Raise Leaders · 5 min read
The leaders are already in the room. They just haven't been named.
The most common thing I say to a leader in a coaching conversation is some version of “I think you're more ready than you know.” I've said it to candidates who were sure they weren't called, to spouses who thought they were just along for the ride, and to quiet men in the back of a living room church who had never once been asked to lead anything.
I've rarely been wrong. Not because I'm perceptive, but because leadership potential is far more common than we think and far less visible than we'd like. It doesn't announce itself. It waits.
Here's the pattern I see in most immigrant churches. The pastor carries everything, and he'll tell you it's because there's no one ready to help. Meanwhile there's a nurse who quietly organizes every meal train, a young man who translates for the older generation without being asked, a mother who has three families over every week and knows more about what's actually going on in the church than anyone. None of them think of themselves as leaders. In many of our cultures, you don't put yourself forward. You wait to be named. And the pastor is waiting for someone to volunteer. So nobody moves.
Breaking that stalemate is the job. Here's what I've learned about doing it.
First, look for responsibility, not charisma. The person who stands up front is not always the leader. The leader is the one who, when something needs doing, feels responsible for it. Watch who notices the new family. Watch who stays to clean up. Watch who worries about the church when they're not at church. Responsibility for other people's growth is the raw material of leadership. Everything else can be taught.
Second, name it out loud, specifically. Vague encouragement does nothing. “You're a leader” slides right off. “I've watched you notice every new person who walks in for six months, and I think God has given you a shepherd's eye” lands. Be concrete about what you've seen. In honour-based cultures, this matters even more, because the naming needs to come from someone with the standing to give it.
Third, give them something real, and small. Not a title. A task with actual weight and a clear edge. Lead the prayer time for a month. Follow up with the three new families. Teach one session of the new-believer class. People discover they're leaders by leading, and they need to succeed at something small before they'll believe they can carry something large.
Fourth, let them do it differently than you would. This is the hard one. If you hand something off and then correct every detail, you've told them they're an assistant, not a leader. Set the outcome, stay available, and let the method be theirs. Some of the best things in my churches were things I would never have thought to do.
Fifth, do this with more than one person at a time. A single emerging leader carries too much weight and too much loneliness. Three or four, growing together, become a core team. That's the beginning of a church that can reproduce.
Sixth, and this one is for the honour-based cultures many of us come from: give them permission to fail in front of you. A leader who has never been allowed to get something wrong will either never try, or will hide every mistake from you. Tell them ahead of time that something will go sideways, that you'll be there when it does, and that it won't change what you see in them. Then keep that promise. Trust grows faster through a handled failure than through a string of easy wins.
A word to the pastor who's reading this and thinking of a name right now. You've probably been thinking of that name for a while. The reason you haven't said anything is that naming them means trusting them, and trusting them means letting go of something. I understand. But God did not give you that person so you could carry the church alone. Say the name this week.