Strong and godly leadership is a key factor in ministry growth. Many ministries struggle to grow because they only have one leader. The reality is that one person cannot carry the ministry alone.
The secret sauce to growing your men’s ministry and reaching more people is to develop more leaders. If you want to train up leaders in your men’s ministry, here are some ways you can do it:
- Cast Vision. A ministry must have some place it’s going so that it feels like we’re moving forward. If all we do is what we did last week, then it’s going to be hard to get men excited and rallied behind that vision. A vision must be a God-sized, forward-moving vision that inspires the men to reach further, go deeper, and believe God for more.
The secret sauce to growing your men’s ministry and reaching more people is to develop more leaders
- Regularly Address the Need. Most men don’t step up into leadership simply because they don’t realize there is a need. If you have a vision you’re moving toward, you’ll have various needs to meet. You can regularly let the men in the ministry know that there are varying needs and challenge them to step up and take them on.
- Tap Men on the Shoulder. Standing up at the front and telling guys they need to volunteer doesn’t usually help. Most men need to be personally tapped on the shoulder, presented with the opportunity, and then invited to participate. You may get a “no,” but that’s ok. Identify the strengths of the guy and then call him out to step up to something greater than what he’s doing. Take a guy out for a coffee and tell him that you’ve identified him as a leader. This will be a game-changer.
- Intentionally Hand Stuff Off. In your leadership, it’s time to get out of doing anything that someone else can do and hand off as many aspects of the ministry as possible to other men. Get others to pray, to make announcements, to lead worship, to follow up with other guys, to coordinate outreaches, etc. Get a group of guys to plan the upcoming ministry calendar. The more, the merrier! Every time the guys step up to do something, notice it and encourage them. Give them positive feedback and press them to keep going.
- Create Projects for Your Leaders. A great way to train up leaders is to initiate projects that they would lead. A prayer initiative, an outreach, developing a greeting team, etc. What’s happening here is that you are letting the guys lead a project or an area of the ministry that requires them to step up and lead. They’ll need to build a team, cast vision, identify other leaders, and hand off ministry duties to other guys. Now, you are using these projects to develop leaders who develop leaders.
Ministry is a team sport. We all work together and develop one another. We challenge one another, and we build one another up.
If your ministry doesn’t look like this, then something needs to change. Ask yourself, “How am I developing the people around me?”
The answer will lead you down the pathway of putting others first and investing in their growth, for their good and the good of the ministry.
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