Some Roles of Equipping Leaders

As an equipping leader, there are times that you and I have to wear various hats. We put on the hat of trainer, or facilitator when needed. At times, we must wear the hat of coach or mentor. Other times require that we communicate or speak with authority. There are even times when we must challenge the status quo of our culture and speak with boldness as to what God has placed within us. This means that as we actively participate in the transitioning of our church culture, we must wear the hat of Challenger.

More often than I can recount for you, I have sat back during a meeting and bit my tongue as I listened to a discussion that either went against the grain of equipping leadership, or someone made a comment that did so. Too often, I have left those meetings fuming because no one in “leadership” spoke up and corrected this issue, only to find out that I was the one in leadership who should have spoken up and said, “stop!” I found my own finger pointing at myself!

As equipping leaders, there are times when we must stand up in the face of opposition or even silence and speak the truth, as we know it. No one else will speak your truth but you, and if it is never spoken, then people will never know. And if we choose to “not rock the boat” or take the “easy path”, skipping altogether the conflict that would probably occur as we hold people’s “feet to the fire”, then we need not ever complain about people not “getting it” or not living into the equipping message.

It’s up to you! We can hide all we want to behind the excuse: “if my Senior Pastor would just speak up”, and miss the opportunity God has given us to speak. We must stop waiting on others to speak the message that God has prepared us to speak. Speak up, or keep your mouth shut!

Equipping leaders must be courageous, choosing the path that few in the church world have chosen, speaking up for truth and holding our direct reports, colleagues, and yes even our Senior Leadership, accountable to the equipping leadership paradigm. As we speak the truth in love, we will be providing the necessary challenge to leaders, to become better at preparing God’s people, ultimately beginning to make the transition toward an equipping church.

One of the most effective ways to participate in the positive transitioning of culture is to act as a Trainer and Facilitator with the staff and congregants that we are serving alongside.

Have you ever been talking with someone and you are sharing some key learning that you have appropriated into your life or ministry, only to have the person that you are speaking with give you a blank stare or a very recognizable “what in the heck are you talking about” look? If you are an equipping leader, then I am sure that you have seen many of these looks. But what do you do about them?

An equipping leader must be a trainer of sorts. We must be willing and equipped ourselves, to stand in the presence of people – direct reports, colleagues or supervisors – and take every opportunity afforded us, as an opportunity to train and teach others, especially in the face of “blank stares.” There are leaders in your church right now who have no clue as to how to equip other people, how to build teams, how to delegate responsibilities or how to train non-paid people. It is our responsibility to share the practical “how to’s” of equipping with these people, regularly providing them with opportunities for discussion and practice, which leads to individual growth and development. But how you might be asking? Through training.

As an equipping leader, you are training in everything you do and say. When people observe you in leadership situations, you are training. When you are leading your team, you are training. When you are interacting with colleagues, you are training. Now, you can choose to acknowledge this opportunity or trivialize it, and either this opportunity will be turned into a learning moment, or it will be missed altogether.

As you focus on taking advantage of these opportunities, here are three ways to do so:

See every opportunity as a time to train. Do not miss or overlook the chance to train people that you are interacting with. Granted, it may not be specialized training or a dedicated training time, but learning can still occur if we take advantage of the time.

Ask the question: What can we learn (from what will or just happened)? This is a key question that every equipping leader should keep handy at all times. This question can be asked in a variety of settings: After a discussion, or meeting; before, during or after a conference, teaching session or sermon; after a conflict situation; or during or after a successful or challenged event or program, to name a few.

Repeat back, as often as necessary. Keeping with the first suggestion, to “see every opportunity as a time to train”, one way to do this is to regularly repeat back what you just heard or what you think a key learning for you or the group is. This will provide consistent refocusing as you attempt to create a “learning culture” within your church leadership.

These are just a few of the many ways that we can train the leadership within our churches. You may not have been given the designation of “staff trainer”, but this does not relinquish you from the responsibility to constantly point people toward a more thorough embodiment of Ephesians 4 and the responsibility of all leaders to equip God’s people.

As Equipping Leaders, we are consistently interacting with other highly qualified and incredibly gifted leaders. They are experts in their own specific areas of ministry service. We have the wonderful opportunity to peer into their lives and speak truth that will assist them in becoming equipping leaders, thus achieving their God call and fulfilling their biblical responsibility.

The challenge is that this can be done one of two ways: One, we could speak as “sages on the stage”. This assumes that we know more about equipping leadership than others, and therefore, they just need to sit back and listen up. The second way would be to share as “guides alongside,” where the assumption is that we are speaking to intelligent people who probably know more than we think they do, so our approach is to listen, ask lots of questions and then make simple suggestions.