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006203451
CREATING AND CURATING A RECRUITING
CULTURETODD ADKINS
© 2018 LifeWay Leadership®
LifeWay Christian Resources
One LifeWay Plaza
Nashville, TN 37234
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Christian Standard Bible®,
Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and
CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.
All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of LifeWay Leadership®.
3
Your church is growing, especially with young families.
And with these young families come more kids in your
nursery and preschool rooms during worship services.
Where do you find additional volunteers to care for
these children?
Your church is launching a new campus with limited
downtown parking. You have a strong parking team
leader at your current campus, but the service times at
both campuses overlap. How do you find someone so
both campuses have equipped parking team leaders?
Your children’s minister just found out that she and her
husband are expecting twins. Though she anticipated
putting together her maternity leave plan over the next
few months, her now high-risk pregnancy has placed
her on bedrest. Where do you find someone to lead your
children’s ministry in her absence?
You’ve likely experienced one (or more) of these
situations in your church. What do you do when
you need more volunteers, leaders, coaches, or
ministry directors?
Far too often in our churches, we think it’s the job of
the pastor and paid church staff to recruit volunteers
“CULTURE EATS STRATEGY FOR BREAKFAST, BUT CULTURE GETS ITS APPETITE FROM PURPOSE.”1
4
and leaders when there’s a gap in ministry. This leads
us to focus on leadership placement over leadership
development, and we settle for warm bodies instead of
weekly volunteers. After all, Sunday is coming and we
need someone to fill in the gaps.
What if we instead equipped those under our leadership
to feel confident in recruiting and developing someone
to serve in their ministry role? What if we created a
leadership pipeline that
provides continuity of
leadership when someone
steps out of a role or
when we need more
help in a ministry area?
How do you begin to create this type of environment
that emphasizes the importance of recruiting and
development with all people in your church or ministry?
You start with culture.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
Creating and curating a church or organization’s distinct
culture is one of the most important, yet difficult,
elements of leadership today. While the information
economy paved the way for leaders to expand their
knowledge and enhance their skills, it has also become
A LEADERSHIP
PIPELINE PROVIDES
CONTINUITY OF
LEADERSHIP.
5
increasingly difficult to create and maintain a distinct
culture in the whirlwind of messages in the modern day.
When it comes right down to it, the most important
function of a leader may be the creation, management,
and, when it becomes necessary, destruction of culture
within a church.
Now, more than ever, we realize leadership and curating
culture are intertwined and difficult to understand
independent of one another. “The only thing of real
importance that leaders do is to create and manage
culture.”2 Edgar Schein made this statement in the early
1980s, well before the Internet redefined the dynamics
of nearly every organization in the world. Remember
the 1980s were also much less transient times when
a person tended to work within one organization their
whole career. Each person is a carrier and conveyor
of culture, which makes it all the more difficult to
manage today.
WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?
The idea of organizational culture seems obscure and
difficult to define at first glance,
especially in the church world.
A more formal definition of
organizational culture might be
CULTURE IS THE
SHARED VALUES
OF A GROUP.
6
“the underlying assumptions and beliefs shared by a
group of people that operate unconsciously in a church
or organization’s view of itself and its environment.” 3
The deeper level of assumptions should be
distinguished from the “values” and “artifacts” typically
associated with the surface level of culture.4 For the
sake of simplicity, let’s just agree to define culture as the
shared values of a group.
Leaders often reference three layers of culture in a
church or organization. The cultural pyramid provides
an illustration of these three layers: artifacts, stated
values, and underlying assumptions. 5
LOGOS &LANGUAGE
SOCIAL NORMS
VISIBLEARTIFACTS
STATED VALUES
ASSUMPTIONSINVISIBLE
PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR
FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS AND VALUES
7
At the top of the pyramid are the artifacts of the culture.
Artifacts are visible and often recognizable even to
people who are not part of the culture. Common
artifacts include vision statements, taglines, logos,
branding, organizational specific language, acronyms,
and so forth. Artifacts also include things you might not
expect like buildings, physical space, ministry processes,
communication style, and even how people dress. A
person may get an idea of who your organization is but
not fully understand why these artifacts have been
established without looking at the stated values.
In the middle of the pyramid are stated values. These
are the values regularly promoted by the leadership
in a given culture. Stated values may be formalized
and reinforced through the clearly articulated values,
strategy, measures, and so forth. Every church and
organization has stated values. Whether or not the
values have been formalized, they exist and people are
listening. Even if the values aren’t displayed on a wall,
your values can be found in the common language and
stories as well as what is celebrated, measured, and
controlled in your culture. If you have articulated your
values, they must truly resonate and align with the
assumptions or assumed values of people within the
culture in order to be healthy.
8
Notice that as you move from the top of the pyramid
to the bottom, you also move from visible attributes
of culture to invisible attributes of culture. The bottom
layer of the pyramid is your culture’s assumptions.
Assumptions reflect the underlying shared values
within the culture. These values often remain unstated
and are nebulous or self-defined by people within the
culture. The assumptions and espoused values are
possibly not correlated or rooted in the actual values
of the culture. It’s important to recognize that what is
written on the walls is not always actualized in the halls
of the church.
Sometimes a good bit of cultural examination has
to take place to bring these into the light. Consider
the following questions regarding your church’s
current culture.
• What or who is celebrated?
• What is measured?
9
• How is important communication handled?
• How are decisions made?
• What is your church’s most prevalent leadership style?
• What is your church’s cultural personality?
10
THE IMPORTANCE OF A LEADERSHIP PIPELINE
Churches consist of many groups and subgroups
with both formal and informal hierarchical layers.
We must recognize that churches don’t drift toward
simplicity. Churches drift toward complexity over
the course of time,
regardless of size. Two
modern phenomena
add complexities to
churches: the multisite
model and digitization
of modern life.
A multisite church model brings the challenge of
creating and managing church culture through shared
experiences and environments while aligning the
groups and subgroups as they become increasingly
complex and geographically diverse. The digitization of
life means that droves of people are now working from
home, Starbucks, and the next stoplight. Even if they
attend your church every week, they can access the
same number of sermons on their commute as they
might hear from you in a year. People used to come to
church three times a week. Now we are lucky to get
them through the door three times a month.
CHURCHES DON’T
DRIFT TOWARD
SIMPLICITY.
CHURCHES DRIFT
TOWARD COMPLEXITY.
11
What does that mean?
In this daunting new
paradigm, high-level
leaders must constantly
and consistently
create and embed
shared values in their church culture. I will examine
six components that make up a recruiting culture:
Scripture, strategy, structure, systems, skills, and style . 6
LEADERS MUST CREATE
AND EMBED SHARED
VALUES IN THEIR
CHURCH CULTURE.
12
These components correlate with our leadership
pipeline philosophy and framework. 7 Leadership
pipeline does not solely focus on top levels of
leadership or key leaders but is a long-term investment
in the church or organization’s most valuable resource:
people. A leadership pipeline provides a clear process of
development, so each volunteer, leader, coach, ministry
director, or senior leader knows their next step.
SENIOR LEADERSHIP
MINISTRY DIRECTOR
COACH
LEADER
VOLUNTEER
S
D
C
L
V
13
Most people hear “leadership pipeline,” and think vertical
advancement. I want you to understand success in a
leadership pipeline is not always progression. Success in
a leadership pipeline occurs when a person is becoming
who God has created them to be and multiplying
themselves at their current leadership level.
Over the past two years, LifeWay Leadership has had
the privilege of walking over 2,800 church leaders
through our Pipeline process. The number one reason
why they say they attend is because they need more
volunteers, leaders, coaches, and ministry directors.
Whatever level of their church’s leadership pipeline they
oversee, they would say, “I need more people!”
Odds are likely that you feel the same.
Audit your current ministry.
• How many leaders do you have?
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• How many leaders do you need if:
• You grow by 15%?
• You start another service?
• You want last year’s Easter attendance to be
your church’s average weekly attendance?
Church leaders often look at a diagram that shows
leadership multiplication and think, No way! That diagram is not reality. I would say you can move
from thinking it’s a dream to moving it into your
leadership pipeline and making sure that you are
multiplying yourself.
Consider this diagram. What if you recruited two people
and spent the next year developing them? If you do
that the first year, then in the second year you and the
two people you developed in year one each recruit and
develop two more people, and when the model continues
again the third year, you have quickly moved from it just
being you as a leader to 27 leaders in your ministry.
15
You may say, “That’s not reality. People come and
go. People move away. And some people wash out.”
So maybe it’s not three years. Maybe it takes seven
years. Your number one role as leader is to reproduce
yourself. But consider the growth of your church and
ministry if every volunteer, leader, coach, ministry
director, and senior leader also followed this model to
multiply themselves? The responsibility of recruitment
and development doesn’t lie with you alone. The
responsibility of recruitment and development is part of
everyone’s role, not just the pastor’s.
16
BUILDING A RECRUITING CULTURE
Building a recruiting culture is foundational to
leadership pipeline because it proactively cultivates
development within the church. You have probably
heard me say before that leadership development is
both poetry and plumbing. We will start with the poetry
that provides the “why” and quickly move into the
plumbing that provides the “what, where, and how.”
When I talk about building a leadership pipeline for your
church, I am looking at it holistically in stages from stirring
conviction for development through Scripture and story
to strategy, structure, systems, skills, and style of training.
When these components
are properly implemented
and aligned, you create a
culture that instills shared
values to recruit, develop,
and reproduce leaders
at every level of your
leadership pipeline.
SCRIPTURE
Let’s begin this discussion with Scripture. In the
church, recruiting is simply a fancy word for the Great
Commission. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commands
RECRUITMENT AND
DEVELOPMENT IS
PART OF EVERYONE’S
ROLE, NOT JUST
THE PASTOR’S.
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His followers to go and make disciples, who in turn
make disciples, who in turn make disciples. This
commissioning is not for an elite class of leaders
or pastors. All believers have been called to make
disciples, not just pastors and church staff.
Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:8-9 that we have been
saved by grace through faith, lest any man should
boast. But Paul doesn’t stop there. In verse 10, he
reminds us that God didn’t just send His Son to save us
from something. He saved us for something. “For we
are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.”
Paul examines the role of church leaders to be
equippers in Ephesians 4:11-16. “And he himself gave
some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists,
some pastors and teachers, equipping the saints for the
work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we
all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s
Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by
Christ’s fullness. …
From him the whole
body, fitted and knit
together by every
supporting ligament,
promotes the
growth of the body
SCRIPTURE REVEALS
THE DEMOCRATIZATION
OF THE DISCIPLESHIP
AND DEVELOPMENT OF
GOD’S PEOPLE.
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for building up itself in love by the proper working of
each individual part.”
What these passages promote is the democratization
of the discipleship and development of God’s people.
Our role as church leaders is to equip the body in such
a way that it becomes self-sustaining through ongoing
recruiting and development of each supporting part. A
culture of recruiting and development is foundational
and should be a shared value implicit in every church.
STRATEGY
Building on the firm foundation of Scripture, we’re
ready to take a look at strategy. When we look at the
life of Jesus and examine His methodology, it’s easy
to see that men were His method. We often think of
Jesus spending time among the crowds, preaching, and
healing the sick. But what is striking is how Jesus spent
His time after leaving the masses. More often than not,
Scripture reveals that Jesus took aside His disciples to
further explain what He said to the crowds, especially
with Peter, James, and John. Jesus wasn’t testing them
to see if they could repeat back what He had just said.
Jesus was looking for growth in their character and
competency; He was looking for transformation of the
whole person.
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Likewise, our strategy of bringing people into our ministry
should not merely focus on onboarding. What many
churches call “training” is primarily an orientation task
to get someone started in a volunteer or leadership role.
That is not development; that is an information dump. A
recruiting culture uses leadership pipeline to develop a
person, not delegate a task.
When a person begins a volunteer role, the first thing
we want them to be
is a learner. They need
to learn the role. As
they gain proficiency in
the role, they become
a leader. Leadership
is the next step, but
that’s not the only step. If you recall our examination of
recruiting in Scripture, we are supposed to disciple and
develop other people. That’s not just the pastor’s job.
That’s not just the ministry director’s job. Development
is everyone’s job.
When we begin to see people multiplying themselves in
their current role, they may be ready for the next level of
your leadership pipeline.
A RECRUITING CULTURE
USES A LEADERSHIP
PIPELINE TO DEVELOP
A PERSON, NOT
DELEGATE A TASK.
20
Implementing a leadership pipeline strategy for recruiting
and development removes guessing from the leadership
game. After a person has displayed proficiency as a
learner, leader, and multiplier, strongly consider bringing
them to the next level of your leadership pipeline. If they
want to stay in their current role, applaud their efforts and
celebrate them in front of their peers.
S
D
C
L
V
MULTIPLIERLEADER
LEARNER
MULTIPLIERLEADER
LEARNER
LEARNER
MULTIPLIERLEADER
LEARNER
MULTIPLIERLEADER
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Consider your volunteers and leaders.
• Are they learners, leaders, or multipliers?
• Have you emphasized multiplication as a key part of
every role, not just the pastor and church staff?
• How is multiplication modeled at all levels of
leadership in your church?
STRUCTURE
As our LifeWay Leadership team has worked with
over 2,800 church leaders on developing a leadership
pipeline for their specific context, I can tell you it’s
22
fairly easy to get everyone on board with the scriptural
foundation and strategy of leadership pipeline. But now
we’re about to meddle with your day-to-day ministry.
The next two phases are often the most difficult to
implement: structure and systems. These components
don’t seem like that big of a deal at first, but they often
cause the keepers of the status quo to rise with torches
and pitchforks in hand. Let’s take a look at why so often
this is the case.
Odds are likely you have restructured or reorganized a
time or two. For some churches, it seems like an annual
event. Leadership pipeline focuses on bringing clarity
and alignment to the formal and informal elements
within a church or organization. You may reorganize
your formal structure and everything looks great on
paper, but when you get right down to it, the informal
structure is still at play. Individual ministry areas do not
appear as silos on paper, but the reality is often quite
different.
If you don’t believe
me, ask one of your
volunteers or leaders.
Odds are likely that
many people serve
in more than one
ministry at your church
LEADERSHIP PIPELINE
BRINGS CLARITY
AND ALIGNMENT TO
THE FORMAL AND
INFORMAL ELEMENTS
WITHIN YOUR CHURCH.
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and experience differences in each. These differences
make it difficult to recruit volunteers and leaders
when language, titles, roles, levels of leadership in
the ministry, levels of responsibility, and ratios of
care vary from ministry to ministry. Consider how
confusing these differences may seem to volunteers
and leaders as they attempt to understand where
they are, their specific responsibilities, and their next
step of development.
Take a moment and audit where and when the
following terms are used in your church’s ministries:
• Volunteer
• Leader
• Coach
• Coordinator
• Director
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Is there clarity and alignment with titles, definitions of
roles, hierarchy of roles, and so forth? If so, how?
Ask 2-3 volunteers or leaders who serve in more than
one ministry to provide feedback on the language
inconsistencies they see between ministry areas. It is most
helpful to find people who have recently started serving
in new roles, as those who have been around awhile likely
have figured it out or come to live with it.
SYSTEMS
Systems are often the least favorite subject for two
different kinds of people: innovators and keepers of the
status quo. To the innovator, systems seem antiquated
and cumbersome, a quagmire of policies and
procedures that will only slow down your church. To the
keepers of the status quo, established systems are the
only thing between the church and self-destruction,
usually at the hands of a rogue staff member. If it ain’t
broke, they don’t fix it.
25
Over time, no church drifts toward simplicity. We have a
tendency to add new processes, new paper trails, new
policies, and so forth without ever taking the time to
call out or kill off what isn’t working. Sometimes things
are working just fine; they’re just working differently
in each ministry leading to inefficiency, duplication of
effort, and confusion. If you want a recruiting culture,
you must address your systems holistically.
I personally began to feel this pressure in leading our
church toward launching multiple campuses. The
stakes were high as we were trying to achieve clarity
for our volunteers, leaders, coaches, and staff. That
meant almost everything we did had to be examined. Is
this process absolutely essential to our mission? Is this
process clear? Is this process easily repeatable? Is this
process scalable? Has this process been documented in
such a way it can be easily transferred to someone else?
One system we had to address was our application and
onboarding process for new volunteers and leaders.
We weren’t just finding weekly volunteers at one
campus. We were identifying, recruiting, and developing
volunteers for a location that hadn’t yet launched. Our
application process had become extremely siloed and
overly complex. We received complaints from people
who were filling out multiple applications, though they
had served our church for years.
26
Not only did each ministry area have its own
application, but each campus had started to create
their own applications as well. When I finally audited
all applications (we stopped counting at 26), I also
discovered that many were also using different
databases. We were not only wasting the time of
our staff, we were also wasting the time of our most
treasured volunteers and leaders.
Did each ministry area want to change its system?
No. Each had a narrow view of their area. If it worked
fine for them, they didn’t want to be slowed down by
everyone else or make concessions. In order to fix this
discrepancy, we had to find real world examples of
how frustrating and confusing these varying systems
were for our volunteers and leaders as they experienced
different onboarding processes in each ministry.
While the process was painful, we eventually developed
one application that covered 80 percent of what
everyone needed and allowed them to ask additional
questions or add an addendum if necessary. We also
created a role description template for everyone to use
that contained core competencies and responsibilities
for each level of our leadership pipeline. As you can
imagine, this greatly increased our ability to recruit
and onboard volunteers and leaders. I could sit down
with a potential volunteer and show one role profile,
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one application, and what to expect in the onboarding
process, providing clarity and making the experience
much better for everyone.
Consider a couple of your best leaders who are serving
in multiple ministry areas. Make a mental audit of what
this person has experienced in recruiting, applying,
interviewing, onboarding, and training in each
ministry area.
• Was there clarity and alignment across ministry areas
in role profiles, expectations, communications, forms,
and processes?
28
• What ministry areas at your church will have the most
difficulty coming to the table to clarify and align areas
throughout your church?
• What can you do to help the leaders of these areas
see the need for change?
• How will it become painful or compelling enough for
them to make the change?
29
SKILLS
When it comes to recruiting skills and training, we
often focus on transferring knowledge. I would like
to shift that toward a focus on competency and
mastery. Traditional education is concerned with
display of knowledge through testing. Consider how
a person spends years in a specific college major only
to find the real skills they need are gained on the job.
Competency-based learning adds two more elements
to traditional education: experience and coaching. The
overlap of knowledge, experience, and coaching leads
to transformation.8 Throughout the New Testament,
Knowledge Experience
Coaching
30
we see essential qualifications for being a leader in the
church. As part of your church’s leadership pipeline,
you must identify core universal competencies or skills
for each level of leadership to determine if someone is
qualified and competent to serve at that level, regardless
of ministry area. For example, if someone leads a team of
ushers or serves as a small group leader, they should each
be competent in handling conflict. In addition to these
core competencies,
there are, of course,
role-based skills
as well.
Our team spent two years working with senior pastors,
executive pastors, leadership experts, and consultants
to develop a leadership pipeline for the church. The
pipeline provides a framework of universal leadership
competencies vetted by these ministry leaders (See our
Competency Overview chart on pages 38-39). We also
have created training pathways that are specific
to ministry areas. Each pathway contains three
specific levels of learning for volunteers, leaders, and
ministry directors.
We believe people need a map, not a menu, for
their training and development. To best equip the
people God has entrusted to your care, your church
needs a leadership pipeline and each person needs a
PEOPLE NEED A MAP, NOT
A MENU, FOR TRAINING
AND DEVELOPMENT.
31
training pathway. The primary tool for delivery of both
leadership pipeline and training pathways content is
our learning management system, MinistryGrid.
com. Regardless of whether or not you choose to use
the framework or content that we have developed,
shifting the conversation from an information dump to
transformation requires a competency-based approach
to development.
STYLE
In a survey of over 2,000 pastors and church leaders,
four challenges hindered leadership training and
development: they don’t know how, they and their
people don’t have time, they don’t have a framework,
and they don’t have the resources. 9 While we do not
believe you can digitize development, we do recognize
that the greatest barrier to training in churches is that it
only occurs at a specific time and place.
Quite often in the church when we host live training
events, we focus on the lowest common denominator
in the room instead of recognizing that our people
have varying levels of competency. When you attempt
one-size-fits-all live training events, you tend to focus
on onboarding or orientation, leaving out your more
experienced volunteers and leaders. This means you
will likely have low attendance, you have to summarize
32
training for those unable to attend, and then host
even more events each year to make up for the
lower turnout.
We have developed a training philosophy that is
both high-tech and high-touch that involves flipping
the classroom. Think in terms of circles, not rows. In
traditional education, the teacher is the sage on the
stage who delivers a lecture to attendees sitting in rows.
After the lecture, attendees complete homework on
their own.
In the flipped classroom, attendees watch training
videos prior to the group gathering time. Doing so
allows various levels of training on the same subject
to be distributed to attendees, depending on each
person’s level of competence. When they gather,
they sit in circles, not rows, to debrief and discuss the
training they have completed. Each attendee is no
longer a spectator but a participant as the group learns
and grows together. Each participant has a different
level of competence, experience, and knowledge to
offer the other people at the table in their own
personal development.
This type of training helps seasoned leaders engage
in the development of others and positions them to
recruit the right people into higher levels of leadership.
As the leader, you no longer have the pressure of being
33
the sage on stage. You are now the guide on the side
and are available to assist people who may need a little
extra help or who are experiencing difficult issues that
need to be addressed. Doing so embeds recruiting at
all levels of your leadership pipeline as it redistributes
the responsibility of development and creates an
environment that builds biblical community. And, let’s
be honest, that training is much more fun to attend.
CREATING AND CURATING A RECRUITING CULTURE
Let’s take another look at Jesus’ relationship with the
disciples. Jesus modeled not only how recruiting and
development occurs but also how responsibility is
transferred, as He rarely did the work of the ministry
by Himself. Sure, He spent time alone, but when
He ministered to people, His disciples were always
nearby. Early on,
they listened and
watched Jesus,
but soon He asked
them to serve with
Him. Jesus then
flipped the script
and asked them
to serve while He
JESUS DIDN’T SHIRK
HIS RESPONSIBILITY
WHEN HE RECRUITED
AND COMMISSIONED
HIS DISCIPLES. JESUS
SHARED IT.
34
observed and helped. You see, Jesus wasn’t shirking His
responsibility for the mission when He recruited and
commissioned His disciples; He was sharing it.
This diagram illustrates four steps to develop someone
in their ministry role. Like Jesus and the disciples,
gradually a transfer of responsibility must occur. These
four phases allow the developer to relinquish authority
and fully prepare and equip a new leader in their role. 10
First, when you look at the developer’s responsibility,
you see the word “intentional.” Intentional ministry
means that I do, you watch, then we talk about it. In
each of these four steps, there is always a feedback and
coaching component. For example, if I’m a small group
GRADUAL RELEASE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Intentional Ministry
Guided Ministry
Collaborative Ministry
Equipped Ministry
DEVELOPER’S RESPONSIBILITY
LEADER’S RESPONSIBLITY
I do, you watch, we talk.
I do, you help, we talk.
You do, I help, we talk.
You do, I watch, we talk.
35
leader and you’re a small group apprentice, I lead the
group discussion, you observe, then we talk about it.
Maybe we do that for a week or two, then we move
into the second phase: Guided. During this step, I do,
you help, and we talk about it. So I’ve moved from
leading group discussion and you watching to asking
you to come alongside and help me facilitate the
conversation.
Next, we move into collaborative ministry. Here’s where
we flip the script. You do, I help, then we talk. Now
you’re primarily leading group discussion, and I’m there
to jump in and help as needed. When we talk, we have
the opportunity to troubleshoot and discuss what’s
working well and what’s not working well.
Finally, we move into the equipped phase. Now you’re
doing the work. I’m just watching but am still giving
you feedback. I’ve released ministry responsibility
to you and now you’re able to lead your own small
group. These four phases may take weeks or even
months to complete. It really depends on the level of
responsibilities and specifics of that role.
Even though equipped ministry is the last of these four
phases, it doesn’t end here. Now that you’ve walked
through this framework with me, you’re equipped to do
it again, this time as the developer of someone else. You
36
have experienced this model yourself and know what it
takes to raise up another leader, so you can repeat the
process with a new potential leader. Then they can do
the same.
The great thing about this model is that it can be
introduced and replicated at all leadership levels
and in all ministry roles. A seasoned volunteer in the
church nursery can recruit and develop a new nursery
volunteer. An usher can identify and train a new usher.
A youth teacher can recruit and help a teacher launch
a new class.
Jesus and the early church leaders modeled a way of
healthy leadership reproduction that moves past simple
addition to multiplication: recruit, develop, and repeat.
If we model this leadership development method as
church leaders, we will quickly see it take hold and
deeply embed recruiting and development into our
church culture. Remember Ephesians 4 and that as
church leaders, we are all called to that end. Let’s
make sure our legacy is not just about the things we
accomplished but the people we developed.
To watch a video on Four Steps to Recruit Better Volunteers and access additional resources on Ministry Grid, visit bit.ly/cultureofrecruiting or scan this QR code with your camera app.
37
END NOTES
1. John O’Brien and Andrew Cave, The Power of Purpose (United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited, 2017), 83.
2. Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Josey-Bass Inc., 2004), 11.
3. Adapted from Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 6-11.
4. E. H. Schein, “Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture,” Sloan Management Review, no. 25 (1984): 3-16.
5. Adapted from Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 18.
6. Adapted from Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 9-10.
7. Adapted from Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel, The Leadership Pipeline (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 8.
8. Eric Geiger and Kevin Peck, Designed to Lead (B&H Publishing Group, 2016), 163.
9. LifeWay Research, “CRD Training Project” (Nashville: LifeWay Christian Resources, 2012).
10. Adapted from Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2014), 3.
25
Pip
eline Level
Leadership
Resp
onsib
ilitySam
ple
Ro
les
Co
re Co
mp
etencies
Discip
leshipV
ision
Strategy
Collaboration
People D
evelopment
Steward
shipM
inistry-Sp
ecific
Co
mp
etencies
Pro
gressio
nD
escriptio
nE
xamp
lesTheo
log
ical and Sp
iritual D
evelop
ment
Preferred Future
Plan o
r M
ethod fo
r the P
referred Future
Ab
ility to W
ork w
ith O
thers
Co
ntributing
to the G
rowth o
f O
thers
Overseeing
Reso
urces W
ithin O
ne’s Care
Uniq
ue Skills W
ithin M
inistry Area
Senior
Leadership
Provid
es visio
n and sets the strateg
ic d
irection fo
r the church as a
who
le
Pasto
r, E
xecutive Team
, Deaco
n, E
lder, B
oard
Mem
ber
Teaches theo
log
y and serves as a C
hrist-like exam
ple
Creates visio
n fo
r the church
Thinks strateg
ically ab
out the
church as a w
hole
Wo
rks throug
h team
leaders
Creates a
develo
pm
ent culture
Faithfully stew
ards
op
po
rtunities w
ith church’s reso
urces
Ministry-
specifi
c co
mp
etencies vary b
ased o
n role and
ministry
area. These co
mp
etencies p
rog
ress from
task executio
n to p
eop
le d
evelop
ment,
to systems
manag
ement
and strategy,
to church and m
inistry oversig
ht.
Ministry
Directo
r
Oversees
a ministry
area with the
respo
nsibility
of lead
ing co
aches and lead
ers
Child
ren’s M
inister, W
orship
Pasto
r, Stud
ent P
astor
Und
erstands
and app
lies system
atic and b
iblical
theolo
gy
and teaches sp
iritual d
isciplines
Co
ntextualizes visio
n for
ministry area
Desig
ns m
inistry strateg
y and im
plem
ents in m
inistry co
ntext
Wo
rks throug
h lead
ers
Creates a
develo
pm
ent p
athway fo
r m
inistry area
Faithfully stew
ards
church’s reso
urces
Leader
Provid
es lead
ership fo
r a ministry
team
Small G
roup
Leader,
Co
mm
ittee C
hair, Teacher
Know
s basic
do
ctrines, p
ractices sp
iritual d
isciplines,
and exhibits
the fruit of
the Spirit
Articulates and im
plem
ents visio
n for
ministry area
Leads o
thers to unite aro
und and execute
ministry
strategy
Wo
rks throug
h o
thersD
evelop
s o
thers
Faithfully stew
ards
gifted
ness of
others
Vo
lunteerServes o
n a m
inistry team
Usher, G
reeter, N
ursery W
orker
Know
s the g
osp
el and takes
respo
nsibility
for p
ersonal
develo
pm
ent
Supp
orts
vision o
f m
inistry area
Serves eff
ectively in m
inistry role
Wo
rks with
others
Disp
lays w
illingness to
be d
evelop
ed
Faithfully stew
ards
their perso
nal g
iftedness
COMPETENCY OVERVIEW
40
GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE
Use the following questions to process Creating and Curating a Recruiting Culture with your staff or ministry team.
Consider the following roles at your church. Circle each role that actively recruits and develops new volunteers and leaders.
• Pastor
• Church Staff
• Ministry Director
• Coach
• Leader
• Volunteer
Review your ministry audit on pages 13-14. How might the total number of roles you circled in the previous activity relate to your church’s current need for more volunteers and leaders? Explain.
41
Answer the questions about your church’s culture on pages 8-9, if you have not already done so. How does your church’s culture emphasize ongoing recruitment and development?
Does your church have an organizational structure such as a leadership pipeline (page 12)? If so, how does it help your people know their next steps in ongoing development? If not, how are you equipping people to serve in their ministry roles?
42
Review the leadership multiplication diagram on page 15. If you began practicing this model and invested in two leaders for the next year, who would be those leaders? What can you do now to begin developing these two people in your ministry?
Answer the questions about learners, leaders, and multipliers on page 21, if you have not already done so. How would a focus on developing people over delegating tasks better equip your people to learn, lead, and multiply in their current ministry roles? Explain.
43
Recall the importance of clarity and alignment in your church’s structure on pages 21-24. Are role titles and levels of leadership consistent in all ministry areas of your church? If so, how does this alignment help when someone serves in more than one ministry? If not, what may be confusing for your volunteers and leaders?
Answer the questions about your church’s onboarding systems on pages 27-28, if you have not already done so. Does each ministry area have a clearly defined process? If so, how are the processes the same? How are the processes different? What may be confusing or frustrating in your current development processes for leaders who serve in more than one ministry?
44
Review the diagram on page 29. If transformation occurs when knowledge, experience, and coaching overlap, then how does your church’s training and development emphasize each component to equip your people? How does the concept of knowledge, experience, and coaching relate to the importance of a person learning, leading, and multiplying? Explain.
Remember that Ephesians 4 calls church leaders to be equippers and not just doers. How can you use the four steps of the gradual release model (p. 34) to establish a culture of recruiting and development in your ministry and church?
45
NOTES
46
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Leadership Pipeline: The philosophy and system behind helping a church member move from a member to a leader who develops other members.
Knowledge, Experience, Coaching: The ideal learning environment where information is received and then applied to create reproducible learning.
Conviction, Culture, Constructs: The foundation blocks for building a Leadership Pipeline in a church. Conviction relates to the heart change that must happen in leaders; Culture refers to the environment of the church that encourages growth; and Constructs are the processes put in place within the church to develop leaders.
Learner, Leader, Multiplier: One example of a Leadership Pipeline. A Learner is the entry point of a leader looking to grow and mature. The Leader is practically applying leadership lessons. The Multiplier is someone who is training other Leaders who will train Leaders.
Leading Self: The ability to take initiative and to learn and implement a skill or task.
Leading Others: Someone who leads a group of people, each of whom is capable of leading themselves. The captain of a team or ministry area that serves the church body in the parking lot or in the nursery.
Leading Leaders: A leader who leads a group of leaders. This leader influences individuals who oversee teams.
Leading Departments: The leader that contextualizes the strategy and vision of the overall organization for a specific area of ministry or department.
Leader of Organizations: This is a leader who sets vision for the entire organization and must work through department leaders to contextualize every arm of the organization or ministry.
Design Team: A team of people who will collect the data and input from all of the ministry areas and departments and implement a Leadership Pipeline that aligns the entire organization.
47
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Todd Adkins is the Director of Leadership at LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, TN. Prior to joining LifeWay, Todd served the local church in student ministry and as a campus and executive pastor. He has a background in launching strategic initiatives and web-based leadership development, and he’s passionate about helping churches create cultures of pipelines, leadership development, and training pathways for every role in the church.
Since joining LifeWay, Todd has spearheaded the development of Ministry Grid, LifeWay’s dynamic leadership development platform, and written Developing Your Leadership Pipeline, a tool to aid church leaders in developing their people. He also hosts the 5 Leadership Questions and New Churches podcasts and tweets #Leadership incessantly at @ToddAdkins.
48
LEAD by DESIGNFor you. For your ministry team. Authors Eric Geiger (author of bestselling Simple Church
and Creature of the Word) and Kevin Peck argue that churches
that consistently produce leaders have a strong conviction to
develop leaders, a healthy culture for leadership development,
and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally
build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed
through the ministry of a local church.
For you. For your ministry team. Authors Eric Geiger (author of bestselling
and Creature of the Word
that consistently produce leaders have a strong conviction to
develop leaders, a healthy culture for leadership development,
and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally
build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed
through the ministry of a local church.
Visit DesignedtoLead.com to receive free leadership resources
AVAILABLE NOW
WHAT IF THESOLUTION ISN’T A NEW
MODEL OR A COMPLICATED STRATEGY, BUT A
SHIFT IN PERSPECTIVE?
No Silver Bullets explores fi ve micro-shifts that
have the potential to produce macro-changes
in your church. Leaders will discover how to
integrate these micro-shifts into the life of your
church, starting with the way you disciple. You
will fi nish by developing a plan to structure,
communicate, and evaluate these changes to
ensure that they take root and pave the way
for lasting change and kingdom impact.
For more information, please visitdanielim.com/NoSilverBullets
49
LEAD by DESIGNFor you. For your ministry team. Authors Eric Geiger (author of bestselling Simple Church
and Creature of the Word) and Kevin Peck argue that churches
that consistently produce leaders have a strong conviction to
develop leaders, a healthy culture for leadership development,
and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally
build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed
through the ministry of a local church.
For you. For your ministry team. Authors Eric Geiger (author of bestselling
and Creature of the Word
that consistently produce leaders have a strong conviction to
develop leaders, a healthy culture for leadership development,
and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally
build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed
through the ministry of a local church.
Visit DesignedtoLead.com to receive free leadership resources
AVAILABLE NOW
WHAT IF THESOLUTION ISN’T A NEW
MODEL OR A COMPLICATED STRATEGY, BUT A
SHIFT IN PERSPECTIVE?
No Silver Bullets explores fi ve micro-shifts that
have the potential to produce macro-changes
in your church. Leaders will discover how to
integrate these micro-shifts into the life of your
church, starting with the way you disciple. You
will fi nish by developing a plan to structure,
communicate, and evaluate these changes to
ensure that they take root and pave the way
for lasting change and kingdom impact.
For more information, please visitdanielim.com/NoSilverBullets
50
Training is a vital part of any healthy discipleship
culture. But any church can tell you that training
every leader can be difficult. But it doesn’t have to be.
Ministry Grid makes training simple by providing
training to every volunteer and leader in your church
at the time and place that’s best for them.
Start training your leaders for free at
ministrygrid.com.
HARD WORKWE DO THE
FOR YOU.
51
Join Todd Adkins, Eric Geiger, and Daniel Im each
week as they ask five questions of great leaders.
You’ll be encouraged, equipped, and entertained.
Subscribe at lifeway.com/leadership
006203451
Far too often, churches think it’s the job of the pastor to recruit volunteers and leaders when there’s a gap in ministry. These churches focus on leadership placement over leadership development and settle for warm bodies instead of weekly volunteers.
Instead, what if you focused on leadership development and equipped all your people to feel confident in recruiting and developing someone to serve in their ministry role? How do you do this?
Todd Adkins examines how implementing a leadership pipeline in your church provides a clear process of development for your people. Through Scripture, strategy, structure, systems, skills, and style, you can create a culture of ongoing recruiting and development.
The defining legacy of a leader is not the things you have done but the people you have developed. Build an army, not just an audience.
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