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Great leaders are always on the lookout for leadership gifts in others and ways to develop future leaders. In this episode, John Bailey is joined by Mark Renfroe to discuss how it is critical for ministry success to develop as leaders who build up more leaders. This aspect of ministry training is often overlooked in seminary, but growing ministries and churches always need more skilled leaders. Scripture itself points to the importance of evaluating and training up new leaders. So how do we become more successful in this area?
Key Points from the Podcast
• Pastors are called to lead everyone in the church, but there are some unique qualifications to leading and discipling up those who have leadership giftings.
• When there are struggles among new and upcoming leaders, you need to step back and see if there’s a system issue that’s hampering new leaders or if there are personnel issues where someone is not operating well with leadership giftings.
• Micro-management is the church leader who is looking for followers and providing their needs without moving them to a place of greater independence; the pastor who has good empowerment management is evaluating where people are at and what they need in order to have greater autonomy.
• A leader mentoring someone will need a higher degree of involvement, but as that individual becomes more mature and grows as a leader, their mentor will reduce involvement and increase simply being informed about the work.
• One of the biggest signs of a leadership issue in a church is if people are coming in, getting saved, then leaving. Another significant sign of a leadership problem is if people aren’t getting saved.
• New pastors in seminary are often training in sermon preparation and theology, which are both good things; however, leadership skills and discipling new leaders are often left out of this training. These can both be major hurtles for church leaders.
• Refusing to delegate responsibilities or delegating duties with no accountability are equally damaging. One will leave to mission suffocation, and the other will lead to mission drift.
• There’s a difference between delegating tasks and delegating leadership responsibilities. Tasks can be checked off a list, but leadership responsibilities go beyond projects.
Bible Verses Referenced in the Podcast
Exodus 18:9-23, 1 Samuel 17:47
Resources Mentioned in the Podcast
The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
About Mark Renfroe
Mark married his college sweetheart, Amy, with whom he has four adult children—one girl and three boys. The Renfroes have been involved in field missions work for 30 years. They served in the Arab community of San Francisco for four years before becoming foreign missionaries in 1995. Mark was asked to serve as the Area Director for Assemblies of God World Missions in 2007. As part of his role, he led missionaries and interfaced with national church leaders in the 18 countries of the Arab World. In 2017, Mark created Reaching Africa’s Muslims, an initiative to mobilize, equip, and deploy indigenous African missionaries to reach Muslims on the continent. Mark has graduate degrees in Intercultural Studies and Executive Leadership. He currently serves as the Chief Missions Officer for World Challenge in Colorado Springs.
About John Bailey
Pastor John Bailey serves as the Chief Operating Officer at World Challenge. John came to know Christ in jail after some difficult struggles as a young man, and God has done a powerful work of transformation since! Spending 13 years in Next Gen ministry, he excelled in discipleship and helping young leaders discover giftings to serve God. John was called next to serve as a missionary and pastor in Western Europe. John and his family then returned to plant the Springs Church in Jacksonville, Florida. Today, the church is a thriving body of believers excelling in outreach and missions. John has now brought his giftings and vision to World Challenge, accelerating the spread of the gospel in America and around the World.
