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 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 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.
This is an excerpt from Creating and Curating a Recruiting Culture by Todd Adkins. Learn more about creating a culture of recruiting in your church and download the full booklet here.