Empowering Leadership Summary

 

Effective leadership begins with an intimate relationship with God, resulting in Christ-like character and a clear sense of God’s calling to lead and empower others.  As this base of spiritual maturity increases, effective leaders multiply, guide, empower and equip those they serve to realize their full potential in Christ and work together to accomplish God’s vision.

 

Leaders consider it as one of their most important tasks to help others develop greater degrees of empowerment.  They equip, support, motivate, mentor and coach individuals and communities to become all that God wants them to be.

 

Some Aspects of Empowering Leadership:

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• Balanced Stewardship of their own time, talents, and treasures

• Active collaboration with others to collectively discern and work toward God’s vision for health, growth, and transformation

• Proactive removal of BARRIERS that limit individual and corporate health, growth and transformation to accomplish God’s mission.

 

Qualities of  the “Davids” (Great Leaders) Based on Empowering Leadership Research:[1]

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• Remarkably firm character (far lower need for status symbols or demonstrations of pride:  “We are the first or the greatest.”, condescending attitude was non-existent.

• Enormous teachability and curiosity to learn new things.  If something in their ministry went wrong, they were non-defensive, didn’t tend to explain it away by the context or other external factors, but by their own mistakes.

• Multiplication mindset.  They were always eager to share what they had received.  Their focus was on transformation even if it didn’t mean an increase in numbers in their own church.

• Managed polarities easily:  spirituality and administration, relationships and goal achievement, the natural and the supernatural et al. 

• Balance between leading and empowering  (e.g.  casting God’s vision vs. encouraging the release of God’s vision from others)

 

[1] Excerpt from Natural Church Development’s The Three Colors of Leadership, p. 39-40