I’m hesitant to write this. As a ministry committed to building movements of evangelism and discipleship everywhere, we are more comfortable listing broader sorts of leadership “qualities or characteristics.” In this blog, I’ve often written of “vision, a vital spiritual life, emotional maturity, etc.” and less often of the practical skills necessary for building movements. Of course, both are critical; the former admittedly more so. Yet, “being” must walk hand in hand with the “doing”. We need both character and competence for successful movement building.
The most successful team leaders always couple their character qualities with practical skills. And perhaps the two most important practical skills, according to a recent study within the Vineyard Movement, are the team leaders’ ability to gather people and to develop and lead leaders.
The Ability to Gather People
People go about the gathering process differently. Some people are good at one-on-one conversations; their gifts and attractiveness naturally come out in personal interactions. Others more naturally gather people with their upfront skills: interacting with large groups, communicating, teaching, and casting vision.
However it is expressed, though, the ability to gather people is one of the first and most fundamental of abilities that must be present in the local team leader.
Gathering people also means being able to attract and empower others who are themselves people gatherers: people who are extroverts, or who are natural evangelists or “bringers and includers.” The team leader who is skilled at gathering people will empower those in his core who are natural gatherers themselves.
The Ability to Develop and Lead Leaders
The number one characteristic in successful church plants (or in successful movement building)–according to Todd Hunter and others in the Vineyard Movement–is the team leader’s ability to “identify, recruit, train, and deploy other leaders.” Team leaders must have the ability to attract and lead other leaders.
If the movement builder can lead people to Christ and nurture them, but cannot develop and lead leaders, he or she will not be able to build much more than a large home-size group. In other words, the ministry will never grow beyond what the team leader can directly oversee and lead…and thus, it will never become a movement.