The Transition From Leading to Developing Leaders: A Change of Ministry Philosophy

The North American Baptist (NAB) Conference's Leadership Center Initiative has been actively engaged for almost a decade in addressing the reality that not all gifted leaders will be gifted in leadership development. As part of it's description of the current state of leadership development it asserts that:

"It is widely acknowledged that leadership training is needed in the church, and in fact, there may be a number of developmental models from which to chose, but there are at least two difficult decisions that need to be made:

1. Settling on the leadership development model in which to invest your time and resources;

2. Clearly assessing the leadership development culture (the DNA, if you will) of your church. "

Within the NAB Conference they have answered the first of these difficult decisions with the creation of their Leadership Centre Training Model. This link provides a detailed description of its development, which is also available as a .pdf here on the Network under the title "A Blueprint for Developing Leaders in the Context of the Local Church".

The second difficulty, the one of assessing a congregation's leadership development culture, was addressed with the creation of a helpful and thorough document entitled The Transition from Leading to Developing Leaders: A Change of Ministry Philosophy. It begins by describing the current state of leadership development in its churches and then provides a comprehensive list of diagnostic questions, charts and rating scales to aid churches in assessing their leadership development culture.  Once you have established where you are, it is easier to plan a route forward with a development model that fits the needs and resources of a given congregation.