“Where do I find leaders?”
It’s one of the most pressing questions facing churches today and will likely remain so for the next two decades or more.
We are facing a leadership crisis in the Body of Christ. In 2023, Christianity Today reported that one in four pastors in the United States planned to retire by 2030.
In my home country of Canada, it is reported that the country needs 625 new pastors every year over the next 12 years to address retirement attrition (this assumes the number of churches remains the same and does not factor in increasing the number of churches to reach more people with the Gospel of Jesus).
We are facing a leadership crisis in the Body of Christ.
Those statistics are not limited to pastoral ministry. Across the church and in men’s ministries, there is a strong felt need to identify potential leaders.
Over the years, leadership experts have developed a wide range of acronyms to help identify the qualities of potential leaders:
- HAIL stands for: Hungry, Available, Involved, and Learning.
- HAT stands for: Hungry, Available, and Teachable.
- In the Christian community, you may have heard of FAT or FATSO. I’m not sure why we latched on to these words, but they stand for: Faithful, Available, and Teachable (and Spirit-led and Obedient as well).
Each of these words certainly provides some sound principles to guide you in identifying potential leaders, but they do have one critical flaw:
They assume you have people already hungry for leadership.
The reality that we have so few people moving into leadership positions in our churches suggests a more fundamental issue: we don’t have enough people in the pipeline of potential leaders.
Fortunately, Jesus gives us two important lessons that can help guide us as we look for men’s ministry leaders.
Pray for Potential Leaders
It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but prayer is often the one thing we forget to do or put as the last item on our checklist of finding leaders.
In Matthew 9:38 (CSB), Jesus tells us, “Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”
Jesus cares more about the advancement of His mission than you and I do. His mission will continue long after you and I are gone from leadership in ministry. It only makes sense to ask the all-powerful Founder of our movement to call up more people to lead.
The most fruitful leaders I have worked with and for have been those who have been the answer to someone’s prayer. The best starting point for finding potential leaders in your men’s ministry is to ask the Lord to raise them up.
Jesus cares more about the advancement of His mission than you and I do.
The answer He gives to your prayers may surprise you—and will almost certainly surprise the people He has in mind. This is why the second principle becomes essential.
Call Up and Mentor the Ones God Reveals
In most Christian environments, if you wait for somebody to be hungry and available, you will probably be faced with a shortage of leaders while you wait. At best, your numbers will be small, and at worst, you will have some people with wrong motives who have raised their hands to say they are hungry for leadership.
This is a very passive way to develop leaders, and it’s very different from how Jesus did it.
Jesus did not choose the most obvious people to lead. Most of His key leaders were not well-educated or showed a great passion for in-depth religious studies (Acts 4:13).
Instead, He walked into the workplace of a group of fishermen and said, “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19).
Your potential leaders are everywhere—even in some of the most unlikely places.
As you pray for the Lord to raise more workers for your men’s ministry, follow up with the names He brings to your heart and mind.
Your potential leaders are everywhere—even in some of the most unlikely places.
Meet with them and let them know the gifts you see in them, and ask them to prayerfully consider if God wants them to be part of the most crucial mission in the world.
Then, just as Jesus did, take the time to mentor and develop their servant leadership while ensuring their faithfulness along the way. There are numerous men’s ministry leadership resources available to support you on this journey.
We did not find ourselves in this leadership crisis overnight, and we will not quickly emerge from it either. It will take focused and long-term intentionality from all of us to raise leaders for the mission. What we do in leadership development today may be the one thing that has the most impact on the church fifty and one hundred years from now.
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