03.09. Leadership Training
Leadership Training
(The author of this article is concerned with personal discipline that is geared to raising up leaders in the local assembly. Elders should always make provision for men to share their ministry and eventually to be their successors.) As important as gospel preaching is in the mission of the church, if we incline our vision no higher than seeing souls saved, of having as our ultimate goal the conversion of unbelievers to become faithful meeting-attenders, then we are guilty of short-sightedness and will eventually be faced with the prospect of a spiritually weak and impotent assembly.
We must set our sights on nothing less than the transformation of immature believers into leaders of the church if we are to share the vision of the One who declared. "I will build my church." In fact, the key factor that insures the continuance of His living edifice is the raising up of spiritual leaders from generation to generation, a strategy that the Master Himself was busily engaged in when He uttered the preceding statement. But if we are to share the vision of the Lord Jesus for church leadership, then we must also adopt His method if we hope to succeed. And His method was personal discipleship - the choice of certain men to be with Him. If the Savior Himself trained His men through three years of constant, personal attention, how can we expect to see effective leaders raised up by relying solely on Bible classes and pulpit ministry? An illustration of the Lord’s method is seen in His work with Peter. Study the occurrences of statements and questions, which He directed to Peter, and you will begin to catch glimpses into the personal relationship between Peter and his Lord. And you will see the Savior at work in the life of His disciple - confronting, challenging, encouraging, transforming a rough, untaught fisherman into a faithful shepherd of the flock of God. We can assume that the Savior’s method was no different with the eleven other disciples. When the training was complete, He had raised up men who, when filled with the Holy Spirit, actually turned the world upside down. Of course, we can think of objections to following this strategy in our own lives. It seems to us that greater numbers in the training relationship would produce greater dividends In the end. So we prefer to teach large classes and preach to hundreds, hoping to affect more lives at one time. But the result too often is hundreds of shallow Christians. You cannot disciple crowds. Yet when considering the option of spending our time with one or two key men on a regular basis, we think within ourselves. “Why this waste?” and prefer to scatter our efforts across the masses. But this was not the Lord’s approach to leaving a legacy of strong leaders.
Another difficulty to overcome in adopting our Lord’s approach is the cost of transparency. We run the risk of being known by our disciple in a way that would never be true in a class or from a pulpit. The Lord did not shrink from that intimacy but allowed Himself to be seen, heard, and handled by twelve men every day for three years. When the time had ended, all except one had acquired the same selfless love for others that they had seen and experienced in Him. This is not to imply that specially gifted and charismatic men cannot have a strong influence on the lives of others solely through ministry to the multitudes. But such men represent a small percentage of the body of Christ, and to expect this method to be the chief source of church leadership is both unrealistic and unscriptural. The result of this method will be a church that flourishes during the active ministry of one man and then dies away with his passing -- for want of faithful men to carry on in his place. Contrast this situation with the Lord’s parting words to Peter (John 21:15) and those of Paul to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:2).
Man-to-man discipleship does not require specially gifted or charismatic leaders to be effective. Its success depends on a Spirit-filled man who loves God, His Word and His people, and is willing to open his life to another. Given this as the strategy, the tactics are simple.
Meet together often for Bible study and prayer.
Teach by example. Let the disciple see your godly life and your burden for people up close. Jesus did.
Teach through practical experience. Take your disciple with you when visiting the saints and witnessing to the unsaved, and afterwards explain what you did and why you did it. Jesus did.
Work on character. Think of the Lord constantly reminding Peter of his impulsiveness and self-confidence. What is it about your disciple that prevents the adjectives “holy and blameless” from being applied practically?
Exhort and encourage him in the Word, and pray for him. Jesus did.
If anyone had a vision for the growth of the church, It was the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for it. If we are to share that vision with Him in its fullest sense, that is, beyond seeing souls saved to the raising up of leaders of the flock who will be able to teach others also, then we must adopt His methods as our own. If the Son of God Himself found it necessary to concentrate on a few faithful men, how much more should we.
Rick Belles