2016 AMF Read - Leader loop - from Followers to Mentors

LeaderLoop/Huffard
2016
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LeaderLoop Theory: Following—Leading—Mentoring
Evertt W. Huffard, PhD
Harding School of Theology
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
The church provides us a rich and necessary environment for spiritual formation
and for living out our calling in service to God. A healthy church can give much more
to the world than the sum total of the ministry that individual Christians could possibly
offer. The health of that spiritual body depends upon the constant emergence of new
leaders to provide direction, spiritual influence, godly examples, encouragement,
guidance, and spiritual resources. Without these leaders there will be no mission;
without mission there will be no growth of the church. Without growth there will be no
honor for God. It is the sobering reality that churches seldom, if ever, rise above their
leaders that motivates me to seek ways to develop more effective leaders within the
church.
Where do we start?
For the past thirty years, I have asked students in my spiritual leadership class at
Harding School of Theology to participate in a very easy exercise. We generate a list of
problems they have experienced with church leaders. The critique flows fast and freely.
The most common responses include the lack of many things, such as: spirituality,
organization, commitment, direction, vision, mission, communication, trust,
consistency, discipline, stability, visibility, mentoring, new leaders, and preparation.
However, in the past couple of years, I have adjusted the assignment to also include
problems they have experienced with followers or as followers. To overlook the
challenges of following undermines the foundation for leading, so I have come to
believe we have started in the wrong place. The answer to the question of how to develop
more leaders really begins with how to develop stronger followers of Christ. Where do we
start—with leading or following? With both!
John Gardner observed two matters of failure of followers that can apply to
churches.
First, there are qualities such as apathy, passivity, cynicism, and habits of
spectator-like non-involvement that invite the abuse of power by leaders. . .

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Second, there is the inclination of followers in some circumstances to collaborate
in their own deception.1
The first point makes sense. When members fail to step up as active participants in a
church and follow their leaders, the leaders are forced into more autocratic styles and
peace keeping missions rather than evangelism and shepherding.
We may need a little help with his second point. To illustrate the second point, Gardner
notes that from our political process we can learn that when a population wants to be
lied to they will have liars as leaders. When members of a church refuse to accept
challenges to trust in God and their leaders, they will have leaderless leaders. In fact, I
have seen roles are actually reversed in churches where the members take on the
leadership role and the leaders become the followers. This is not a new phenomenon.
Remember Korah and the 250 leaders of Israel? They appointed themselves to lead
when they told Moses: “The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the
LORD is with them.”2 So they proceeded to let Moses know that they would follow
themselves and not him.
One wonders how a Bible-based church could have anything less than strong
followers and leaders with so much about both in the Bible. Almost every book of the
Bible yields insights about leaders, followers and situations in which both failed or
succeeded. With over thirty different types of leaders mentioned in the Bible, several
thousand leaders mentioned by name, and twenty books that speak directly to
leadership, Bible study should produce great leaders.3
But this has not always been the
case. Maybe one of the reasons for the disappointing success rate of leaders finishing
well in the Bible may be the same today—human will struggles to submit to God’s will.
Leaders missed a fundamental spiritual step in their development. Active followers,
true disciples, submit their lives to God. To become a leader and skip this step leads to
spiritual, moral and institutional failure. Good followers (disciples, servants) make
good leaders.
1 John W. Gardner, On Leadership (Free Press, 1990).
2
Numbers 16:3.
3 See J. Robert Clinton, The Bible and Leadership Values: A Book by Book Analysis (Altadena, CA: Barnabas,
1993) 46-48, for a list of the top 20 books.

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Part of our problem may be in the questions we ask—or don’t ask. If we
approached the Bible with more questions about developing leaders, what would we
find? Of the leaders we know enough about their life to determine the outcome, only
about thirty percent finished well. You will also find positive and negative examples of
transition. For example, the transitions from Moses to Joshua, Elijah to Elisha, Barnabas
to Paul, Jesus to the apostles, and Paul to the elders at Ephesus provide great examples
of passing the baton to emerging leaders.4
However, the transition from Eli to his sons,
Saul to David, and David to Solomon should alarm us to the consequences of dropping
the baton.5
This discussion could seem impractical for many small young churches in Asia
and Africa where the urgent need is to train leaders, not pass leadership to the next
generation. It could take decades to raise up new leaders. In so many cases the future
seems rather hopeless as churches struggle to survive. If so much training and maturing
is needed but the opportunities and resources are extremely limited, why think about
the development of leaders? What can a church with very limited resources do?
The Challenge
Ask a seasoned preacher or missionary to reflect on forty years of ministry to
name the one thing they would do differently if they could start over. Many will tell
you they would spend more time developing leaders. Any seasoned minister can name
churches that have died simply because no one developed leaders or the leaders failed
to bring the next generation or two into leadership.6
The long-term health of a church depends on developing leaders. I am not aware
of many churches that give priority to developing leaders and I wonder why. Beyond
4
Rickie D. Moore, “The Prophet as Mentor: A Crucial Facet of the Biblical Presentations of Moses, Elijah
and Isaiah,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15:155-172, provides a theological framework for mentoring
through “spiritual succession” and the expectation that discipleship is “more about being and being with
someone than knowing what to do” (p. 172).
5 See J. Robert Clinton, Leadership Perspective: How to Study the Bible for Leadership Insights (Barnabas, 1993),
100-103.
6 Kennon L. Callahan, Small, Strong Congregations (Jossey-Bass, 2000), believes some church leaders hold
on to power because they worked so hard to seize the power and do not think the younger generation is
“ready for it” (p. 228).

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the spiritual issue this raises, I believe the suburbanization of the church could partially
explain this phenomenon in the USA. In Africa and Asia it might be just the opposite
reason—inadequate resources and training opportunities.
As suburban churches went through a phase of rapid numerical growth in the
USA, they became lax in developing leaders because transfer growth brought mature
men and women into the church who provided instant leadership. Transfers from rural
to suburban churches have almost stopped. Now leaders are searching for emerging
leaders and discover they should have started developing leaders decades ago. When it
comes to leadership in the church, we suffer for the sins of the fathers—at least the ones
who were too short-sighted to invest time and resources into intentionally developing
leaders for the church today. Unfortunately we carry on the tradition and fail to
develop leaders for tomorrow. How do we learn to pass the leadership on to others
when it no longer seems to be a natural thing to do?
If a generation forgets how to develop strong leaders, they adapt by lowering
their expectations of leadership and failing to learn how to follow. The temptation for
churches under the influence of western values, consumerism takes on more power. As
volunteerism declines, the demand for more paid staff in churches increases in order to
maintain a minimal level of ministry; but never enough to meet the demands of the new
consumers. As members morph into consumers, they expect the church to serve them.
What follows is a very strange phenomenon where the followers become the leaders
and the leaders abdicate their spiritual authority and responsibility to plan ahead, to set
a direction and to hold the church accountable for doing God’s will. Why then would
anyone want to be leaders in a context where so few are willing or able to follow? This
begs the question for training in followership. Until we become good followers we
cannot be good leaders. How do we become better followers?
God placed every church in a community for a purpose. If that church turns
inward and fails to fulfill its mission, it dies. Followers need direction and organization.
Someone needs to interpret the context and discern what God is calling the church to
do. Without a clearly defined and intentional mission, we see no need for real leaders. I
only need to point out the stress many churches encounter when they try to develop a
mission statement. It takes months to do this when the mission has not been determined
and the leaders lack vision and purpose. In this instance, the mission statement gets no
further than a mantra in the weekly bulletin where no one really sees it or understands

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how it can guide the ministry of the church. How do we, as a church, discover and
identify our mission from generation to generation without effective leaders and
willing followers?
Reference to leaders will probably bring to your mind thoughts of preachers,
elders and deacons. These are not the only leaders in the church. In this paper, my
reference to spiritual leadership is really to spiritual influence more than to a role or
position in an organization. I know men and women with great spiritual influence in
their church who have no assigned role or appointed position. I also know the reverse
to be true. Spiritual influence incorporates a much larger percentage of Christians into
the equation. How do we develop more followers into leaders with spiritual influence?
When a congregation realizes the need to develop more leaders (often too late!)
the natural response is to start a class, a series of sermons or a program on leadership.
Such efforts have limited success. They might raise the awareness for the need. Ask an
elder in a mature congregation in the USA about the last time their church appointed
new elders and you will hear about the same thing: “It has been a long time.” He might
also say they identified a few good, qualified men to serve but they declined. So as the
church (especially the leaders) continues to grow old, it can actually skip a generation in
the eldership. The elders get stuck in the immediate challenges of managing a church,
keeping the peace, and the tyranny of the urgent without empowering new leaders or
passing the baton to anyone. When the elders finally resign or die, they leave a hole too
large to replace and a generational gap too great to span. A few of these good men take
a lot of wisdom and experience to the grave. Some withdraw to the degree that they
become followers, barely functional. What a loss! This is how and why churches grow
old and die. Yet the challenge of replacing leaders reaches much deeper into the church.
The larger the church becomes, the more challenging it is to staff various ministries, be
it outreach, Sunday school, nursery, or teens. How do we pass the desire to lead on to
others? How do we create an environment to develop more leaders in the local church?
These challenges motivated me to chart a path for the transition of followers to
active involvement and leadership in the church. My passion for church renewal keeps
taking me back to this basic reality: unless more followers become active followers and
leaders, there can be no lasting renewal.

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LeaderLoop Theory
The process of developing leaders can be confused with the process of
appointing leaders within the organization of the church. Churches are impatient and
demanding. They may know what they need but do not want to take the time to get
there—especially when it comes to leading. Like a married couple who fail to maintain
a budget because it takes too much time and keep on adding to their debt, so churches
continue to bankrupt their leader pool for lack of discipline and planning.
Plans to develop leaders in the church often start with attempts to move
followers into leadership positions in a short amount of time—like 6-9 months--and
assume elders can learn to lead on the job. These premature attempts to develop leaders
usually focus on public roles and positions of the church, such aslike worship leading or
a position in the organization of the church.
The anxiety brought on by the absence of effective, healthy leaders tempts the
church to seek quick solutions. I have seen this in churches that take a year or two to
find a preacher. They become so anxious that they take shortcuts, only to find
themselves in another preacher search in a few years. They operate with a false sense of
security by assuming their leadership
is adequate if all the traditional
organizational positions are filled.
They disregard the fact that some of
the members with the most spiritual
influence in the church are not in the
public eye or in an official role. Jesus
made a clear distinction between the
function of leaders in the world and
those in the church.7
So, how do we
change this? Where do we start? The
natural response might be to start
with followers. How can we have
good sheep without a shepherd?
7
Mt. 20:20-28.
Figure 1. LeaderLoop Model

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LeaderLoop Theory proposes a path or paradigm for the development of
spiritual leaders within the family of God that is neither gender specific nor limited to
public or official roles. Simply stated, LeaderLoop theory assumes that the
development of emerging leaders in a church begins with leaders mentoring
followers to become active followers and leaders.
This shift in function (from leader to mentor) requires an intentional strategy
along with the ability to cope with the stressful consequences of the transition. The goal
of spiritual influence in a church shifts from maintaining and “filling” positions (for a
long time) to mentoring as many as possible to become active disciples and leaders
who use their gifts to the honor of God.
When leaders overcome the temptation of being stuck at the top of an
organizational pyramid, making all the decisions, carrying all the responsibility, and
handling all the pressing urgent needs, they will value the opportunities to mentor
others to serve and lead.8 They will shift their priorities to passing the baton to
emerging leaders by mentoring those who pick up the new responsibility or use their
gifts to develop new ministries. Empowerment unleashes God’s people to use the
resources God has given them to transform lives, communities and the world. This is
missional more than institutional.
Figure 1 illustrates the LeaderLoop process. Each arrow represents a dynamic
function or process. The focus of LeaderLoop Theory concentrates on the process (the
arrows) not the positions. It gives priority to the process of developing leaders rather
than to positions that need to be filled. It is empowering and transforming.
While most attempts to develop leaders start with followers (A), LeaderLoop
Theory starts with leaders (C). When leaders mentor followers to become active
followers and leaders, a process begins that can replicate itself (a loop). To start with
followers is like starting with sheep without a shepherd to lead them and care for them.
In the real world of raising sheep, we start with the shepherd, then add the flock. Sure,
it takes much more time, but it addresses core competencies for becoming the kind of
8 Another reason leaders could be stuck can be attributed to the assumptions of an older generation.
Richards and Hoeldtke wrote a book on Church Leadership: Following the Example of Christ (Eerdmans) in
1980 with no reference to mentoring or coaching.

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person people will follow. Attempts to develop leaders without addressing the need for
inner life, life maturing, and ministry maturing, sets the church up for failure.9
If these phases were sequential and overlapping, a natural process for
developing leaders could emerge that gives more attention to becoming a leader
someone could follow rather than politicizing the body of Christ by placing the wrong
personj in a position without adequate spiritual authority. According to this theory,
anyone could be at any point (A-D) at any given time. LeaderLoop challenges the notion
that once someone is a leader in some role of the church, he or she should be a leader in
everything. Leaders in one area are not leaders in all areas. This is a reason for the
plurality of elders; they also follow each other. In reality, an elder is still a sheep! In
developing leaders in a small church, Callahan argues that leaders learn to love, listen
and learn before they lead.10
This reminds me of the story I read about a telecommunications company that
hired attorneys to work in teams on deregulation issues. They looked for people who
could lead and follow but very few applicants could do both.11 Leadership in the church
requires both.
LeaderLoop theory relies heavily on defining our ministry by our spiritual gifts
and spheres of influence. When a few leaders do all the work, something is seriously
wrong. To resolve this gridlock, leaders have the responsibility to transition to
mentoring while passing the baton to an emerging leader in their area of ministry. To
do so, leaders will have to overcome the tyranny of the urgent to focus on the
important—mentoring others to lead. The Pareto Principle (20% of the people do 80% of
the work) challenges every church to take on mediocrity and empower more members
to be active followers.12
9
See J. Robert Clinton, The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development
(Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2012) for a guide to inner life maturing (chapter 3), life maturing
(chapter 7) and ministry maturing (chapters 4, 5, 8, 9).
10 Kennon L. Callahan, Small, Strong Congregations: Creating Strengths and Health for Your Congregation
(Jossey-Bass, 2000), 214.
11 Stephen C. Lundin and Lynne C. Lancaster, “Beyond Leadership: The Importance of Followership.”
The Futurist 24 (May-June, 1990): 19.
12 Gary McIntosh, One Size Does Not Fit All: Bringing Out the Best in Any Size Church (Grand Rapids:
Fleming, 1999): 121.

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Strategy and Stress
As illustrated in Figure 1, attempts to develop leaders, especially transitioning
from A to B to C to D, will require a more intentional strategy and will create stress.
These two factors may offer primary reasons why C and D are exceptions; it takes
training and increases stress in a system already stretched to the max. Keeping it simple
and quick will keep you at “A” for a long time. Greater intentionality (strategy) and
higher energy (stress) will be required to move leaders into mentoring (D) than to move
followers to active followers (A). At “A” the tension will be personal; at “D” the head
winds will be institutional and organizational.
By the end of the 20th
Century, large growing churches in the USA began to shift
their strategy in developing leaders from a program-based approach that sought people
to fill positions to a person-based approach or a “relational discipleship approach.”13
This shift involved a strategy that would incorporate members in small groups and new
ministries.
From Followers to Active Followers (A)
In 2004, Kent Bjugstad conducted a book search on the Amazon.com website for
books on leadership and followership. He discovered 95,220 titles on leading and 792
titles on following—a 120:1 ratio.14 One reason given for the imbalance can be attributed
to the misconception that leaders are more important than followers.15
In the following
section, I will introduce the dynamics of the transitions of the LeaderLoop.
When Jesus called men along the shores of the Sea of Galilee to “follow me,” he
spent three years developing good followers before he launched them into leaders. In
the modern church, it is so easy to skip this step (A) in developing leaders, probably
13 Gary McIntosh and Daniel Reeves, Thriving Churches in the Twenty-First Century: 10-Life-Giving Systems
for Vibrant Ministry (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 2006), 101.
14 Kent Bjugstad, Elizabeth C. Thach, Karen J. Thompson, and Alan Morris, “A Fresh Look at
Followership: A Model for Matching Followership and Leadership Styles” (Institute of Behavior and
Applied Management, 2006), p. 304;
http://ibam.com/pubs/jbam/articles/vol7/no3/JBAM_7_3_5_Followership.pdf. Accessed on the web March
15, 2012.
15 Ibid, p. 305.

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because we assume too much and want too much too quick. The leaders who have
failed, who did not end well, likely skipped the process of becoming an active follower
before they assumed leadership roles. Their church may have pushed them into these
roles too quickly, or their ego may have driven them into premature leadership.
Whatever the case, effective leaders in the church come from the pool of good disciples.
The believer’s next step will always be active discipleship, not leadership.
Called to Serve
In Be My Witnesses, Darrell Guder convincingly argued the case that every
Christian needed to answer two questions: “Am I saved?” and “Am I useful?”16
These
two questions set the boundary between a follower and an active follower. The active
follower, the disciple of Christ, can answer both questions with clarity and confidence
but the passive follower will not grow past the first question.
Active followers of Jesus respond to the call to serve. It is possible to believe in
Christ and be redeemed by the blood of Christ without becoming an active disciple—a
hearer of the Word but not a doer of the Word.17
This transition demands spiritual
formation and inner life maturing: a maturing process that takes time, commitment,
experience, accountability, a desire to serve, and mentoring.
Willing to Serve
Possibly the most un-American text in the Bible is Ephesians 5:21—“Submit to
one another out of reverence for Christ.” Here lies the base line for a disciple, an active
follower of Christ. A follower, a believer, will submit to Christ, but not necessarily to a
church. An active follower submits to Christ and his church. This also identifies the
threshold for spiritual influence. How can one possibly lead and mentor others when he
or she cannot submit to anyone else? Leadership in the kingdom of God depends on
influence, not commands. The foundation for effective spiritual leadership is the ability
to be an active follower. Spiritual leaders can take responsibility in one area of his or her
giftedness (thus exercising spiritual authority) but in all humility follow someone else in
their area of giftedness. As Standish concludes in response to the question of whether
leaders can be humble: “Humble leaders motivate people to follow God’s vision. In
16 Darrell Guder, Be My Witnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985): 59.
17
James 1:19-25.

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contrast, conventional leaders motivate the people to follow the leader’s vision.”18
This
is why an elder would submit to the leadership of his fellow elders. This is the Sunday
school teacher that submits to the leadership of the church in developing a curriculum
that fits the direction of the church. This defines a ministry leader who is willing to
collaborate with other ministries, because an active follower knows the value and
power of team work.
Understanding this difference, even distance, between a follower and an active
follower helped me realize how easy it has been for me to skip this step in developing
leaders. I assumed a follower was a follower. However, a follower was really a seeker
who became a believer in God, reconciled to God through the redeeming blood of
Christ. As a new believer, he or she needs to feed on the milk of the Word to grow into
mature service. I also know many followers who, for decades, never took the next step,
even though they attended worship services every Sunday. They camped on the fringes
of the congregation and for a host of reasons lived in the shadows of the fellowship that
could have richly blessed their lives. For many years I have been lacked a clear strategy
to move more of these followers into the light of active involvement in the body of
Christ.
Involved in a Ministry
So how do we define an active follower? I will venture to define active followers as
disciples of Christ who use their spiritual gift(s) in at least one area of ministry. Call it a
“spiritual job description.” Two examples that provide a base line for an active follower
would be the willingness to assume responsibility for the spiritual welfare of others in
some way and the willingness to follow spiritual leaders.
Paul called the brethren in Thessalonica to the core competencies of discipleship
in caring for others. Passive followers look around and see others like themselves who
are just consumers, shy about their faith, and weak. In 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18, active
followers (healthy disciples) step up to participate in the spiritual maturation process by
warning the idle (= followers), encouraging the timid (= followers) and helping the
weak (= followers). They assume spiritual responsibility for others by taking the
18 N. Graham Standish, “Whatever Happened to Humility? Rediscovering the Misunderstood Leadership
Strength.” Congregations 33 (Sp 2007): 25.

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initiative to use their spiritual gifts to influence an idle, timid, weak or high
maintenance brother or sister.
And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help
the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for
wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful
always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will
for you in Christ Jesus.19
Active followers also imitate the faith of their leaders and obey their leaders. In a
poignant contrast between the temple as the center of faith (temple consumers) and
Christ who never changes, believers were urged to “go to him outside the camp” and to
“continually offer a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.” Active
followers (true disciples) “do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with
such sacrifices God is pleased.” 20 Passive followers wrap their faith around a temple;
active followers of Christ express their faith in service and ministry outside the temple.
This contrast between the temple and Christ (13:9-16) is bookended by base line
behavior of active followers:
Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the
outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today and forever. . .
Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as
men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a
burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.21
In the individualistic, consumer driven, western culture a Christian can be
tempted to reject any spiritual authority and detest the word “submission.” These
words challenge the motivation for planting new churches to be free to do church as
they like, attending mega churches to hide in the crowd while enjoying multiple
ministries, or to stay marginal in a small church to avoid criticism. It also explains the
phenomenon of a generation our churches are losing who say “yes” to Jesus and “no”
19 1 Thessalonians 5:14-18 (This and all other biblical quotations come from the NIV, 1984).
20 Hebrews 13:13, 15-16 .
21 Hebrews 13:7, 17.

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to church—any church. The spiritual reality at the core of Paul’s admonition would call
for a process of inner life development and spiritual formation to be able to value the
spiritual guidance of leaders.
Many Christians are so stuck in the believing phase that movement toward
discipleship, to being an active follower, will require a strategic process and generate
new areas of stress for everyone. The easiest thing to do is leave them where they are,
which I have been known to do. McIntosh and Reeves identified the goals of gifts-based
ministry as moving members into active discipleship. “Everyone is encouraged to be in
a group or a team as soon as possible, with few if any prerequisites.”22
From Active Followers to Leaders (B)
Theories on the development of leaders have long debated the degree to which
leaders are made or born.23 Robert Clinton proposed a theory of leadership
development (Leadership Emergence Theory) that evolved from comparative studies of
hundreds of leaders. The theory traces the development of a leader over a lifetime
where divine sovereignty and providence shape the leader so that “the lifetime of
learning involves the intervention of God.”24
Context also influences the development of leaders. If leadership in small
churches resides in a few key families, in committees in medium size churches, and in
select leaders in larger churches, then the path of that development will vary
accordingly.25 John Maxwell would call this the “law of process” where leadership
develops daily, not in a day.26
Israel Galindo, in The Hidden Lives of Congregations, moves the paradigm of
leadership in churches from an individualistic to a corporate focus.
22
McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 101.
23 J. Robert Clinton, A Short History of Leadership Theory (Barnabas, 1992), 28-38. The “Great Man Era”
(1841-1904) argued for leaders being born, followed by the “Trait Era” (1904-1948) which assumed
specific traits made a leader. Both theories have been challenged by the complexity of leadership.
24 J. Robert Clinton, Leadership Emergence Theory (Barnabas, 1989), 27.
25 Gary McIntosh, 50-53.
26 John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (Thomas
Nelson, 1998), 21-32.

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The insight that a congregation is an organic relationship system with hidden life
forces dictates that what effective congregational leaders provide for the church
are the specific functions for the systemic relational processes in the
congregation. More specifically, leadership in the congregational context is
primarily a corporate function, not an individual one. It has more to do with the
leader’s function in the system than it does with the leader’s personality or even
with the ability to motivate others.27
He gives theological and practical reasons to shift from a pastor system to shared
leadership. For him, congregations need more leaders, not managers. From my
experiences in consulting, churches tend to be over managed and under led. When
leaders mentor, more focus will be given to developing leaders, to the influence of
culture on the church, to their influence through relationships, to empowerment, to the
process of how people function, to coaching/consulting the most mature, and to the
mission of the church.28
Leaders Learn
I have often wondered if the assumption that leaders are born and not made has
influenced the lack of leadership development in churches. Should we also debate the
issue of whether followers are made or born? Not as debatable, is it? It seems easier to
observe how followers are made (transformed, sanctified, grown) than how leaders are
made. Few scholars accept the assumption that leaders are born.
Kouzes and Posner, like Clinton, share the accepted norm that leaders emerge
through a process to develop a set of skills and abilities.
What we have discovered, and rediscovered, is that leadership is not the private
reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use
when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. What we’ve
discovered is that people make extraordinary things happen by liberating the
leader within everyone.29
27 Israel Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations: Discerning Church Dynamics (Alban Institute, 2004),
138.
28 Galindo, p. 185-204.
29 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (Jossey-Bass, 2002), xxiii.

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And any skill can be strengthened, honed, and enhanced, given the motivation
and desire, the practice and feedback, and the role models and coaching.
It’s very curious—and revealing—that no one has ever asked us, “Can
management be taught? Are managers born or made? Why is it that management is
viewed as a set of skills and abilities, while leadership is typically seen as a set of
innate personality characteristics? It’s simple. People assume management can be
taught.30
If we adapt managing and leading to the biblical language of oversight and
shepherding, the same assumptions exist in churches. Why would church leaders be
more open to consultants coming to their church for help in managing the church but
seldom seek guidance in shepherding the church? For example, the elder with the least
management skills often wonders what good he is doing and why he is an elder.
LeaderLoop theory urges leaders, especially elders, to move beyond managing in order to
develop mentoring and shepherding skills (C and D) so they can be effective at
mentoring disciples (A). They still manage (oversight) but not at the expense of good
shepherding. In doing this, they reap the joys of ministry. One such joy comes from
helping release the gifts of others. It can be a reliable way of overcoming the stagnation
of churches.
Of all the life-giving systems, none creates more satisfaction than a mentoring
process. It is, in fact, needed to produce consistent, balanced and healthy growth
in people. Not only is a mentoring process easily transferable across ministries, it
identifies giftedness and then challenges people to place themselves accordingly
within the body of Christ.31
We can assume a certain level of inner life maturity and life maturing as one
transitions from an active follower to a leader in some area of ministry. To skip “A” and
appoint a follower to a leadership position usually ends in failure for the individual and
the church. Yet it happens too often, because the emerging leader had no mentoring or
guidance. A new believer will be given a leadership role with the assumption that he
will rise to the level of expectation—only to find that he or she burns out trying to
30 Ibid., 386.
31 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 98.

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please everyone or is crushed by the criticism. A successful businessman meets the
minimum requirements of being an elder, yet never established himself as an active
follower. Everyone suffers when he has a moral failure and will not submit to the
spiritual influence of his fellow elders or those who were close to him. Their spiritual
authority in his life could redeem his soul and spiritual influence.
I had a young, energetic couple share their plans with me to plant a new church
or become missionaries so they will not have to “mess with elders.” That did not sound
good. They wanted to be at “B” and skip “A.” This principle finds support in the
admonition not to appoint a recent convert as an elder.32
Malphurs and Mancini call attention to the “M-myth” in developing leaders.
They argue that mature and mobilized believers as well as “ministry masters” may not
be leaders. Good people can be put into leadership roles but not become good leaders.33
In small or smaller congregations, where the informal structures share the
organization of the church, a domineering personality can create a very unhealthy
environment—one in which the potential leaders give up and leave. Callahan
recommends a good three-step process in this situation: commit to develop and
encourage competent leaders, add new people to the leadership team, and advance a
shared understanding of congregational leadership. He offers four stages to developing
competent leaders: picture accomplishing something, match strengths to goals, mobilize
a team to accomplish goals, and “let the leader and the team come to their own.”34
A Baseline for Leaders
What sets the baseline for being a leader? We do not find in scriptures the
expectation that everyone will be a leader in the church. Not everyone has the gift to
lead.35 However, expectations that everyone will seek to be an active, mature, authentic
disciple of Christ seem clear.36 Every disciple is expected to have spiritual influence.
32 1 Timothy 3:6.
33 Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini, Building Leaders: Blueprints for Developing Leadership at Every Level of
Your Church (Baker, 2004), p. 191-192.
34 Callahan, p. 221.
35 Romans 12:8.
36 Colossians 1:28-29; Hebrews 5:11-14.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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Paul describes leaders as people who “work hard among you, who are over you
in the Lord, and who admonish you.”37
What prepared them for this seems to be their
maturity as disciples or active followers who had experience in warning the idle,
encouraging the timid, helping the weak and learning to be patient with everyone.
So what core competencies do we develop in our lives to become leaders? I will
suggest a few.
 Responsible for others: Leaders in any ministry show concern and love for
others. They build trust in caring for those who follow them. They manage their
time well enough to balance the priorities of immediate tasks with the
importance of relationships.
 Initiates structures: Leaders can begin new ministries or expand existing
structures to serve the church. Followers can demand such high maintenance
that they literally drain the energy out of a system (church or ministry).
Followers will often be heard saying: “Well, no one asked me to do that” or “It
did not appear that anyone else cared about this as much as I did so I quit
trying.” Active followers will be advancers, stepping in and marshalling
resources to get a task done or to meet a goal. Leaders see the need for a ministry
and initiate the structures to get the task done. They are forward-looking.38
 Copes with criticism: Consumers demand so much that church leaders find
themselves catering to and even sidetracked by the complaints of followers.
Developing leaders in any area of ministry within the church requires continual
training in coping with criticism. Leaders know how to discern the legitimate
feedback from the criticism of those followers who make no contribution to the
growth of the church or resolving problems.
 Seeks to do what is right: Paul exercised good leadership skills in the collection
for the poor in Jerusalem by asking the church to appoint someone to help him
take the money to Jerusalem. As an apostle he did not have to work with his
hands or limit how he did things to avoid criticism—yet he did. He wrote: “We
37 1 Thessalonians 5:12.
38 Kouzes and Posner, 136.

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want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift. For we are
taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the
eyes of men.”39
 Attracts followers: A deep reflective question we all might ask is “why would
anyone follow me?” The common scenario in the church for developing
followers starts with the respect and credibility one gains as an active follower.
Their involvement in the life of the church and their commitment to the Word
earns the respect of other active followers to the point that active followers ask
them to lead a ministry, to serve as elders, or seek their guidance.
 Ability to exercise spiritual authority without dominating or manipulating
others. Through our experience, knowledge and relationships people will follow
us. However, we must first know ourselves well.
Learning to lead is about discovering what you care about and value.
About what inspires you. About what challenges you. About what gives
you power and competence. About what encourages you. When you
discover these things about yourself, you’ll know what it takes to lead
those qualities out of others.40
In weak and unhealthy churches, church leaders can’t seem to get past being
active followers. Elders suffer paralysis from the inability to lead the church through a
crisis or cope with any conflict. They may be loved but not followed because they do
not know where to go. Their lack of courage or wisdom may have cost them credibility
to lead. Leaders can get stuck between “A” and “B” (see Figure 1) and only appear to
lead. I know, that did not sound right—they should be between “B” and “C.” The same
dissonance can be felt at churches where leaders should at least function at “B” but
have slipped back to “A” at a time when “C” is really needed. When a deacon takes no
risks, makes no commitments, and simply maintains status quo in his ministry, he fails
to step up as a leader. When a “ministry leader” waits for years for someone to create a
new structure for his/her failing ministry while blaming the leaders for the
39 2 Corinthians 8:20-21.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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19
ineffectiveness or inactivity of that ministry, the “ministry leader” has slipped back to
“A.”
If leaders and followers are made—not born—then how can they be developed?
Teaching and preaching may point the way, but it is no substitute for personal coaching
and mentoring. The evidence continues to point me to the necessity of more leaders,
especially elders and preachers, shifting their priority to mentoring, knowing that such
a shift will not be easy.
From Leaders to Mentors (C & D)
Because we have no presidents, prime ministers, or popes as leaders in the New
Testament church, no leadership role would be viewed as “top of the mountain.” When
one becomes an elder he has not “arrived” to the highest point in the church. That place
is reserved for Christ alone. Is there something beyond—not above—being an elder or a
leader in the church?
Consider the ministry of Christ. He emptied himself and took on the form of a
servant. How do leaders do that in the church today? LeaderLoop theory suggests leaders
do this in mentoring relationships. Old leader-follower structures, where the position
and title define authority, will no longer work in contemporary western society. Good
leaders create more leaders, not more followers. They find ways to turn loose of
responsibilities in such a way that will bless those who accept these responsibilities. The
ability to initiate and engage in mentoring relationships has been considered the “one
indispensable skill set for leadership development. . . Church leaders’ doing so enables
those around them to release others in exhilarating, reproductive ministries.”41
These
relationships require the skill to enter and exit relationships in a healthy way.42
What Do Mentors Do?
Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, identified five practices of good
leadership based on several decades of research. These five practices of exemplary
42 Ibid., 96.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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leaders are: model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others
to act and encourage the heart.43
They’re available [the five practices] to anyone, in any organization or situation,
who accepts the leadership challenge. And they’re not the accident of a special
moment in history. They’ve stood the test of time, and our most recent research
confirms that they’re just as relevant today as they were when we first began our
investigation over two decades ago—if not more so.44
They give several case studies to illustrate these practices. One example came from
Lindsay Levin of Whites Limited. She made a commitment to training people 16 hours a
month—10% of their time.
She admits that it is expensive and that pulling people off the job is not always
popular, but it’s a long-term strategy that pays off in two directions. One is that
skills transfer is a reality and the people who have been on training courses
(covering both technical and people skills) go on to train others on the job. The
other is the bottom-line effect, where revenue and growth have more than
doubled, contributing to many awards both inside and outside the industry.45
In LeaderLoop theory, these five practices start with active followers. Just imagine
the impact on a church culture in which every leader devotes 10% of his or her time to
training others. As this case study shows, when leaders mentor followers, the
mentoring loops around and the mentoree mentors others. I find in this a convincing
illustration of a core competency for mentoring (“D”) and modeling the way—a model
of service that can start as an active follower.
Sure, leaders had operational and strategic plans. But the examples they gave
were not about elaborate designs. They were about the power of spending time
with someone, of working side by side with colleagues, of telling stories that
made values come alive, of being highly visible during times of uncertainty, and
44 Kouzes and Posner, 14. For further research on the theory and evidence behind the five practices see
http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131362.html.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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of asking questions to get people to think about values and priorities. Modeling
the way is essentially about earning the right and respect to lead through direct
individual involvement and action. People first follow the person, then the
plan.46
Where in our churches do leaders spend time, work side by side, tell stories and
ask questions? Several times, as an elder, I saw elaborate plans with no one to execute
them or the wrong person wanting to execute them. For example, large suburban
churches can make two or three false starts to a small group ministry or to multiple
services. Most plans focus on everything but the credibility and influence of the people
leading the change, and fail. Granted, a much greater issue is the shortage of active
followers!
The most common phenomenon in churches where 80% of the work is done by
20% of the members means that the leaders will assume most of the work load and
make most of the decisions, but seldom, if ever, develop new leaders.47 They cannot free
themselves from the burden of their responsibilities long enough and often enough to
spend the time it takes to mentor someone else. Like Moses, they keep wondering when
the Lord will send someone to help lead the people, ignoring the fact that Joshua and
Caleb were at his side!48
Without a strategy and the maturity to cope with the stress, it
will be very unlikely to find a church culture naturally developing leaders at every
level. We will also find a church with a “shortage” of volunteers because leaders take a
program-based approach where it seems more emphasis has been given to the program
than to the persons being recruited.49
A Baseline for Mentoring
If no one seems to gravitate to a leader for mentoring, McIntosh and Reeves
would conclude that they are in the “pre-mentor stage of their effectiveness.”50
Thus, a
baseline for a mentor (“C”) would be at least one or two people seeking a mentoring
relationship with the leader in transition to being a mentor.
47 McIntosh, One Size Does Not Fit All, p. 121; see the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule where 20% of the
efforts yields 80% of the results.
48 Exodus 33:11-12.
49
McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 100.

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According to John Maxwell, reproducing generations of leaders would be a good
leader’s lasting contribution. It is the true test of a leader to develop other leaders, not
to see how many followers he can find.
Those types of leaders have no idea how much they are limiting their own
potential and the potential of the people around them. As I have said before, a
leader who produces followers limits his success to what his direct, personal
influence touches. His success ends when he can no longer lead. On the other
hand, a leader who produces other leaders multiplies his influence, and he and
his people have a future.51
Maxwell would set the baseline for being a leader as a desire to lead, relational
skills and practical leadership skills.52 Baseline competencies for mentoring begin with
the ability to balance leading and managing the urgent and the important, setting
priorities, connecting people to the mission, and coping with the increased complexities
of matching people to ministry. To become a mentor, a leader will spend more time
with fewer people.53 As I see it, all the expectations of Paul for active followers/disciples
at Thessalonica required some form of mentoring. How else would one know how to
warn the idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone, be kind to
others, find joy in everything, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances
without a guide on the side helping one exegete life? I would assume a relationship
would be necessary for this spiritual growth to take place. Paul wrote I Thessalonians as
a mentoring more than an apostle issuing commands. His guidelines were general,
assuming the Holy Spirit would help the disciples fill in the gaps.
If we define leadership as influence in relationships, mentoring will be a natural
process.54
Two of Maxwell’s “laws of leadership” illustrate this point: “only secure
leaders give power to others” and “it takes a leader to raise up a leader.”55
51 John C. Maxwell, Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential
(Thomas Nelson, 1995), 197-198.
52 Ibid., 199-200.
53 McIntosh and Reeves, in Thriving Churches (p. 90) suggests the mentor adopt a good screening process
“for selecting those with the highest aptitude and desire.”
54 Kouzes and Posner, xxviii.
55 Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws, 121-142.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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Lawrence O. Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke wrote Church Leadership in the 1980s,
long before the contemporary focus on mentoring. They made a distinction between the
tasks of the “body leaders” and the “institutional leaders.” They took what seemed to
be an extreme position, that elders do not accept responsibility for ministries or
mission—it is done by those who own the ministry. However, they raise the issues a
leader needs to think through to move beyond leading (“C”).
If we are a body, and Jesus is head over all things for us, then policy making,
goal setting, organizing, decision making, and all the other roles of management
cannot be the responsibility of the human leadership of the body.56
Spiritual leaders need to encourage members of Christ’s body to accept
responsibility for the achievement of those tasks Jesus wants to accomplish in
our world through His body. Spiritual leaders in the church should not accept
responsibility for, or take control of, task-focused ministries or missions, as
though these could be “church programs.” Spiritual leaders in the church must
recognize that they are body leaders and that the “church” cannot be shaped to
accomplish any task/produce/service objective.57
If leaders moved beyond making decisions for the church or a ministry, what
would they do? They would mentor followers to become active, and active followers to
be leaders. Peter Senge identified five roles the mentor fulfills: facilitator in connecting
gifts to ministry, appraiser of performance and actions to improve, forecaster of new
developments, advisor to give support in the face of obstacles, and enabler in developing
a strategy and network.58
These factors describe the functions I have experienced as a
mentor over the past thirty years. They cannot be done in a classroom. They require the
mentoring relationship Leith Anderson describes as “teachers-friends-influencers who
shape our lives and leadership more than anyone else.”59
56 Richards and Hoeldtke, Church Leadership, 90.
57 Ibid, 203.
58 Adapted from Caela Farren and Beverly L. Kaye, “New Skills for New Leadership Roles,” in The Leader
of the Future, ed., Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass, 1996): 179-180; quoted in Gibbs, LeadershipNext, 214.
59 Leith Anderson, Leadership that Works: Hope and Direction for Church and Parachurch Leaders in Today’s
Complex World (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1999), 185.

LeaderLoop/Huffard
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Eddie Gibbs observed, in 2005, that mentoring was still a novel concept in
churches but vital to leaving a legacy. Mentoring enhances spiritual and ministry
formation. He urged churches to make the training of mentoring a priority since there
are so few doing it. “The most significant test of leadership is not present performance
but the legacy that the leaders leave behind them.”60
A LeaderLoop Response
At the beginning of this paper I raised the following questions:
1. How do we learn to pass the baton when it no longer seems to be a natural thing
to do?
2. How do we become better followers?
3. How do we, as a church, discover and identify our mission from generation to
generation without effective leaders and willing followers?
4. How do we develop more followers into leaders with spiritual influence?
5. How do we pass the desire to lead on to others? How do we create an
environment to develop more leaders in the local church?
We become better followers when leaders loop back around and start mentoring
followers to be active followers—like themselves. Through personal story telling and
shared reflection, it will become clear that the mentor is both an active follower and a
leader—because a leader did not become a leader and cease to be a disciple. As
mentoring increases (D), leaders will become more aware of what God is doing through
the church and empower members to use their spiritual gifts. The percentage of
followers growing into active followers, with this process, will grow exponentially with
the multiplication of leaders who engage in consistent mentoring and empower new
ministry. Mentoring reaches into the heart to give both the desire to lead and the
confidence to lead, knowing the journey will not be taken alone or without support. A
heart shaped for leading will naturally touch other hearts—as the LeaderLoop goes on
and on.
60 Eddie Gibbs, LeadershipNext: Changing Leaders in a Changing Culture (Downers Grove, IVP: 2005), 214-
216.

2016 AMF Read - Leader loop - from Followers to Mentors

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