Chris Miller, President of Miller Management, is the guest host of this week’s episode. He is joined by his colleague, Curt Vignery, Pastoral Care at TheRock of KC.
The first two episodes in this series dealt with Selecting & Developing leaders and then Empowering & Releasing them. Specifically in the church. Then we focused on the church, but also touched on the business side of leadership development. Next, our guest and host talked about practical steps to take to develop leaders. Today, the discussion focuses on the importance of leadership mentoring and training.
Developing Other Leaders
For our guest, the first five years of ministry and the mentoring he received during that time were very crucial. The discipleship, evangelism training, and studying the Word together, especially for someone who didn’t grow up in that environment, was very valuable for Curt.
When it comes to training and developing volunteers – well, really anyone – our guest believes that true leadership can see something in someone else and help develop that. He is energized by getting the right people the right seat on the bus. He believes that a lot of leadership can be developed.
“True leadership looks like Christ-like leadership: discipleship, mentoring, developing others.” – Curt Vignery
Traits to Look for in Your Mentee
Traits their church looks for in a leader: humility. Talent is the first thing that jumps out at you, the first thing you notice, but humility and teachability is necessary; more so than talent.
The second thing is passion. Or it might be described as hunger. This could be their attitude and general philosophy on life. As a leader, you are able to fan that flame, no matter how small that fire is, as long as there is something there to flame. Poor leadership shrinks down to the bear minimum, our guest encourages us to raise that bar higher and see what people are capable of.
Process to Invite New Leaders In
One way to invite someone in to leadership is to test them out – meaning calling someone into more to see how they respond. For our guest, he was told he was going to learn a new instrument because there was a void in the band. Another of his examples was when someone from the congregation came to him with an idea and he responded, great – let’s get you started on co-leading this.
Replacing Ourselves
Our host wants to know, how do we appropriately empower someone to take something over? Our guest responds that, “We have to have humble, truthful, and clear conversations with people.” And he said he knows that comes with maturity.
Another example: he had a younger guy come to him and wanted to play in the band. He knew he wasn’t ready, but instead of sending him back on his own to work on his skill by himself and come back, Curt decided to have the band mentor and develop him. He stood right next to the best guitar player in practice, he went with the band to a worship conference, he was faithful in his practice. Now, he is one of their best players. This not only gave the lead guitar player an opportunity to grow his discipleship, but also to have the younger guy be mentored – because there was a fire already there.
Be Fruitful and Multiply
This is our job, to raise up other people; develop other leaders. We were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. This applies not only to families, but also to ministry, and to business. If God has put something in your hands, he wants you to multiply it. You are replacing your job, but not all of your traits. According the book we mentioned in part one, you teach what you know, we reproduce what we are. So we need to be cognizant of those things we are passing on.
Our guest’s call to the Church – Are we reproducing, or are we managing departments? We are in a hurting world, we need to reproduce the church now more than ever.
In Conclusion
The more we can grow and develop leaders, the more ministry we can accomplish. This concludes our month long conversation of Leadership Development. You can revisit each week of our Leadership Development series here:
- Leadership Development – Selecting & Developing
- Leadership Development – Empower & Release
- Effective Leadership Development Principles
- Leadership Development – practical steps to develop leaders
Next month our topic tackles Marketing in Ministry.
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Special thanks to our guest, Curt Vignery, and our masters of all things Podcasting, Chris and Lauren Miller, for this fifth episode in our Leadership Development series.