Raising Leaders from the Harvest and for the Harvest 2

Earlier this week I was doing missionary training in Auburn, Alabama.  It was a great blessing to work with a wonderful group of guys who have a heart for planting churches across North America, and throughout the world.

One of our sessions included an extensive discussion on rasing up leaders to pastor the new churches we plant, with those future elders coming from the harvest field and not already long-term Kingdom citizens.  We took a look at the way Jesus raised up men, just extracted from the kingdom of darkness, and eventually released them to make disciples of all nations.

One of the best resources that I have found on leadership development, written by church planters, is a little-known work by Bob Logan and Neil Cole.  Raising Leaders for the Harvest is a very practical work on this topic.  Here are Logan and Cole’s observations regarding how Jesus invested in leadership development:

• He started with people from the harvest (Matt 4:18-22; 9:9)

• He gave His followers an effective model (Matt 4:23; 9:35-36)

• He trained leaders through on-the-job ministry assignments (Matt 10:1-5ff)

• He commissioned them to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18-20)

• He released the multiplication of disciples and churches all over the place (Acts and church history)

I’m going to conclude today by asking you to consider a few questions related to this topic:

How are you doing when it comes to raising up leaders to extend the glory of God among the nations of the world?  Are you thinking about it? Do you have a leadership development plan in place?  If not, why not?  What are you doing to overcome your struggles in this area?

Look over the five points above.  Does your leadership development process begin with new Kingdom citizens?  What is the example you are modeling before them?  Is it biblical?  Who is able to reproduce your example–only a few high capacity, multi-talented leaders?  If so, what are you also doing to raise up the majority who represent the lower levels of leadership capacity?  Is your equipping of leaders heavily based on hands-on training, or are you mainly lecturing to them and telling them to read books?  Are you empowering and mobilizing those leaders for church multiplication as either sending them to pastor well-established churches and planting others across North America and in other countries, or are you trying to hold on to them indefinitely?

Leadership development is not just a missionary concern.  We must have a strategy for the development of leaders in established churches as well.  And while many of these leaders with whom we are equipping and mobilizing are long-term Kingdom citizens, we must make sure that we do not limit leadership development to these people alone.  Our leadership development process must be designed to raise up leaders who have recently arrived from the harvest.  How is your leadership development strategy in this area?

Raising leaders from the harvest and for the harvest! Jesus did it.  The Apostolic Church followed His example.  We should too.