Leadership Baton : An Intentional Strategy for Developing Leaders in Your Church

by Rowland Forman, Jeff Jones, and Bruce Miller

• ISBN13: 9780310253013
• ISBN10: 0310253012
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: Harpercollins Christian Pub

Summary

The demand for quality leaders constantly outstrips the supply. If you're a pastor, team leader, staff member, or board member, you're always challenged with a leadership shortage. But what can you do about it? More than you've ever imagined. The Leadership Baton equips you with a solution that's time-proven and right at hand: church-based leadership development. More and more churches are adopting it, and no wonder-the principles that made the early church such a spiritual powerhouse are just as effective today. Leadership was never a matter of institutional learning or professional expertise. Rather, starting with Jesus and his apostles, it involved seasoned leaders passing the baton to ordinary people right within the local body of believers. That same approach can help ensure your own church is never at a loss for dependable men and women to enter the leadership race with wisdom, vision and passion. Drawing on the field-tested expertise of the Center for Church Based Training, The Leadership Baton will help you get the leaders you need up and running, developing leadership qualities they can in turn hand off to other up-and-coming leaders. Part 1 casts a vision for church-based leadership training-not merely a program, but a leadership development culture based on biblical and historical foundations. Part 2 presents a whole-life approach to leadership development that is wisdom-based (through courses), relationship-based (through the church community), and personal (through mentoring). Part 3 describes a comprehensive plan for leadership development, then breaks it down to target the needs of governing boards, emerging leaders, pastoral staffs, and interns. With discussion questions at the end of each chapter, this book concludes with two appendices, including a self-inventory for church leaders to help them assess their personal strengths and weak areas that need development. Put the principles in The Leadership Baton to work with patience, and in time your church will never lack the right people at the right time to help it fulfill its kingdom mission.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Wayne Cordeiro	11	(2)
Acknowledgments	13	(4)
Preface: The Story behind This Book	17	(4)
Introduction: The Baton in Your Hand	21	(8)
Part 1: VISION: THE POWER OF CHURCH-BASED TRAINING
1. A Culture Where Growing Leaders Thrive	29	(14)
2. An Emerging Movement	43	(18)
Part 2: PROCESS: WHOLE-LIFE APPROACH
3. Designing a Leadership Development Strategy	61	(10)
4. Courses: A Wisdom-Based Learning Process	71	(16)
5. Community: A Relational Learning Process	87	(12)
6. Mentoring: A Personal Learning Process	99	(18)
Part 3: IMPLEMENTATION: ROM STRATEGY TO ACTION	117	(68)
7. Getting Started
8. Equipping Your Governing Board	133	(12)
9. Equipping Your Emerging Leaders	145	(14)
10. Equipping Your Ministry Staff	159	(12)
11. Equipping Your Interns	171	(14)
Epilogue: The Future of Church-Based Training	185	(8)
Appendix 1: The Six-Step Wisdom Process: A Learning Engine for Life	193	(8)
Appendix 2: Assessing the Whole Person: An Inventory for Church Leaders	201	(12)
Notes	213	(2)
Subject Index	215

Excerpts

The Leadership Baton Copyright © 2004 by Rowland Forman, Jeff Jones, and Bruce Miller Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forman, Rowland, 1943- The leadership baton : an intentional strategy for developing leaders in your church / Rowland Forman, Jeff Jones, and Bruce Miller. P. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-310-25301-21. Christian leadership. 2. Leadership—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Jones, Jeff, 1966- II. Miller, Bruce, 1961- III. Title BV652.1 .F63 2004 253—dc22 2003024442This edition printed on acid-free paper. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible: New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked The Message are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Word Publishing, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NASB taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as follows: Individuals may make copies of appendix 2 and the inventory in chapter 7 for personal use or for classroom or seminar use, not to exceed one copy per attendee.Interior design by Beth Shagene Printed in the United States of America04 05 06 07 08 09 10 /. DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Part One VI S ION: THE POWER OF CHURCH-BASED TRAINING 1 A CULTURE WHERE GROWING LEADERS THRIVEJeff: Over the last decade, we’ve visited a lot of great churches, trying to learn everything we can from each of them. Yet one visit stands out from all the others. For one thing, this church is in Hawaii. It was tough to make the sacrifice to go to Hawaii, but I felt particularly led by God to do so. That church visit changed forever the way I will think about ministry.New Hope Community Church in Honolulu, pastored by Wayne Cordeiro, has a strong leadership development culture.The church had only been in existence for eight years when I visited it, yet some ten thousand people worshiped at New Hope each weekend. Most of these people were not just attenders; they were engaged participants. One of the church’s basic principles is teamwork. Every ministry is carried out in teams, and every leader works with four other people to do a ministry that each person has a responsibility to develop and encourage. They refer to these teams as “fractals.” One “surf dude” guy I met on the beach went to New Hope. I asked him if he was on a ministry team. He replied, “Of course.We do ministry as team. I’m on the evangelism fractal in the surfing ministry.” I was amazed that he could describe his role that clearly. He then gave more detail about his role, telling me that he was on a team with a leader who was encouraging him but that he also had a team and a few people he was encouraging. Another lady I met also went to New Hope and was on a team that made leis for newcomers.When I got to the church, I was amazed to see thousands of people serving with great joy. One person I talked with said he was shadowing a cameraman, learning how to be a cameraman himself. He explained that every ministry leader is encouraged to have someone in his or her shadow. Nearly everyone I met knew their role in ministry and was both being developed and developing others at the same time.I came back from Hawaii full of enthusiasm to adopt New Hope’s way of doing teams and developing leaders. I announced to our staff that we were going to do “fractal teams.” I painted a great vision of how this could work. Yet, the initial attempt flopped. I made the common mistake of getting excited about a particular church’s way of doing things and immediately trying to introduce it into my own church culture. Here’s what I discovered: If the culture isn’t ready, even the best ideas and strategies are doomed to failure. Before we try to import new ideas, improved systems, and high-quality tools for doing better leadership training, we first need to prepare the soil in our church.We need to do the hard work of embedding new values deep into our church culture.The churches doing the best job of leadership development are not necessarily those with the best systems or tools. What each has done well is embed the value of leadership development deep into their church culture. Leadership development has more to do with who they are as a church than with what particular things they do. PREPARE THE SOILLast year my wife and I grew tired of our overgrown bushes and shrubs and hired some people to rip them out. Then I began to price how much new plants would cost, and I couldn’t believe it! Why would anyone pay $100 for a dinky little plant—especially when you need about twenty of them! I bit the bullet, though, and paid the bill.I decided to save a little money by planting everything myself, but I wanted someone else to prepare the beds for planting.When we got the estimate, the figure was astronomical! They wanted hundreds of dollars just to take out the old dirt and put in new dirt. Dirt is dirt, I figured.Our new plants would just have to find a way to grow in the soil we already had. I wasn’t going to pay for new dirt.A year later the results are mixed. A few plants have thrived and some have died; most are somewhere in between. Maybe all dirt isn’t the same. If I had it to do over again, I would prepare the soil.What does it mean to prepare the soil in your church so that leadership development can thrive? Over the past several years, we’ve learned several essential principles for cultivating a culture in which growing leaders can thrive. You can try to grow leaders without these, but your results are likely to be mixed at best. For best results, it pays to prepare the soil. SEE PEOPLE WITH FRESH EYESAs we try to help our church cultures make the transition to be more leadership development-friendly,we must first change something within ourselves. If we are going to make the transition from acquiring great leaders to developing great leaders, then we must adopt a different view of the people in our churches. Ultimately, leadership development is as simple and organic as one person believing in another and building into his or her life.To do so, one must have the heart of a developer.We have to view people much differently from the way we naturally would.We must put on the eyeglasses of potential.Jeff: I got my first pair of contact lenses when I was fourteen. On the ride home from the optometrist’s office. I could see everything so clearly. Clouds had shape and texture; the sky wasn’t just a swirl of blue and white.Trees had individual leaves; they weren’t just green blobs on brown sticks. The new lenses helped me see the world differently.The prerequisite to becoming a developer of leaders is putting on a new set of glasses, what I call “the eyeglasses of potential.

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Excerpted from The Leadership Baton: An Intentional Strategy for Developing Leaders in Your Church by Rowland Forman, Jeff Jones, Bruce Miller
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