Disciple-Makers and Leaders: Why We Need Both
Disciple-making and leadership overlap in important ways, but conflating them weakens both.
I’ve been wrestling with a peculiar challenge in navigating the intersection of leadership development and the invitation for all believers to make disciples.
Making disciples is a form of leadership because it requires walking with an individual along a directed path toward Jesus. Without a doubt, disciple-making overlaps significantly with community leadership, particularly in emotional intelligence.
However, the overlap between disciple-making and leadership can lead to confusion about the differences between the two. We could misunderstand that because everyone is called to make disciples, there is no particular leadership gifting or skills to be cultivated. Effectiveness in disciple-making does not automatically mean that a person is gifted, equipped, or competent for organizational or community leadership in the family of God (or elsewhere).
The challenge is that we need both leaders and disciple-makers in disciple-making movements. This challenge presents itself in a few different ways: Leadership systems: Overcoming the inertia and assumptions around traditional leadership systems that tend to prioritize program or platform requires investing energy in systems that cast a wider net for people. Even though organizational leadership differs from disciple-making, we must be careful not to unquestioningly import corporate leadership ideals into the family of God.
Skill Development: The skills of localized disciple-making are not the same as those for leading communities and movements. They are almost completely unrelated. Creating a development path for both simultaneously is resource-intensive.
Expectations: The conflation of disciple-making with organizational leadership erodes both disciple-making and leadership by blurring expectations and qualifications for who can lead.
Disciple-Making and Leadership Are Not the Same
Let’s start by differentiating a leader from a disciple-maker.
Disciple-making focuses on an individual and their disciples. It is a primarily relational activity focused on helping people follow and be transformed by Jesus, while inviting the modelling, training, and empowering of others to do likewise.
Leadership focuses on the community as a whole. While leadership is primarily relational, it also encompasses many other hard and soft skills. For example, the following skills are necessary for a leader but typically do not show up in disciple-making:
Casting vision
Developing and implementing a strategic plan
Navigating interpersonal dynamics beyond the leader’s direct relationships
Organizing, managing, and administering
Motivating large groups
As a leader, many of these functions occur beyond the bounds of direct relationships and through distributed responsibility.
Why the Distinction Matters
We could quibble that this distinction between leadership and disciple-making is somewhat arbitrary. However, without the distinction, the requisite development of differentiated skills between leaders and disciple-makers will fail to materialize.
I submit this thought as I reflect on our own discipleship and leadership systems and the fruit of each over the last eight years. As we have emphasized disciple-making relentlessly over the years, we have come to realize that our leadership development and systems are somewhat underdeveloped. As a result, a current major focus for our team is strengthening our leadership development.
What We’re Doing About It
To help make this happen, we have done and are doing a few things:
Added specific leadership equipping to our primary missionary training pathway through the VITAL framework.
Assessing and reassessing our leadership structures to ensure they are clear regarding accountability and the expectations of each role.
Evaluating our senior leadership to ensure we are continually developing depth in our teams while resisting the urge to solve problems ourselves.
Regularly observing the leadership development environments of other movements; the echo chamber of our own thinking is our greatest enemy.
Systematically evaluating whether we are “doing the right things” and “doing them right. The larger we grow, the more essential it is that we are very clear about doing the right things.
Over the coming weeks, I hope to continue exploring the intersection of leadership and disciple-making to hone my own thinking and communication. I hope you come along for the journey, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I have greatly appreciated your passion for disciple-making and the depth of your reflection on the relationship between leadership development and the calling of every believer to make disciples. Your insights highlight an important truth: we need both faithful disciple-makers and godly leaders who can equip, guide, and strengthen movements.
Your ministry and leadership have been a tremendous encouragement, and I would be honored to learn from your experience and wisdom as we continue growing in this vital calling.
At Pathfinder Harvest Ministries, we are deeply committed to making disciples who make disciples. This year, we have intentionally embraced a disciple-making movement strategy called EDEM:
E – Evangelize Reaching individuals and communities with the life-transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ.
D – Disciple Establishing new believers on strong biblical foundations through intentional mentoring, teaching, and Christ-centered relationships.
E – Equip Preparing disciples through leadership development, ministry training, evangelism, and church-planting principles so they can effectively participate in God’s mission.
M – Multiply Sending equipped disciples to start new disciple-making groups, plant churches, and raise up other leaders who will continue the multiplication process.
Through this vision, we have seen God’s faithfulness as we have planted 8 churches in 5 years, with a focus not only on gathering believers but on developing disciples who reproduce and raise up others.
I strongly agree that disciple-making and leadership development must work together. Healthy movements require disciples who can multiply and leaders who can cultivate environments where others grow and serve.
I would be grateful for the opportunity to learn from you, exchange ideas, and explore how we can encourage one another in advancing disciple-making movements for the glory of God.
One of the most important questions every church planter and ministry leader must answer is: What kind of church are we trying to create?
If our goal is to establish churches that make disciples who make disciples, then disciple-making must become the foundation upon which the church is built. The methods used in the beginning stages of ministry will ultimately shape the DNA, culture, and future growth of the church.