Generational leadership is a big part of the Church. Leaders with experience should always be looking for opportunities to reach back and share with the generations coming up after them. This is the easiest way to develop the next generation of leaders while pouring into the future of the local church and the Kingdom.
Here are 3 of the most important principles to remember when training up the next generation of leaders for your church.
How you convey your vision to your staff members can heavily influence how they will carry that vision on, and how they will cast future goals long after you are gone. In his book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ author Daniel Goleman writes, “[quality] leaders convey a sense of where the group is going. They don’t tell their staff how to get there. They draw them into the vision.”
Training up the next leaders in your church requires guidance through your vision for ministry. Verbally communicating alone will not be enough for the long-term growth of your church.
Ask yourself: Do your young leaders know where your church is going in the big picture, and if so, have they bought in?
We talk about coaching quite a bit here at Vanderbloemen, especially when it comes to our Senior Pastor and Executive Pastor Coaching Networks. However, I want to take this coaching a step further, to one-on-one coaching.
I am speaking for many young leaders when I say we want to be coached. All the experiences you’ve had, mistakes you’ve made, and challenges you’ve overcome are eternally valuable in developing strong leaders for the future. Those “mistakes” made in your years of ministry are only mistakes if you fail to use them as a coaching mechanism.
Ask yourself: Are you too currently busy to invest in coaching your staff? What could be put on hold to make time for this investment?
This principle may be the toughest for many experienced church leaders: letting go of your responsibility and allowing other team members to take it on. While this might be a challenge at first, there is no better way for a young leader to learn than actually doing the work.
When you delegate responsibility to others, you provide valuable experiences while creating a safe environment to fail. Having a safe place to try new things without the fear of failure exemplifies how a leader shows mercy and how someone should view God’s grace in his or her own life.
An entire organization can rise and fall on how well their leaders fail. Oftentimes the mistake was not the undoing of the leader, but how poorly that person reacted to the failure. By not delegating to those around you, you limit some of the most key developmental experiences of your staff.
What are some responsibilities that you can delegate to the next generation of leaders?