We know that a healthy Christian leader is strong in all 5Cs: Christ, Community, Character, Calling and Competencies.
However, too often in leader development we only deal with competencies. When a young man or woman goes to Bible school to become a leader, what is addressed? Competencies! Perhaps some token attention is paid to the other four elements, but for the most part, our attention to “leader development” is given in the area of competencies such as biblical knowledge, how to preach, how to counsel, etc.
Competencies are essential but not sufficient in developing healthy leaders. Consequently, we have many “disconnections” in our leaders today.
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The author attended a meeting of a local church’s leadership team. The senior pastor expressed his desire for more “leadership training” in the church. The team discussed how to do this. Then one of the team members offered to begin teaching a course on New Testament Survey. They all agreed this was a good idea and moved on to the next matter – to them the issue of “leadership development” had been successfully addressed! In reality, however, the actual formation of their young leaders’ lives had not been addressed at all.
As necessary as competency development is, it is not sufficient to ensure that the leader’s life will result in truly positive influence or an enduring legacy. Many leaders may accomplish much but never amount to much! According to Robert Clinton, over 70 percent of leaders who successfully climb the ladder of leadership influence do not finish well. Some dramatically fail, precipitating public scandal, while the majority of leaders who lose their influence just fade quietly into obscurity. They fall short because in their outwardly successful lives there is a disconnection between the development of leadership competencies and the development of leadership character. The lack of character is a frequent cause for leaders failing to fulfill their true potential; and this lack of character can be traced to a lack of Christ and accountable community in the lives of the leaders.
Significantly, a 14-nation research project[1] found that the prime reasons for early and painful return from missionary service (in both older and younger sending countries) were not related to inadequate formal training in missions. The project found that the prime causes were clustered around issues related to spirituality, character and relationships in the life of the missionary. In other words, it is usually not a lack of competencies that undermines missionaries; it is inadequacies that occur in the other areas that are to blame. These are areas frequently not addressed in preparation – Christ, community and character (no doubt calling was not specifically addressed by the research or else we suspect it would have shown up, too).
Think about your own experience now. Identify examples of leaders you have known who were strong in competencies but were weak in one or more of the other “Cs.” What happened?