Passing the Baton

Just finished listening to the newest edition of Willow Creek's Defining Moments. This edition featured Wayne Cordeiro and Jim Mellado talking about developing cultures within the church where leaders are not only trained but released into ministry. The audio had some incredibly powerful concepts, one of which was Cordeiro's contention that most churches need to multiply the number of "platforms" they offer to developing leaders. He says that in most churches there is a Sunday platform, a children's ministry platform and maybe one or two others (perhaps Wednesday night), and what is needed is something along the lines of four times that number. Unless churches have places for their leaders in training to fly (and fail) then they will always under-develop their leaders and short change their own future.

Other topics included the importance of the 5-10 year strategy in passing the baton from senior leadership to the next generation, looking within the organization rather than without for leaders, the importance of mentoring and the essential of leaders having people that they are truly transparent with (Henry Cloud has great materials along these lines).

This is one audio I'm planning on going back to soon to digest some more and ask:

• How can we be more intentional about building a culture of leadership development here at our church?
  
• How can we multiply platforms? Coincidentally part of the answer is definitely small groups which we are going to be focusing on in a whole new way beginning in 2011.
  
• How can I be more intentional about raising the leadership quotient at KCF?
  

I also made a quick visit to Cordeiro's website and found an great article that captures some of his thinking about the importance of passing the baton to the next generation. This is something that the church at large must REALLY dig into over next 5-10 years as the baby boomer generation moves into retirement. We do this poorly far too often. Check the article out here.