Stop recruiting, now!

Carter Moss | CCC-New Thing Adult Catalyst

I am currently reading "Organic Leadership" by Neil Cole, and he expounds on a point he made in "Search & Rescue" which I found extremely interesting, and I'm still wrestling with in my head. He says that the main difference in churches that have plenty of leaders vs. those that don't, is in how they get new leaders. He says it's that churches that struggle recruit their leaders, but that this is not an addition strategy, it's actually a subtraction strategy. Why? Because it's taking leaders away from one ministry to serve in another.

Instead, he says we need to farm leaders--develop people when they first begin to follow Jesus, disciple them, and as a natural result of discipleship, they will want to jump in on God's mission. So we need to start with discipleship (farming), not recruiting.

I realize this is a very limited summary of what Neil takes the appropriate time to set up, so I hope it doesn't do his point any injustice. But based on this, or maybe what you've read and tried--is he on the right track?  Do we need more farming and less recruiting?

Where do you end up finding most leaders, specifically small group leaders?

Comments

[brian hofmeister]

I’m a fan of the farming/organic approach. A growing and expanding community should be growing up new leaders to accommodate their future.

Apostleship may be what we are looking for instead of recruitment. Some outside help is needed if a community is forming, or could form, but is lacking the catalytic leadership needed to come together and go somewhere.

Recruiting new leaders steals a person from one community to another.

Apostleship would be more like borrowing.

[Bob]

Seems to me if we are recruiting leaders from the existing leaders we just pile more on - and since leaders can't say no to staff well - we could have a negitive impact on the lives of out current leaders. Helping someone take their first steps into leadership is the second best thing to watch happen (right behind taking their first steps with God). Sounds like another book for the coffee table, the stack is getting higher.

[Mike Mack]

Totally agree with the farming/discipleshp/organic/apostleship method of finding leaders (whatever you want to call it!). Another huge value in this "method" is prayer. Jesus didn't really "recruit" those he discipled into leaders. He asked the Father, and then actively waited and watched. I believe that may have been one of His main topics during the 40 days in the desert just before His ministry began. "Who are you going to send me?" (kind of follows Collins's "First who then what" principle).

In Matthew 9, Jesus taught His disciples the strategy: ""The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

In John 17, Jesus confimed that this was His approach from the beginning when He prayed, "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you."