Ministry's Sweet Spot

In an article in Leadership Journal.net, Gordon MacDonald explains how each year, he and his wife have handpicked a group of potential leaders and trained them every Wednesday over a nine-month period. Their basic approach is summed up in four statements:

• To identify people with potential to influence others if they were appropriately coached.


• To accelerate their spiritual growth so that they would become strong, self-nourishing followers of Jesus who would seek to grow in godliness for the rest of their lives.


• To give them an experience of all that Christian community is capable of becoming when people truly love one another (as Jesus loves us).
  
  
• To demonstrate what it means to feel called and gifted and to discover that there is no greater joy than to be caught up in God's purposes for a particular generation.

The kind of people they look for and choose have the following qualities:

1. People who were teachable. Who asked good questions, who took seriously the Christ-following life, who went a bit out of their way to grow spiritually.


2. Essential social skills. People who showed respect and regard for others, not so argumentative or abrasive or touchy that they didn't fit well with others.
   


3. People who would not simply sit for an entire evening saying nothing. We wanted "players" unafraid to mix it up, experiment with ideas, move the conversation along, venture opinions.

Read the whole article, and see also how MacDonald's self-building activities gave way to building an organization, a church-organization.