100 Leadership Lessons #20 Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 1

In this post and the following three are 4 sets of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality. There are probably plenty more.

1. People holding wrong assumptions about what the church is:

• Church is meeting to attend rather than common life together
• Lack of understanding about every member ministry
• Unbiblical view of fellowship = activity or nice time together
• Unbiblical view of leaders = activity coordinators
• Unbiblical view of congregation = consumers or pupils
• Historical assumptions about relationship between clergy and laity
• Denominational assumptions or practices that turn leaders into a priesthood

100 Leadership Lessons #18 The Leader as Change Agent 1

Kingdom growth involves constant change by definition. A church that wants to be in exactly the same place in 10 years time is extremely complacent and will atrophy. Leaders are the people who mainly expect to receive and shape God-given vision and direction for where the church and its mission can and should be in the future. Change, however, is the biggest threat to stable organisational life so being able to lead through change is critical to church and kingdom growth. Whether leaders are allowed to lead for change, and how they do so, will determine whether a church develops for future gospel extension or concretises itself in a past reality.

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100 Leadership Lessons #14 Discipling People in the Ways of the Lord

Think hard to day about discipling people in the ways of the Lord as well as in the truths of the Lord.

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100 Leadership Lessons #12 Be Honest When Things Aren't Right

Ok, maybe this is a provocative one. Evangelicals (like me) can find it too easy to sweep under the carpet things that aren't right because we think we are doing and believing all the right things

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100 Leadership Lessons #13 Don't Try to Reverse-Engineer Discipleship

Think of three things: Growing disciples Growing local church structures Growing church activities Which of these produces the most fruit for leaders' labours?

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100 Leadership Lessons #11 How Did Paul Disciple Leaders?

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. (2 Tim. 3:10-11) This is a key discipline verse. It teases apart how the older leader, Paul, nurtured and trained the younger leader Timothy

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100 Leadership Lesson #10 Discipling Others in the Truth of the Lord

When discipling others it is always worth asking three questions I learned from reading Chick Yuill:

• What teaching do they need to enable them to get a biblical DNA?
• What opportunities for immersion do they need so they actually learn to do what God is calling them to do?
• What structures can we build to help them? NB - structures are for the sake of discipleship and only for the sake of discipleship. Not for the sake of building good-looking church. Read The Trellis and The Vine for a brilliant exposé of the dangers of confusing building church structures with building disciples

I also like to distinguish how to disciple people in the truth of the Lord and how to disciple them in the ways of the Lord. A few thoughts about the former:

1. Building Bible-centred prayerful living (don't make the mistake of stopping here, confusing discipleship with Bible knowledge and Bible study alone)

• Helping others know how to feed themselves from the Word
• Helping them know how to apply what it says to their lives

2. How to disciple others for their spiritual growth

• How to work with them for their progress and joy in God
• How to develop a passion for growing in spiritual maturity

3. How to help others grow in love for God
4. How to help others identify where they are in their spiritual walk and how to take next steps
5. How to live based on a daily appreciation of grace
6. How justification and adoption shape character, ambitions, goals and relationships
7. How to help them grow in the fruit of the Spirit