I often hear one common problem among church leaders, “Why don’t we have more leaders and volunteers?” At leadership prayer meetings, we always pray for more leaders and laborers for the harvest.
The Problem
What is the problem with seeing leaders and volunteers stepping forward?
A church leader’s insecurity and need for control
Ephesians 4:11-12 states that our primary activity as leaders is to equip others for the work of effective ministry. However, church leaders frequently feel threatened. “What if someone takes my ministry away from me? What if I am no longer needed?” The fact is that others can’t take away someone’s gifting and anointing. Only someone’s position can be removed. Only God or ourselves can take away our gifting for ministry.
A Wrong View
A primary reason we are not growing is because we often have wrong concepts of what a leader is supposed to do. This is not really a lack of understanding the principle of delegation; instead it involves a leader having a willingness to hand off ministry. Leaders need to be able to say to others, “I think you can do what I do. I am willing to step out of this role if you are willing to step in.”
Working IN rather than ON the church
Most leaders spend their time on the demands of working in the church rather than on the church. This activity will keep others out of ministry and now allow leaders to develop. We develop a maintenance mode rather than actually building the church and moving forward in mission.
We have a lot of people in the wings, coming along behind us. This demands we break out of our self-limiting structure in order to allow them to develop. We get caught in the maintenance matrix. The demands of the current structure often take all of the leader’s time.
The Answer: Replacing yourself.
The key to seeing more leaders come forward is to replace yourself. Replacing yourself is about taking a responsibility that you own and handing if off to someone else so that they not only do what you do but also own what you owned. This practice is found throughout the scriptures: Moses to Joshua, Elijah to Elisha and Paul to Timothy.
Moses had to address this issue. In Exodus 18, Jethro told Moses he was going to wear himself out if he didn’t start to replace himself with others. He told Moses to get men who would oversee groups of 10, 50, 100, and 1,000’s. Within his new infrastructure, Moses appointed men who had different levels of leadership capacity. Each would have a different capacity, however all have within themselves an ability to grow and increase their leadership. Because Moses listened to Jethro’s counsel, Moses went from a force of one to a force of 131,000 leaders.
Keys to opening the door
In order to develop leaders and grow disciples, we must have at attitude adjustment. Here are 3 key perspectives to embrace in order to not only replace yourself but have a church that reproduces leaders:
All of us will be replaced
• We will either replace ourselves intentionally or we will be replaced unintentionally.
• We must resist the tendency to feel as though we are losing control or status, since we will all be replaced.
The strategy for volunteers
• The church is comprised of volunteers who carry on the ministry.
• Implementing an intentional replacement strategy increases both the pool of volunteers and the quality of volunteers. Without this strategy, you will always suffer in both quantity and quality of volunteers.
The joy of apprenticing
• All of us will be replaced someday but to participate in the process is a big win!
• Embracing a value of replacement erases the question, “How do we get more volunteers?”
Replacement is personal. Just getting more volunteers is impersonal. While developing a replacement, we are present to watch someone do what we used to do and can enjoy the process!
