reproduction mindset
I had an epiphany a few days ago, and it wasn't a good one. I have two really strong students that just graduated high school and are moving out of high school homegroup in a couple of weeks. These are two students that I personally invested a lot in and honestly, they run their homegroups. They call students every week, make sure everyone has a ride, plan food, do talksheets, and lead other students in their relationship with God. Both of them are incredible.
I got scared the other day though... I had done my best to reproduce myself in them and to work myself out of a job. Truthfully, I think I did a pretty good job at that. It's evidenced by how their homegroups run now with me as a zone pastor and not being their homegroup pastor. But I made a mistake. I never thought to teach them to reproduce themselves. I just never thought about; it never even crossed my mind.
Now all I can think about is "O, goodness. I hope their homegrops stay strong after they graduate. I hope they modeled what I tried to teach them but never plainly spelled it out. I hope my mistake doesn't screw things up. I hope everything is ok."
The good news is that they are both sharp, strong leaders. I think they get it, even in spite of my mistake. They understand that leading is about reproducing others to lead and believing that people can do the job.
I learned a lesson though. It's not enough to just simply reproduce yourself and to raise up a leader after you. Your job is not done until they understand their job is to do the same as you did and have someone following them. It's this mindset of replicating everything we do so that things can be built even stronger after we leave. It should always be building.
Our success as leaders should be measured by how strong things remain when we leave our place of ministry... not the things we did when we were at that place. But it should be measured not only when we leave, but when those we raised up to follow us leave. That's a true measure of successful leadership.
I got scared the other day though... I had done my best to reproduce myself in them and to work myself out of a job. Truthfully, I think I did a pretty good job at that. It's evidenced by how their homegroups run now with me as a zone pastor and not being their homegroup pastor. But I made a mistake. I never thought to teach them to reproduce themselves. I just never thought about; it never even crossed my mind.
Now all I can think about is "O, goodness. I hope their homegrops stay strong after they graduate. I hope they modeled what I tried to teach them but never plainly spelled it out. I hope my mistake doesn't screw things up. I hope everything is ok."
The good news is that they are both sharp, strong leaders. I think they get it, even in spite of my mistake. They understand that leading is about reproducing others to lead and believing that people can do the job.
I learned a lesson though. It's not enough to just simply reproduce yourself and to raise up a leader after you. Your job is not done until they understand their job is to do the same as you did and have someone following them. It's this mindset of replicating everything we do so that things can be built even stronger after we leave. It should always be building.
Our success as leaders should be measured by how strong things remain when we leave our place of ministry... not the things we did when we were at that place. But it should be measured not only when we leave, but when those we raised up to follow us leave. That's a true measure of successful leadership.
Labels: christianity, seven
posted by Seth Henderson at 9:20 AM
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