Growing Excellent Leaders
Lucinda Sadler Rountree

Leadership is extremely important for the success and effectiveness of your ministry. Women will listen to you and watch you and your leadership team, so it's important to make sure you and your leaders are examples of growing servants of Christ. Here are a few ways to grow excellent leaders on your team.

Quality Team Time and Resources

For a team, a leadership retreat is an excellent tool for developing leaders. It's good to get away with your team for a weekend and spend time together. It builds a sense of team spirit and unity. Getting off campus and in a new environment might just be the thing to refresh your leaders and get them ready for the next retreat or special event. Use this time to encourage your team and introduce them to new leadership material.

Leadership resources will improve their abilities and skills to lead others in ministry. We might have the spiritual gift of leadership, but it is each person's individual responsibility to develop that gift. Some of the resources I have enjoyed using are listed below. I found them to be effective in ministry and in developing leadership skills.

Search out training opportunities for you and your team. You will get so much more than what you expected when you invest your time for training. The leaders come back with excitement and a newfound passion for their ministries.

Conferences are a great place to network. You can share what you have done in your church and others share what worked in theirs. Before you know it, you have a notebook full of phone numbers and email addresses that will benefit your ministry in the future. You also have fresh and new ideas for retreats and other events.

Learning from Others

Call larger churches in your area and find out what their discipleship ministry is doing. Make an appointment with the director of that ministry, and have her walk you through some areas that need improvement or maybe just need developing. Ask the larger church if they would consider being a mentor to your church's discipleship ministry.

State leaders are another resource. These people often organize conferences for the purpose of training church leadership. Often times training conferences provided by the state are available at little or no cost.

It's never too late start developing leadership skills in you and your team. You can become the excellent leader God wants you to be if you will respond to the call of leadership with determination and prayer. Seek out opportunities to be trained so that you may become the servant leader God will use to accomplish amazing things!