100 Leadership Lessons #13 Don't Try to Reverse-Engineer Discipleship
LeadershipThink of three things:
- Growing disciples
- Growing local church structures
- Growing church activities
Which of these produces the most fruit for leaders' labours?
Answer: almost always the first one. The reasons being that nurturing biblical, missional disciples naturally flows out into biblical church and missional activity.
However the same is not necessarily (or, indeed, often) true in reverse. Building our view of what church should be often doesn't work backwards into growing disciples. Still less if we merely pour all our energy into activity-running.
One conclusion is that all leaders ought to have a group of people they are discipling. And then so should those people. If you are a leader without such a group, why is that and how could you get one?
If you are a leader who is currently expending all your energy on categories 2 & 3, how can you start to do #1? You will only benefit others, the church and, yes, yourself, by getting a small band of people with you who are growing together in living out the good news.
Reader Comments (1)
I have always said as a pastor it cannot be a one man show you have to have people who are F.A.T. (faithful available and teachable) discipleship is to be a full circle process.