Serving Bread

People generally do not grow through programs or events. In my opinion, the American church seems to put a disproportionate amount of time and energy (and money) developing programs and events that would facilitate deeper faith and leadership development in people.

While I think that events are helpful and necessary, they don’t work as well as personal mentoring relationships. I am struck by John Lechleiter, president and COO of Eli Lilly, who believes that “about two-thirds of leadership development comes from job experience, about one-third from mentoring and coaching, and a smidgen from classroom training” (“Fortune”, October 1, 2007, page 102) Lechleiter recognizes that leadership development cannot be relegated to a curriculum or a program.

But the people of God have known this before Lechleiter and other business leaders. Leadership development and growth in our faith in general, comes from faith experiences, mentoring and coaching. A smidgen would come from worship services, sermons, and events in general.

Leaders invest in people. Jesus did not build a curriculum or an event. Jesus used events, but he invested in people who would go on to invest in more people. But we don’t invest in people blindly. We need vision for people’s growth. In Mark 1, Jesus had vision for his potential disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” Jesus had vision for his followers.

Leaders need to be excellent at visioning for people’s growth. When I was younger, I would hang out with younger people and hope that what I had (however little) would somehow rub off on younger people. As my stage of life changes, I am realizing how important it is to have a clear vision on how to mentor people. I am realizing the importance of visioning well and helping people who are young in their faith or those who are young leaders, to grow.

For some leaders, mentoring is intuitive. They do things right in mentoring others without knowing what they are doing. Recently, I spent some time reflecting on how some of my mentors lead toward people’s growth, and I tried to articulate whatever may be intuitive for me. I developed a diagram that articulates how to vision for people’s growth. Let me know what you think (as with most of my writings, it’s a work in progress so don’t be shy with your feedback). Feel free to use it for your development or for others.