Church GrowthLeadership

Leadership Multiplication Pathway

17/11/20140226

Leadership Multiplication Pathway

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field”. Matthew 9:37‑38

In Matthew 9:37‑38, Jesus tells us that the key to seeing many people come into the Kingdom through a great harvest is to pray for more workers. More prayer, more workers; more workers, the greater the harvest. It’s a simple equation.

But to shed more light on this equation it’s important to go back to the time Jesus first uttered these words to His disciples. He actually said this to them on two different occasions, repeating Himself to them, and to us, for emphasis (Matt. 9:37-38; Luke 10:2). We may have used these words to challenge believers to get out of the pews and into the fields, and that’s right. But when these words were spoken there were only Jesus and His few disciples facing the entire world population. The question is, where did they expect the answer to this prayer to come from? What would be the source of these workers? The workers for the harvest must come from the harvest. There can be no other intent in the mind of Jesus or His disciples.

Each new convert is a worker…immediately.

Starting in the harvest, a Leadership Multiplication Pathway helps guide an individual on the journey of “becoming a disciple and making disciples” and then on to being ‘meaningfully engaged in a ministry’, reflecting God’s unique gifting and calling on their lives. For some, the pathway will guide them into a ‘leadership role’ in ministry and possibly beyond to being a pastor, a church planter or some other kind of fulltime worker or a movement leader. This will close the circle of harvest to harvest giving a ministry the opportunity to effectively reach beyond itself to fulfil the Great Commission.

The Leadership Multiplication Pathway is structured around four development areas that help people grow personally and in ministry:

Obedient Discipleship          –           Character

Focused Ministry                    –           Calling

Effective Leadership              –           Competency

Continuous multiplication    –           Culture

 Purpose of a Leadership Multiplication Pathway:

To generate a multiplication movement by mobilising organic leadership development within a ministry resulting in spontaneous growth and multiplication.

 Key Assumptions of a Leadership Multiplication Pathway:
  1. All healthy disciples, leaders and ministries are intended to reproduce.
  2. Ready‑made leaders don’t fall from heaven, they are grown on earth.
  3. The best training model is hands‑on ministry involvement with a personal coach.
  4. Fruitful ministry flows from who you are as well as what you do.
  5. The Kingdom of God is much more than one church or one movement.
  6. Multiplication is the best and most natural means of reaching the lost.

Core Values of a Leadership Multiplication Pathway:
  1. Proactive faith and prayer.
  2. Life transformation through the power of the gospel.
  3. Simple obedience to scripture.
  4. Simple and transferable strategy.
  5. Releasing momentum through spontaneous multiplication.

 
Most Christian leaders are disappointed with the DNA they see in their people but why are they disappointed? You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7). You can’t sow a seed substitute and grow the real thing (Luke 8:11; 1 Peter 1:23). We must settle for nothing less than a church of disciples who are motivated from within to live for Jesus – and to pass that on to others.


 
Colin is the Director of ResourceZone International. He has thirty years of ministry experience as a pastor, college lecturer and consultant/coach to consultants, denominational leaders and local church pastors. He can be reached at info@resourcezoneinternational.com

 

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