5 Leadership Buckets: #2 Leadership Development

The second core leadership function of a Kids' City Campus Director is Leadership Development.  If a Campus Director possesses the ability to empower and equip others for ministry they will thrive in their position.  If they don't, well, they probably aren't in the right seat on the bus.

When I was the Campus Director at our Romeoville location, one of my personal goals was to be in the adult service lobby greeting and meeting people before and after every service.  Now you don't have to be in children's ministry long before you realize that the most chaotic and crucial leadership time is the 15 minutes before a service.  That's when you have to make sure all volunteers have arrived, systems are working correctly, everyone has the supplies they need, new families are helped, the ratios in each room are within limits, etc.  So why did I want to be in the lobby?  No, it wasn't so that I could avoid the chaos, but I felt I was being successful when the ministry could run without me.  My goal was to raise up leaders and leaders of leaders who would own greater and greater amounts of responsibility and make the ministry happen without me.  Yes, I think the goal of every Campus Director should be to become expendable on the weekends.  In fact, I think equipping others to do the work of the ministry is actually the Biblical plan for leadership in the church.

So a Campus Director can't be a "do it all myself" kind of person.  Instead, they constantly have their leadership potential radar scanning the church to identify people with leadership gifts who could be challenged to greater and greater amounts of responsibility.  They invite these emerging leaders into their inner circle of community and ministry and begin to pour into them.  They equip them with practical skills but even more they transfer leadership DNA to their followers through modeling, story-telling, and shared decision-making.  They make a significant investment in the lives of the most promising leaders in their care.  This investment extends beyond the task of the ministry to the emerging leader's personal, spiritual, and intellectual life.

In fact, the ability to give care is so important, it gets its own bucket...

Comments

[Kathryn]

Wow...great thoughts Tammy! I am often crazy busy during those 15 minutes before a service but you are right...I need to be empowering others.

I would love to be (and should be) greeting and meeting new people during that time!!

Thanks for the challlenge!

[James Higginbotham]

Exactly right! Leaders are responsible for equipping the body of Christ for service as Paul wrote in Ephesians 4.

I'm actually putting together an eBook on this very topic and will be announcing it soon at my blog: http://www.agilministry.com. Feel free to drop me a comment using the "contact me" link and I'll let you (or your readers) know when a preview of the eBook is available.

[christy]

I believe it to be true, but it is soooo hard! I know that I (and the ministry) am limited by my difficulty with this. Thanks for a good challenge - I'll keep working at it!