Surviving the Future

Outcomes magazine, in a story entitled Developing Next Generation Leaders predicts that there will be a need for over 50,000 leadership roles in Non profits and churches. I'm not sure of the exact number but am confident that the need for people willing to step into positions of serving Christ on a full time basis is going to be crucial in the coming years. In my denomination the leadership is getting older and there does not seem to be very many "young" leaders in the pipeline. This concerns me and should concern any person serving within the church. If we really believe that the Church is the Hope of the world then we need to enlist and train people. How should we accomplish this?


Call them. We as leaders need to get over our apologizing, shameful and even "poor me" mentality of calling people to serve. Serving Christ in any capacity is a privilege, serving Him as your vocation is an honor. Where do we get off apologizing to people we recruit that they may not make as much money as they would in the secular market place. We're not in the secular market place and we're not trying to establish that kingdom. Whether we get "rich" or not should not be our motivation, our motivation should be the eternal. Let's boldly call the young, those looking for mid life career changes and those boomers who are ready to do something signficant with their lives.


Train them. We must utilize the experiences and resources available to us. Our colleges and universities have done adequate to good jobs providing academic and even theological foundations for those in the ministry. The weakness is that they have not accomplished the "on the job" training required to move quickly into serving as leaders. As existing leaders we have to spend time investing in these individuals, we have to replicate ourselves. We have to provide opportunities for the inexperienced to get experience AND learn from it. I'm not talking about sending Billy Ray out to the South Forty where the "old timers" beat him and his family until they can't imagine ever serving in ministry again. I'm talking about creating communities of people that respect the growth potential of new leaders, embrace them with encouragement and we as leaders are on the spot to correct and help process these individuals into stronger servants. We must provide the systems and the relationships!


Adjust our paradigm: Lastly we must adjust our paradigm, our view of accomplishing ministry and serving. The age of a Senior Pastor, Worship Pastor, Youth Pastor and Children's Pastor leading the church are fading into the past. As we move deeper into the information age, roles like graphic arts, technical communications, information services, creative communications, and finance directors may be higher paid and even stronger leadership roles than some of our "pastoral" positions. For many this is a paradigm shift. We have to recognize that our ability to remain relevant is hugely influenced by the MEANs we are communicating the message of Jesus Christ.


We HAVE to make changes, we NEED to make them soon. Are you willing to endure the personal change to make this happen? Are you willing to change how you've served to accomplish the great commision?