Launching Leaders: Taking leadership development to new heights

Great leaders are constantly growing. If a leader is not continuously growing and learning, she/he will soon become irrelevant and no longer be fully equipped to lead. During my more than a decade of coaching leaders, I (Kay) have found an inordinate number of church leaders who lack self-awareness and, as a result, seem un-coachable. Leaders must be willing to be fully self-aware of who they are, who they aren’t, and be willing to continuously self-evaluate as they continuously grow and evolve as a person, a follower of Christ, and a leader. I have run across leaders who have come to the unfortunate conclusion that they have all the answers and do not need or want to be coached or even coaxed. The most effective leaders work with a coach or coaches, both formal and informal, to consistently evaluate, grow, and close the gap of where they are and where God is calling them. The last leadership trait is being holistically coachable.Today’s world calls for leaders, as we have already established. We would challenge our readers to consider this: not only do we need to raise up new leaders, we need to raise up spiritual leaders. To take it even a step further, we don’t just need to raise up spiritual leaders, we need to raise up gutsy, spiritual leaders. We would define gutsy spiritual leaders as people who are spiritually mature and are not afraid to risk for the sake of the Kingdom. You will not find this resource to be a safe play. No, quite the opposite. This resource pushes the envelope of the expectations of a traditional church leader. After all, we believe we have the crisis in spiritual leadership because we have been, indeed, playing it too safe. It is time to equip, release, and encourage gutsy spiritual leaders! God’s Word calls for leaders and calls leaders.In this resource, we will offer two sections. Section One offers an in-depth look at each of the gutsy leadership traits. Section Two offers the process of how to develop leaders. Section One offers the what. Section two offers the how. Since we have sufficiently covered the why, let’s develop some gutsy spiritual leaders for Christ!