Find the Leaders in Your Church

At Watermark Community Church, we believe in giving ministry away to Members, and we have developed a culture of volunteer leadership. In fact, when we started our campus, we made it our goal to be a net exporter of leaders—to have more people available to serve as ministry leaders than we needed, so that they could be deployed elsewhere.

To work toward that goal, we have to identify and train up the potential leaders in our church. We have leadership training classes, which are invite-only; the real challenge is identifying who we should invite.

So how do you find the future leaders at your church?

Watch Over Your Pool

To start with, you need to have a pool of people you can draw from. Obviously, that pool would be your Membership, but you need a meaningful way to observe your Members in action so you can see who the potential leaders are.

That is one of the reasons why, at Watermark, we have every Member serve somewhere within the church. It is a requirement for Membership. Having people serve gives us an opportunity to see people in action. The staff (and trusted non-staff leaders) are tasked with observing those who serve in their ministry areas, like lifeguards watching over their part of the volunteer pool. They can then recommend those who stand out as potential leaders.

And what do these lifeguards look for?

Find Your FAT People

When searching for new church leaders, we look for people who are FAT: Faithful, Available, and Teachable. (I know, I know. But it’s a helpful acronym that is easy for everyone to understand and remember.)

• Faithful. We want people who faithfully pursue the Lord, and who remain faithful in whatever circumstances He gives them. They prove themselves trustworthy through how they serve.
• Available. We need people who have the available margin in their life to lead (which, in many ways, is really an indicator of their priorities). The most basic way to determine this is to just see who shows up; are they consistently making themselves available to serve?
• Teachable. It doesn’t make sense to train someone for leadership (or for anything) unless they are willing to be taught. Therefore, we look for people who exhibit humility; who listen to feedback and implement changes based on it; and who show a hunger to learn.

Note that some people add an “E” for “Emotionally healthy.” So, if you dislike calling people “FAT,” you could just say that it is “FATE.”

Maturity Is Not a Requirement

Obviously FAT is a short list, so there are many things that we don’t consider to be requirements. But there is one non-requirement in particular worth highlighting: we don’t require people to be mature believers at this stage.

To be clear, maturity is a plus; we are not saying that we prefer people who lack maturity. It’s just that it is not required.

It’s not required because we are talking about inviting people to learn how to become leaders. It is part of discipleship, and should be a step on their path to full maturity. We’re not talking about selecting them as Elders (at least not yet), so the 1 Timothy 3:6 command that they should “not be a recent convert” does not apply.

Although they don’t have to be mature yet, we do want people who are hungry to become mature. That is part of being teachable. And they need to have proven themselves faithful and available through serving for some period of time. But if they meet those requirements, we can serve them by helping them grow in maturity through leadership training and experience.

We also match the leadership opportunity to the maturity level. We’re not going to put someone who is new into an essential position. However, we can have them co-lead a small group in partnership with (and under the oversight of) a more mature leader. As Luke 16:10 says, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” We give them the opportunity to be faithful with a little, as we offer oversight. If they prove themselves to be faithful (and available, and teachable) in that role, we know we can start trusting them with more responsibility—and/or invite them to our more advanced leadership training class, which is designed for more mature leaders.

Always Be Developing

Overall, we try to keep in mind that everything is a discipleship opportunity, and we should always be looking to identify and develop the future leaders of our church.

When new ministry opportunities come up, a lot of churches recycle leaders, using the same mature leaders for every ministry instead of developing new ones. Instead, we look at every new ministry as a development opportunity. We try to include both experienced and inexperienced leaders, so that the new guys can learn from those who have been around a while. It’s a continual cycle; eventually the inexperienced people become the mature ones, who can then train up a new generation of leadership.

This is how believers are supposed to replicate themselves, and it is how the Church has survived and thrived for the past 2,000 years. If you are not developing your people, then your church is dying, because there will be no one left to lead when the current crop of Elders is gone. These people are the future of your church; your job is to find them and prepare them for the future.