Instant Church

By Doug Franklin August 9, 2013

I think the church makes more leadership positions then it does disciples. At the same time the church is starving for leaders. Creating leadership positions doesn’t make leaders; making leaders is all about development and the reality is the church has no idea how to develop leaders. Leadership development is long hard work, requiring mature people to spend lots of hours pouring themselves into potential leaders. Jesus spent three full years just walking the road of life with this disciples. The model is the same for us. If we are going to have leaders in our churches we need to start mentoring a new generation of leaders. Unfortunately we live in an instant church where change must produce huge results almost immediately. Last year a student told me they could not follow God because he was too slow. He wanted an instant God who made and communicated decisions within 15 minutes of a request. Yep, the God who created the entire universe in only 6 days is evidently too slow for modern day Christians. We think like this because our church leaders have taught us to think like this. The church’s leadership strategy is to hope new leaders show up or give a person a leadership tittle and magically you have a new leader. Either we need more time to mentor leaders or we need to start when they are younger. It only makes sense to start when they are younger. I just wonder how long it’s going to take for church leaders to wake up and start leadership mentoring programs for students.