Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading…
Transcript

Life Stages of

Leadership

Intro

DEVELOPMENTAL PHASES

of a LEADER’S LIFE

by Jon Petersen

edited & adapted

by Joe Steinke

Informed by The Making of A Leader by Robert J Clinton

Leadership Development is set within the stages of your Life Development.

  • There are 6 stages that have been identified as periods of time during which God works in distinct ways to accomplish his purposes in and through the leader.

  • Sovereign Foundations
  • Inner Life Growth
  • Ministry Maturing
  • Life Maturing
  • Convergence
  • Afterglow

1

Life Stage 1

SOVEREIGN FOUNDATIONS

SOVEREIGN FOUNDATIONS

  • God is working in your family environment, and in personal and historical events that mark you.
  • God is laying foundations often unbeknown to the individual. A relationship with God may still be non-existent or formative. If you believe in the providential and redemptive purpose of God, this is a Destiny Preparation Season.
  • Your Context is a crucial factor in imprinting your worldview. (geography, ethnicity, economic status, family of origin, etc.)
  • You start to show your knack for what you're skilled at, what you're delighted by, and how you interpret and enter the world.
  • Your Leadership Potential may start to show up in small or at times dramatic ways.

2

Life Stage 2

INNER LIFE GROWTH

INNER LIFE GROWTH

  • This stage is marked by the events surrounding your encounter with God, your conversion, and seeking to know God personally.
  • The Journey begins to recognize and redeem your foundational years and see where God was at work in shaping who you are.
  • You begin to put off the old life and take on the new, being baptized and cleansed from behaviors and mindsets of your former life.
  • A sense of destiny blossoms, a hope for your future glows, as you learn the beauty of obedience to a trustworthy Father.

INNER LIFE GROWTH

  • You learn the importance of intimacy, communion and conversation with God in prayer, and hearing the voice of Jesus as your Good Shepherd.
  • This sets the stage for God to begin a series of testing experiences in order to develop your character.
  • An emerging leader usually receives some kind of elemental training:
  • Imitation Modeling
  • Informal Apprenticeships
  • Mentoring
  • You begin to discover the joy of true fellowship with other believers.

3

Life Stage 3

MINISTRY MATURING PHASE

MINISTRY MATURING

  • This stage has been called - "THE BUFFET YEARS"
  • You are invited to serve and take on responibility for Ministry Tasks and the Challenges they bring to prove your motivation and submission.
  • Ministry Assignments come form the Lord, but often are in the context of leader who begins to recognize your potential for servant leadership.
  • Your Ministry Skills go through maturation- with lots of variety and a big learning curve.
  • Your idealism gets punctured and offers you an opportunity to ask: What is truly valuable to God and how do I align myself to His kingdom and His ways?
  • Key Paradigm Shift - Transactional vs Relational Leadership
  • You learn the what the beautiful let down is all about by embracing failure as your tutor, instructing you in Jesus way of humilty and meekness.

MINISTRY MATURING

  • You start to move in your gifts and are affirmed in them.
  • You learn the power of Prayer in the secret place and in public.
  • You hopefully have Power Encounters where the Holy Spirit affirms the kingdom with demonstrations of life transformation.
  • You begin to build a family of friends, who are your comrades.
  • You get insights into the structures and systems that need to be challenged and changed and learn how to speak to those who hold power in a way that is both prophetic and compassionate.
  • Often times this invites a Leadership Backlash that is so importnat for your develoment. It's called Meekness Training.

  • You learn to engage Spiritual Warfare in prayer, wrangling and wrestling with demons within and devils without, In the Name of Jesus!
  • You discover the nature of working in a team and the relational dynamics that are frought with potential conflict. You learn to harness conflict as a transformational presence in your closest relationships.
  • You learn through disappointing others on how to exercise your authority in a way that honors the value and voice of those you lead, or are being led by.
  • And if you're fortunate, you get some affirmation from your hard work, but know that it is not owed nor yours to claim.

Surprise!

During the Ministry Maturing years there can be a sense of climbing the ministry ladder of success – seeking more anointing, more fruit, more influence, more numbers, more money, more ______________.

It needs to dawn on our hearts that Jesus is not preparing us for more ministry, but using ministry to prepare us for more of Himself.

The idol of ministry needs to be torn down. He will not suffer His kingdom to be claimed by eager hirelings seeking a name and place for themselves, so he will lead us to the desert to speak tenderly to us there, where we are stripped of all of our familiar comforts and our flattering companions. This is for our good and for our future well-being. So He can restore us as sons, as daughters, who have a true servant's heart, who claims no rights to anything but their life hidden in God in whom are all things, to whom are all things, and He gets the glory. Amen!

MORE MINISTRY MATURING

  • This Life Stage has you seeking to get training to become more effective in a growing sense of calling.
  • If you're in a healthy network, or invited into new relationships without fear adn judgement, you gain a better understanding of the Body of Christ through experiencing various relationships and assignments.
  • Some of these will be positive and some negative ministry relationships, but they help create a sense of who are your people and your tribe.
  • Often, this is when a leader discerns and decides to engage ministry as a prime focus of their life-work, their vocation.

UNBEKNOWNST TO THE LEADER…

  • Most training during this period is not intentional.
  • God is primarily working in you not through you.
  • "Most emerging leaders don't recognize this; they evaluate productivity, activities, fruitfulness and accomplishments. But God is quietly, often in unusual ways trying to get the leader to see that one ministers out of who one is."
  • It is the lessons learned during this “unveiling-the-cracks-in-the-foundation” period of time that lend power and authenticity to the ministry. Stage 4 will complete this "you-minister-from-who-you-are" journey.

4

Life Stage 4

LIFE MATURING

Life Maturing

Life Crisis - This is an inviation to graduate to your second half of life with a more mature and seasoned perspective on youself, your life and ministry. The disorientation from some familiar things and familiar ways of being are intentionally disrupted by the Father so He can do some of the following things in your life development:

  • Give you a wholistic perspective on ministry
  • Rekindle of a sense of first love and affirm afresh His calling on your life.
  • Bend you to become flexible with an openness to new ideas and welcome change.
  • Broaden you through exposure to others who are not like you
  • Reorient from a Church paradigm to Kingdom paradigm from the Word – a biblical ecclesiology
  • A refined sense of your ultimate destiny emerges
  • Your identity is secured in the Father’s Love, established in Sonship/Daughterhood
  • Discover how graduate to parental adoption of others into your heart, your life, and your inner circle of investment.
  • Discovering bi-generational partnerships with the Timothy's & Timothea's in the work.

Life Maturing

  • The leader identifies and uses his or her gift-mix with power (Heb 13:7,8).
  • God increases imitation modeling through the leader.
  • Increased fruitfulness in primary relationships
  • Character matures and mellows – rest increases.
  • Experiential understanding of Father is being deepened.
  • Communion with God becomes fundamental and is more important than success in ministry.

Life Maturing

In the long haul, God is preparing you for convergence by redeeming the “years of the locust.” He will grab you by the ankles, flip you up-side-down and shake everything out of your pockets that isn’t of him – in essence, He is conforming you to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29), and is discipling you into your gifts and destiny. No sacred cows survive! His goal is heart-broken, community-centered, Word-based, Spirit-filled leaders through whom the living Christ ministers, utilizing the leader's spiritual character and gifts to further His Kingdom. The main lesson here is that “Ministry flows out of being.”

5

Life Stage 5

CONVERGENCE

CONVERGENCE

  • The leader moves into a role that matches gift-mix experience, temperament etc.
  • Ideal role discovery
  • Trans-local networking becomes a critical ingredient in convergence: geographical, domains, people groups etc.
  • Freed from ministry for which one is not gifted or suited – destiny realized
  • Not many leaders experience convergence. Often they are promoted to roles that hinder their gift-mix. Further, few leaders minister out of who they are. Their authority usually is tethered to a role or title, not from their weight of relational grace and mutual trust.
  • Only 20% of all leaders experience convergence

6

Life Stage 6

AFTERGLOW

AFTERGLOW

This is the stage of life where you start to reduce your sphere of investments from wide to a more narrow engagement. It is characterized by:

  • The desire to multiply your life through a few.
  • You become an ambassador of the kingdom, with indirect influence at broad levels.
  • Having built up a lifetime of contacts, you continue to exert influence in these relationships.
  • You begin to reflect over a lifetime of ministry, and are eager to give the glory to God, to honor His faithfulness over a lifetime of development.
  • Pass the baton to “faithful leaders…”

GROUP QUESTIONS

  • How are you reconciling your foundation years?
  • What phase are you in now?
  • What are you enjoying the most?
  • What are your greatest challenges?
  • What is the Lord trying to teach you at the moment?
  • Are you walking in openness with your team. Do you feel known by them?

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi