Raising Leaders

A problem many churches face is a lack of leaders. When I say leaders, I don’t just mean elders or staff members, though those people certainly are leaders. I mean people who are serving, growing in the gospel, living on mission and helping others to do the same. As a church grows, the needs grow as well. If new leaders aren’t developed, existing leaders begin to feel the strain and eventually become overwhelmed and burned out.

That’s where New City was about three and a half years ago. We had just moved into our new building, God was continuing to bring new people to our gatherings almost every Sunday, and we knew we needed to begin seriously investing time and resources into the development of new leaders.

So, we got started. Three years ago, New City began its first Men’s Cohort, a nine-month long training aimed at developing leadership skills in men who are already faithfully living on mission.
Just a little over two years ago, I wrote this blog post as an intro to a series of posts about new leadership pipelines, and we began implementing those pipelines in each ministry area.
Shortly after that, we launched our first Women’s Cohort, recognizing that the need for women in leadership is just as great as the need for men.
And we continued in existing efforts to develop leaders, such as MC leader training, and quarterly trainings open to anyone.

Raising up and developing leaders is hard work. It takes time, intentionality, and money. It comes at a cost, but we have seen over the years that it is well worth the investment. We have seen men and women moving through the pipelines, raising up new leaders as they go. New leadership roles have been filled. Over 30 men and 20 women have completed the Cohorts. New MCs have been planted, DNA (discipleship) groups have been started, and, even beyond New City, men and women are seeing that they are called to lead wherever they are, at home, at work, or at play.

But we have never seen the fruit more clearly than in recent weeks, as we have moved forward with the replant of New City East Side. I’ve been a part of three church plants during my time at New City, and I’ll tell you, getting all the leaders needed can be really hard. But with East Side, the people have just fallen into place. We have some amazing leaders who have stepped up from the legacy church (the replanted church), but we are also sending a great group of men and women from New City Macon to fill key leadership roles needed for the replant.

These leaders have stepped out in faith, choosing to leave their church home for a time, and pour into the body at New City East Side, demonstrating what it looks like to live out our identities as a family of missionary servants. This is no small thing, and it probably wouldn’t have been the case without the intentional investment in growing leaders over the last few years.

My point is that three years ago when we began these efforts, we didn’t know this replant would happen, but God knew. He knew the needs we would have, and He began providing for them years in advance. New City is not a huge church. Our resources are limited. But God…

All of this points to the greatness of God, and what He can do with a group of people who desire to see the gospel moving and who will follow as God leads. What a privilege it is to be given the opportunity to participate in his redemptive work.