What’s in this Episode?

Man, I’ve got some great leaders in this church. In fact, pastors would drool to have the leaders I have, but I gotta tell you, I feel the pressure to train them to be all they need to be. Where do I go for the topics to cover to really make sure these leaders are trained? Well, you’ve come to the right place today at the Church Tips Podcast. That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about. Here is some leadership training for pastors.

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Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:22
There was a time when I was working with a ministry to men, where we were meeting with Christian men all over the community on a weekly basis, and providing them teaching and training on how to be a man of God. Now, these men were all individual leaders in different settings. And so we had I mean, week in and week out, we’d cover their responsibility to lead in the home as a father and as a husband. We talked about leading in the church as a layperson and servant, serving the church serving the pastor. We’d talk about leadership in the workplace and how a man would do that. The point being, we would week in and week out, talk about varying things that related to a man in his role in leading. And that’s the kind of thing we want to talk with you about today, in the sense of you as a pastor. What are the things that you can do to help bring your leaders around to the topics that are going to help them lead with you and help take the church to the highest level possible. So we’re going to submit to you 10 different training topics in this episode and the next episode, that we think are going to be helpful to you. And so as you’re moving forward, and again, you got to keep this keep this straight in your mind. So we’re going to talk to you about things that you talk with your leaders about to help them be better leaders for you. So, Jonathan, you’re kind of the guru on these leadership topics. So why don’t you get us a jumpstart on this?

Jonathan Hardy 2:11
Well I don’t know about that, but I will give us a jumpstart. So basically, again, to reiterate what Dick is saying, these are topics that we’re telling you, you need to be talking to your team about whether you have staff or your key volunteer leaders.

Topic #1: How Do High Capacity Leaders Get And Stay Engaged?

Jonathan Hardy 2:23
Okay. The first thing you want to be talking to them about is how do high capacity leaders get and stay engaged in the church’s mission? You know, this is absolutely critical. It’s one thing to get people to be involved and on board with the church’s mission, but also the next step is you got to keep them engaged. And so you have to be talking to your staff about this or your key leadership team about this. How do we do this? What does that look like? And the mission is bigger than just us. It’s bigger than the leaders and we have to help them understand that and see that and then be able to know what to do. And I might mention here that we talked about in Episode 24, how to develop a philosophy of ministry. And so hopefully you have that. And we talk specific in that episode, Episode 24, as it relates to mission. We talked about that component of the ministry and the mission. And so, with that being the case, we have to be able to teach on how do we get them on board with this mission? How do we get them staying engaged in this mission, and talking to them regularly about that? And so that’s the first thing that you want to do. The first topic.

Topic #2: How Do Church Leaders Stay Healthy?

Jonathan Hardy 3:33
The second topic that we’d encourage you to be training your team on is how do church leaders stay healthy? This is a huge one that we see more and more where church leaders, pastors, those who maybe are volunteer leaders, they’re running, burning the candle at both ends and they’re not healthy. And so we as pastors have to be teaching our team. How do you stay healthy? Because here’s the reality: healthy leaders produce healthy ministries. And conversely, healthy ministries then produce healthy leaders. And so, we want to make sure that we are a healthy ministry producing healthy leaders. And that happens when we’re teaching them and training them. And it starts with you. You’ve got to make sure you’re healthy. You’ve got to look in the mirror, and you know, and then out of that be able to teach others to do that. So that’s the second topic just on teaching on personal health.

Topic #3: How Does The Church Engage Young Leaders?

Dick Hardy 4:26
Exactly. The third one is how does the church engage young leaders? I think it’s only appropriate that is the older of the two of us. I talked about engaging young leaders because I’m just right after it here. But who makes life change? Primarily people under age 40. So primarily his age, people my age tend to…

Jonathan Hardy 4:49
To be clear. I mean, I’m not even 40.

Dick Hardy 4:50
Well, you’re not even close. That’s right. Contact me afterwards, and I’ll tell you exactly how old he is. But the point is, you need to be engaging young leaders. You do, but your leaders need to be engaging young leaders. Always, you want to encourage your leaders to always reach younger. Now, let me state with this. Make sure it’s clear. We’re not saying throw out the old people, but we’re saying reach younger, reach younger reach younger. When you reach younger, your older people and wise people will come alongside you. If you reach old, the younger ones aren’t going to come with you. So you have to help your leaders reach younger, you’ve got to help them position their ministries to reach the young. Aim young and get young and old, aim old and you’re only going to get old. So that’s the third component right there.

Topic #4: Helping Your Leaders Know How To Recruit, Train and Retain Volunteers

Dick Hardy 5:43
The fourth one is, the fourth topic is, helping your leaders know how to recruit, train and retain volunteers. This is not just the job of the senior leader in the church. Yes, we’re recruiting, training and retaining volunteers. If your leaders are going to multiply, if you’re going to multiply through your leaders and really grow them, they need to be doing this. They need to be developing a continual pipeline of prospective volunteers. In fact, if you look at podcast episodes number 12, and 13, just go back a few, you’ll see the eight step process to recruit church volunteers. I really would encourage you to listen to this, those two episodes, and have your leaders listen to that episode. Volunteers have to be front of mind all the time for your leaders. You can’t allow your leaders to get in this mindset that says, “okay, we got who we need.” No, you always need more and you’ve always got to bring more along and they have to be doing that.

Jonathan Hardy 6:45
Yeah. And I can’t reiterate enough what you just said as it relates to the fact that it’s not just the senior leaders job, everyone has to be recruiting. Even if you are the volunteer leader of a ministry, it’s your job still to go recruit others.

Topic #5: How Does The Church Respond To Cultural Shifts?

Jonathan Hardy 7:00
Okay, well, the fifth and final topic for this episode today is to talk to your church leadership team about how does the church respond to cultural shifts? You know, the reality is biblical absolutes don’t ever change, we have to stand strong with the absolutes of scripture, however, culture changes. And so, as a result of that, we have to be able to navigate the changing culture. And we might even find that our methods and tactics that we do for ministry, those change as well. And we also talked about that actually in Episode 24, as I mentioned earlier, so that’s another episode to be sure to check out on the philosophy of ministry. But those things, the tactics, strategies, those things can change, but the gospel and our ultimate purpose never changes. So when it comes to the cultural shifts that are happening, we have to be able to constantly be talking to our team and helping them then be able to translate that to the people that are under their leadership of what do we do? How do we react when culture is changing? And how does that translate into our context today?

Dick Hardy 8:09
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And when you do this with your leaders, you’re going to be setting yourself up for multiplied ministry, because your leaders are doing the things that you know need to be done.

Recap:

Dick Hardy 8:20
So let’s do a little summary here. Of the five things in this particular episode. Number one, how do high capacity leaders get and stay engaged in the church’s mission and the focus on that is high capacity because you’ve got them in your church. Second, how do church leaders stay healthy? Number three, how does the church engage young leaders? Fourth, how do we recruit, train and retain volunteers? And number five, how does the church respond to cultural shifts? So those are the five things that really will help you as you’re teaching and training your leaders on this specific course.

Jonathan Hardy 8:59
Yep. And now in the next episode, we’re going to be covering the other five topics that are important to cover. One of the things I might mention to you as it relates to this leadership development concept is for you to take the Five Day Leadership Challenge for pastors if you have not yet done so, I would encourage you to do so, simply go to leaders.church/challenge, again, that’s leaders.church/challenge. This is a five day, 15 minute per day investment in your life. These are videos that Dick and I put together, we go one by one, they work sequentially, build off each other, and we release them for five days in a row for you. You can do it, your staff, your team can go through that as well. And it’s just a great way to be able to train the team. So I’d encourage you to do that. And then as well, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast or subscribe on YouTube. And also we’d love to have you rate and review this podcast episode or this show so that we can continue to get the word out and we can get your feedback as to how we can continue to put out the church tips for you that are going to help you advance your local church and reaching your community. Well, with that being said, we will look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.

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