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In many of our congregations we have assigned or nominated leaders, but very few spiritual leaders. Many people don’t even know where to begin to nurture leadership. Below are some suggestions in getting started.
- Have every staff member, starting with the Senior Pastor, pray about and select 8-10 people in the congregation who are open to be discipled.
- Meet with this group at least twice a month.
- Begin to read the book of Acts and explore how the Holy Spirit began to lead leaders beyond the confines of the church.
- Explore how the Jerusalem leaders wanted to control the process and stop this movement. What are the applications today?
- Take your leaders out into the community to do a service project or begin to interview the un-churched (see section on Reading the Community).
- Continue to mentor these leaders and assist them in identifying their gifts and calling.
- As the leaders grow, nurture them to form their own small groups.
- Bruce Cole talks about a three-pronged approach to making sure leadership is also “spiritual leadership”. He calls it JAB.
- J stands for Jesus. Make Jesus the explicit center of your conversation with leaders.
- A stands for affirm. Specific, authentic affirmation does wonders for leaders.
- B stands for Bible. Ground all mentoring in Bible stories.
- Robert Hargrove observes that leadership is missing when:
- There is lack of excitement about the future.
- People vacillate about a situation rather than take a stand.
- People are not taking risks or the initiative.
- Discuss these three factors with your leaders.
- As a staff person or mentor, spend at least 20 minutes in prayer before meeting with a leader(s) you are coaching. You have to be prayed-in and dialed-in to be a mentor of spiritual leaders.
As this developmental process grows, Spiritual Leaders then have the responsbility to:
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