By Michael Fletcher
EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP
By Michael Fletcher
It happened again . As I sat at my keyboard to write this chapter , I saw an e-mail from a pastor of a large and fastgrowing church I had met while mentoring a group of pastors on leadership development . The contents of the e-mail were familiar : “ We need to learn how to create a leadership-development culture in our church . May my team and I travel to your church for one day to learn about this ?” Yesterday , I spent considerable time on two phone calls about the same topic : how to build better leaders faster . The first was a conference call with a number of pastors who , at the end of the phone call , requested a two-day meeting for their group . The second was with the facilitator of a group of top churches of a certain denomination . This is routine , and it has absolutely nothing to do with me . ( Trust me , I ’ m not being humble . I wish I were humble .) It has everything to do with what I am calling the leadership crisis .
According to a World Economic Forum survey , 86 percent of respondents say there is a leadership crisis in the world today . There simply aren ’ t enough trained leaders to meet the political and economic challenges the world is facing today . In a recent Forbes magazine article , leadership author Mike Myatt outlined this leadership crisis and actually called for a new leadership movement to solve the problem . Beyond economics and politics , a simple search of the Internet yields numerous articles predicting a leadership crisis in nursing , public school principals , pharmacy , higher education , and so on . And this leadership crisis is not just a secular problem . Ask any pastor . We simply have more needs inside and outside the local church than leaders to meet those needs , and everyone feels it . As I travel the world ( our network of churches has operations in sixty-three countries ), consult with churches here in the United States , and serve as a mentor with Leadership Network , it seems everyone is asking the same question : “ How do we train better leaders faster ?”
Growth requires that we add new leaders . Continual growth requires a continual supply of leaders . The megachurch and multisite movements have proven this point . Additionally , leaders in smaller churches understand that , to move forward , they have to develop a growing team of leaders . The problem
36 • Solutions