are two variables we aren’t taking into account: 1) this is a different generation and ministry context, and 2) this younger leader may be a quite different person from you in terms of gifts, strengths, weaknesses, personality, style, etc. Let’s look at generational context first.  Context matters Each generation need ..read more

One of the biggest questions younger leaders are asking—when faced with the possibility of an older mentor—is, “Do they really care about me as a person? Or is this just part of their job?” Or more cynically, “Are they just using me to fill a slot?” The first step for you, as a would-be mentor of younger leaders, is to be honest about answering those questions within yourself. Do you really want to mentor young leaders? What motivates you to consider mentoring younger leaders? Young people are no longer flattered by interest from established leaders and are not willing to follow blindly. If t ..read more

Who should you invest in? Even when we are willing to spend the time required for real relational investment, sometimes we have a challenge in finding the right people to mentor.  3 Steps to Identify Young Leaders to Invest in  1. Pray with your eyes open The most essential first step, of course, is prayer. Not just, “God, bring me someone to mentor,” or “Make it someone who is interested in X issue,” but real listening prayer. Looking through your acquaintances with God, listening for the voice of the Spirit, paying attention to what he is putting on your heart. For effective praye ..read more

You’re an experienced leader and you’ve learned from that experience. You have discovered some things that work and some things that don’t, and you know how to spot common difficulties along the way. You’d love to be able to share your wisdom with some younger leaders… to help those coming along behind you so they don’t have to learn everything the hard way. That’s a noble ambition, one certainly in keeping with 2 Timothy 2:2: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.  Encounterin ..read more