Leadership Development
Introduction
With dependence on the Holy Spirit and discipline to relationally develop vision, character, and skill in those you shepherd, empower them to empower others (using Map, Tree, List) to live into the mission of Young Life and the Kingdom
Supporting Scripture: “You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.” 2 Timothy 2:2
Evidence of Senior LEaders demonstrating this objective looks like:
- Exceptional proven skills in planting, growing, and supervising excellent YL work (Training, Recruiting, Supervision, Delegation)
- Builds ministry by empowering volunteers to lead people, processes, and vision.
- Develops their ability to lead Interculturally - to lead others outside of one's own country and culture (Cultural Intelligence).
- Facilitates leadership change
- Spearheads strategy
- A Volunteer Movement is started and growing
- Motivates teams and fosters belonging.
- Requires additional leaders to walk alongside those they lead to avoid Mini-me’s
- Builds high-functioning teams
- Lives out the Leadership Tree, intentionally investing in a few and developing their leadership ability and teaching them to do the same with others. Prays over this tree regularly and is intentional with it in supervision.
Teaching
As we work to put the vision into place that the Lord has given us, the first thing we need is people! We need people who are going to be on this journey with us to fulfill this vision - a shared vision. We need the hands and the feet of the body of Christ with us! We need other leaders with us and one of the best ways to do that is to develop others to fulfill this vision with us. To reach the next kid, we need to reproduce ourselves. How do we do that?
Let’s listen to a clip from the Young Life Podcast to hear Simon Peter from Uganda share about his desire to intentionally develop other people to multiply. 7:52-11:21
Peter’s way of intentional multiplication discipleship began to use the metaphor of a tree - a mango tree. Watch the short video to see the comparison of a mango tree and a tomato tree.
Multiplication leadership started with Jesus
Just as Alexis says in the video, Jesus lived this way investing his time in a few! He had the opportunity to speak to thousands of people at a time but in his three years of ministry, he invested in 12 - and even deeper in just three. The Lord of the universe shows us how to develop others through a few deep relationships.
In the book Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman shares that Jesus’ model of leadership development should be at the foundation of all church leadership.
“Surely if the pattern of Jesus at this point means anything at all, it teaches that the first duty of a church leadership is to see to it that a foundation is laid in the beginning on which can be built effective and continuing evangelistic ministry to the multitudes. This will require more concentration of time and talents on fewer people in the church while not neglecting the passion for the world. It will mean raising up trained discipliers ‘for the work of ministering’ with the pastor and church staff (Eph 4:12). A few people so dedicated in time will shake the world for God. Victory is never won by the multitudes. (Coleman 1993, 30)
This echoes Paul’s commandment of leadership in 2 Timothy 2:2, “You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.”
In summary, the Tree is a visual representation of the Master’s Plan. Jesus focused on his disciples (tree) to ultimately impact his vision - the whole world (map). We carry the same vision and plan in our geographies.
Connecting the Tree with Vision
In the last lessons we dreamed and worked on visions for the places where we lead. Once there is a clear vision, one of the first questions is, “How are we going to reach this vision?” The answer? With the people, the Lord has put before us! The Tree is the plan! Watch this short video to see how the Vision Map and Tree work together.
Growth Minded Supervision
Using the Tree as a leadership model reminds us of two things when we are leading - life on life leadership and having a growth mindset. As leaders we may or may not be supervising those on our first branches, but regardless of supervision we are developing our first branch through relationship with growth in mind.
Examples of Leadership Development and Tree’s from i100 participants.
Bledi Mema (Albania)
Rosa (LAC)
Pyneath Sor (Cambodia)
Cambodia Young Life has used the Master Plan of Evangelism to develop leaders for 20 years. Watch the video below and see how the Master Plan of Evangelism and the Leadership Tree work together. The Tree can be a picture of the Master Plan.
Teaching
Developing others takes time and intentionally. The Training Square is a simple tool you can use to assess where a leader is in their stage of development for a certain skill or point of development. Watch this video to learn what the training square is and how to use it with people you develop.
Scott Miedema
2nd Branch
- Be intentional! Learn and pass along 1-on-1 and to multiple levels! - not just you, but how do you talk with your first branch about their next branch?
Next you will see how you can be held accountable to using this tool.
Accountability
Putting the Next Kid Framework into Action:
Let's build some accountability into using the Tree. The below statements are a progression of how you use your TREE meaning that they build on each other. The statements flow from HAVE to ACTIVE to SHARED to GROWING. Consider how you use your TREE and where in the progression you are.
- Every leader has a tree and knows who their three are. (HAVE)
- Every leader prays daily over the people on their tree AND has an intentional plan about how they are investing in them weekly (intentional in prayer, conversations, experiences, ETC) (ACTIVE)
- Every leader knows their 1st branch is doing the same with the 2nd branch. They pray and process this together regularly. (SHARED)
- These trees help us think through “who” our future leaders are, the “where” of the map, and “when” too. (GROWING)
Your divisional iRep will follow up with you on how you are using the tool attached to this lesson using the above accountability questions.
Call to Action
- Create or update your leadership tree.
- In prayer ask the Lord for guidance on how you can best serve each person on your tree.
- Talk with each of your 1st branches about their next branch.
- What is the next step after you talked to each person on your tree?
- Meet with your supervisor and discuss what you have learned. Share where you felt encouraged and where you felt challenged.
- Share how you want to develop your 1st branch
- Share what you need to use the tree more effectively.
- Use the learning square to assess one skill each of your 1st branches needs to grow in. Assess where they are on the square and help them grow in their development of that skill. (Share this in your divisional time)
