Leadership Development through Missional Discipleship

This morning I had the pleasure of sitting down with several guys from our West County Campus, talking leadership development and discipleship.  

We started with some basic questions:

What is leadership development and how should the church think about it?
Are leadership development and discipleship different or the same?  Why? Explain.

I've attached my notes for the discussion if you'd like to read a more detailed writing.  Here's the short version.

I essentially make a case that what I see from Jesus is:

1. He does not just get more followers but the essence of his leadership develops more leaders.
2. And secondly, I see that Jesus has a vision for what people can become when they know him and God through him; and his primary tool for leadership development is discipleship.

From there I define what kind of people Jesus is discipling:

1. People who need to know God 
2. People who need to see ministry up close because they will become the future leaders of the church.  

I contend that these do not have to be two different people, and that in my case, my salvation and call to ministry were one in the same. Therefore discipleship was both a means of evangelism and leadership development in my life, as both life and ministry were shared with me. 

Finally, from a framework of Ephesians 4, I tease out our definition of leadership development as:

"the process of growing knowledge, character, and skills in the fruit of the Spirit for the purpose of leading the church."

Notes are attached.

jd

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Posted on Saturday, Jul 17, 2010 by