Discipleship Is Leadership Development

Theological and Foundational Values of Developing People

Growing up in the western suburbs of Chicago, I have spent most of my life in and around the local church. And over the years, I have noticed a pattern that has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore. I have seen it in churches firsthand, heard it in conversations with ministry leaders, and wrestled with it alongside classmates in seminary:

We are struggling to intentionally develop people into leaders.

You can almost hear the problem from both sides. Church staff and ministry directors are exhausted.
“We don't have enough volunteers. The same people are doing everything. We're burning out.”

Meanwhile, people sitting in those same churches are saying something completely different:
“I want to belong. I want someone to invest in me. I just don't know where I fit.”

Those two realities shouldn't exist side by side as often as they do.

Barna's research on discipleship reinforces part of this disconnect. In one study, 39% of practicing Christians reported that they were not engaged in discipleship at all.1

Perhaps our leadership crisis isn't primarily a volunteer recruitment problem. Maybe it's a discipleship problem. We have become very good at asking people to serve. I'm not convinced we have become equally good at asking who those people could become if someone intentionally invested in them. That's a very different question. Instead of looking at someone and asking, "Could they fill this volunteer opening?" what if we started asking:

"Who could this person become in one or two years if we intentionally developed them?"

Could this volunteer eventually become the lead teacher?

Could this teenager eventually mentor younger students?

Could the person quietly serving in the background eventually build an entirely new ministry?

What might God do through this person if someone simply saw their potential and chose to invest?

That shift changes leadership development because people stop becoming positions we need to fill and become people entrusted to us to develop.

Jesus Developed People
When I look at discipleship through that lens, I have a hard time separating discipleship from leadership development. Jesus didn't disciple the Twelve so they would remain permanently dependent upon Him standing physically beside them. He taught them, corrected them, allowed them to fail, gave them responsibility, sent them out, and ultimately entrusted His mission to them. They were supposed to multiply. And that challenges something in me as a leader. Because developing people requires me to give up control. It means accepting that someone I am developing will make mistakes. It means allowing them to do something differently than I would do it. Sometimes it means watching someone struggle through something I could accomplish faster myself. That's uncomfortable. But if I constantly step in and rescue the process, I may accomplish the task while completely missing the opportunity to develop the person.

Dismantling the Savior Mentality
One of the greatest barriers to developing leaders can actually be the leader. We like being needed.
Sometimes what we call sacrificial leadership is actually an unhealthy system built around one indispensable person. We answer every question. Make every decision. Solve every problem. Carry every emergency. And eventually we burn out. Then we wonder why no one else knows how to lead. I've had to wrestle with a difficult question:

If everything falls apart whenever the leader leaves the room, how healthy was the leadership in the first place?

A sustainable ministry should eventually be able to function without me. That doesn't diminish leadership. I think it demonstrates successful leadership. My goal should be to develop people who can eventually lead without needing my constant permission, validation, or presence—and who can then develop someone else. In that sense, good leadership is constantly working itself out of a job.

Breaking the Dependency Cycle
There is a difference between supporting someone and creating dependency. Healthy discipleship should increasingly move someone's dependence away from the leader and toward Christ. If every difficult decision requires my answer, I haven't finished developing that person. If they need my approval before taking initiative, there is still development to do. I want the people I develop to eventually challenge my ideas. I want them to see things I don't see. I want them to become better than me in areas where I helped train them. And eventually, I want them developing people I may never personally meet. That's multiplication.

We Don't Get to Use People's Stories
There is another danger that deserves attention, particularly for those of us who work closely with people experiencing significant pain. People are not ministry illustrations. They are not résumé builders. And their trauma does not belong to us simply because they trusted us enough to tell us about it. I've spent much of my professional life working alongside people navigating trauma, instability, and difficult life circumstances. That experience has made me increasingly protective of the dignity of people's stories. There can be a temptation in ministry to demonstrate our effectiveness by talking about the brokenness we've encountered.

Look at the kind of people I've helped.

Look at the situations I've handled.

Look at the transformation I've witnessed.

There are appropriate ways to celebrate what God has done. But we need to be extraordinarily careful that someone else's most painful chapter doesn't become evidence for our ministry success. People should never have to surrender their dignity in order for us to demonstrate our leadership. If someone entrusts me with their story, part of leadership is protecting it.

Recognizing the Pain Behind the Eyes
Working with people has also taught me something else: there is almost always more happening beneath the surface than we know. Someone can walk into church polished, articulate, smiling, and seemingly fine while carrying enormous pain. That matters when we're developing people.

People know when they're being treated like projects. They also know when someone genuinely sees potential in them. Especially for people who have experienced rejection, instability, trauma, or systems that have repeatedly defined them by what is wrong with them, being trusted with meaningful responsibility can be incredibly powerful. That doesn't mean ignoring weaknesses or lowering expectations. Actually, I think dignity allows us to do the opposite. We can tell someone:

"I believe you're capable of this. I'm going to help you get there. You're probably going to make mistakes. That's okay. We're going to work through them together."

That's a very different environment from either rescuing someone or throwing them into responsibility and hoping they survive.

Development Requires Proximity
This is probably one of the biggest things my experience has taught me: You cannot develop people entirely from a distance.
Leadership development requires proximity.It happens when someone sits beside you while you're working through a difficult decision. It happens when you explain why you handled a conflict a certain way. It happens when you hand someone real responsibility and resist the urge to take it back the moment they struggle.

It also happens afterward when you sit down and ask:

"What went well?"

"What felt difficult?"

"What would you do differently next time?"

"What do you need from me?"

That kind of reflection turns an experience into development. Three practices have become particularly important to me:

Shared proximity. Don't just give people information about leadership. Invite them close enough to watch leadership happen. Let them see some of the decision-making, tension, planning, failure, and problem-solving that usually happens behind the scenes.

Real responsibility. At some point, developing leaders have to actually lead. Give them something meaningful enough that their decisions matter. Then allow enough room for them to make those decisions.

Restorative feedback. When mistakes happen—and they will—feedback should help someone grow rather than make them afraid to try again. Be specific. Be truthful. Affirm what was done well. Name what needs to change. Then give them another opportunity to practice.

That last part matters. If someone makes one mistake and we immediately take the responsibility back, we didn't develop them.

We taught them that failure means losing our trust.

What This Can Look Like Practically
For leaders who want to begin developing this kind of culture, I would start small:

• Look at your current volunteer needs and ask whether you're recruiting people simply to fill openings or intentionally thinking about their long-term development.

• Identify one meaningful responsibility you're holding because "it's easier if I just do it" and consider who you could begin training to own it.

• Invite a developing leader into spaces where they can observe how decisions are actually made.

• Create regular opportunities for feedback that are developmental rather than merely corrective.

• Protect people's private stories. Their pain is not evidence for your ministry effectiveness.

• Learn to receive someone's no without using guilt to turn it into a yes.

• Ask yourself: If I disappeared for a month, what would stop functioning—and why?

That last question can reveal quite a bit about the systems built.

Moving Beyond A Formula
Developing people is slow work. Sometimes painfully slow. It would often be easier to do the task ourselves. It would be faster to keep relying on the same five dependable volunteers. And it would certainly be more predictable to only give responsibility to people who already know what they're doing. But that isn't multiplication. The Church doesn't need more ministries built around indispensable leaders. We need leaders who are willing to invest deeply enough in people that eventually those people no longer need us in the same way. That's one of the beautiful things about discipleship. We aren't using people to build our ministries. We're using ministry as an opportunity to build people.

And perhaps, if we became more intentional about doing that, we would begin to address both sides of the problem we started with: exhausted leaders who desperately need others to carry the ministry with them, and people sitting in our churches wondering whether anyone sees what God might be developing inside them.

Maybe those aren't two separate problems after all.

Bibliography
https://www.barna.com/research/christians-discipleship-community/?utm_source=chatgpt.com