Most leaders will tell you they expect leadership development to be linear, you will progress slightly each week and steadily improve. But true leadership development is seasonal. There will be seasons where you will work hard, struggle and grow. Church teams who understand this arc ahead of time will remain committed to the process through the slower seasons as they know what is coming.
You won’t be warned about the middle of the journey!
A great multi-year church leadership journey will have clear stages to it, and that is the heart of multi-year leadership training for church teams. Below is what to expect and how Bridge Builder has been designed to support this.
Year 1: Identity
The first year of any real leadership journey will focus on personal leadership. You will spend time looking at your character, habits and beliefs. Jesus took a long time to develop His disciples internally, giving them a solid understanding of the Kingdom, their character and reliance on God before sending them out to lead (Mark 3:14).
You will likely feel like this is quite a slow year. Teams will talk a lot about their calling, servant leadership and stewardship. You will also spend time being honest and identifying your blind spots. Leaders who try to skip this stage will almost always create a leadership culture that lacks a foundation. We should not measure churches based on what they have achieved in the first year, but how much they have grown in their self-awareness and beliefs.
In the Bridge Builder framework, year one centers on identity and calling.
Year 2: Putting Into Practice
The second year will see the theory you learned in year 1 put into practice. You will start applying the principles and leading your small group, managing your ministry team, and dealing with real conflict. This is when you will really see growth within your church.
This year can also be the most risky year as you are putting theory into practice and you will likely identify some gaps in your knowledge. Someone who was confident in talking about servant leadership may struggle to serve when a volunteer challenges them. This is not a bad thing! This is where your development will become sustainable.
Churches going through the Bridge Builder content in this year should expect deeper conversations, more intense mentoring and real growth.
Leaders will start to create their own leadership philosophy based on Scripture and real decision making.
Year 3: Multiplication
The third year will answer the question ‘what will this create?’. By this stage you will have a well developed leader who can pass on what they have learned “to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2, NIV). This is where they will multiply and this is the whole point of investing in a multi-year program.
Typically leaders will start mentoring new leaders. A leadership journey that does not multiply is not really a leadership journey, it is a longer conference! We should not measure this year by how much the original leader has grown, but how many new leaders they have created.
Bridge Builder’s third year focuses intentionally on multiplication so churches can move their trained leaders into developing leaders. This is what has enabled EQUIP to establish leadership development in over 170 countries!
Why it Matters More Than Just One Year
Sometimes churches ask if they can speed up the journey. Thinking long term, each year relies on the previous year and the maturity of the leaders. If you rush the foundation to get to multiplication quicker you will create leaders who can talk about multiplying but can’t actually do it as they haven’t had time to develop.
Trust the arc. Take the time in year 1, embrace the friction in year 2 and you will create leaders who can develop leaders, something you could never achieve in one event!
Go the Whole Journey with Bridge Builder
EQUIP’s Bridge Builder program has been created with this development in mind. If your church is ready to invest in the whole journey we can show you how Bridge Builder can develop your team year on year. Head to iequip.org.
