Develop New Leaders | Deep and Wide | Week 3
Opening
Go around the room and let each person share the area of life where they have matured the most over the past year.
Overview
One of the aims of Deep and Wide is to develop new leaders. If we are going to send people to plant churches and spread the gospel to the unreached, we must be constantly raising up new leaders. God set apart His church to develop and deploy Spirit-led leaders for God’s glory, gospel advancement, and human flourishing. All of these aims start in the family, flow through the church, and then out into the community.
Jesus’ command to make disciples presumes believers will learn and develop over a lifetime and need Spirit-led leaders to help. This is an area we must pay attention to because a broken leadership culture will overlook character flaws for talent/personality, overlook capacity limitations for loyalty/availability, and produce unfit leaders that harm others and stifle the church.
Greater growth brings greater challenges and requires greater capacity. Greater growth and greater capacity requires a church to develop Spirit-led leaders to serve and send the church. The Holy Spirit gifts and calls church leaders and the church develops and deploys them in a Spirit-led culture.
Discussion Questions
- Who has been an influential leader in your own life?
- Do you believe God is developing a greater capacity to serve within you?
Practice
Ephesians 4 11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
Prayerfully read the Scripture passage out loud. Where do you think your primary gifting is? Take some time here to pray with people who aren’t sure what their gifts are. Name gifts in each other. Pray for discernment in helping one another clarify their spiritual gifts.
With your group, discuss how you are growing toward maturity together. Are there commitments you need to make with accountability from the group? Are there places where God is asking you to lead or step into preparation for leadership? Pray together about how your group is helping the whole body be healthy and growing and full of love.
Closing
Pray for wisdom to know and develop and use spiritual gifts for the good of the church and your communities.