Coming Soon: From Followers to Leaders

Robert E. Logan and Tara Miller

A recent survey of churches asked the question, "What is your greatest need as a church?" Guess what the number one answer was? "Leadership development."    

And yet most pastors and churches don't yet have a clear path for developing leaders within their own congregations. We realize that what we've been doing is no longer working. But we've not yet found other workable alternatives. 

"From Followers to Leaders: The Path of Leadership Development in the Local Church", the new book by Robert E. Logan and Tara Miller, lays out a clear, yet flexible path to help develop more and better leaders within our local churches—leaders who are connected with God, growing in intimacy, living out their calling, using their God-given gifts, investing in healthy relationships with others. Leaders like this, who are deeply impacted by God, are then able to facilitate holistic, meaningful life change in others.

"From Followers to Leaders" helps you create a path for developing leaders that is simple, reproducible, and adaptable—something you can take and use in your ministry context.  You don't need to import the latest system from the latest mega-church. You just need something simple that works. And here are the secrets of why the path works: 

• It's relational, and therefore easily adapted to the specific needs and goals of the individual person and church. 


• It's holistic, assuming that each person is spiritual, rational, emotional, and relational—and that all of these areas are related and inseparable.


• It's easily reproducible, not dependent on specifically talented individuals, expensive resources, or complex systems. 

If you are tired of waiting for ready-made leaders to show up on your doorstep, this book is for you. Come discover a simple, reproducible path for developing leaders in the local church. For book information, go to www.churchsmart.com (book will be released in about two weeks). 

Executive Summary

"From Followers to Leaders" explores the narrative arc of our development—from pre-follower to follower to learner to leader to developer of others, and looks at how these stages of spiritual development can flow seamlessly from one stage to the next. 

Ch. 1: Need any leaders? Chapter one establishes the need for leadership development in the local churches. What we've been doing isn't working… we need a new approach.  One that is relational, intentional, flexible, and holistic. This book is for anyone who wants to develop leaders in a local church context.   

Ch. 2: Surveying the path of leadership development. In this chapter we'll lay out the basic path of leadership development that we'll be using throughout the rest of the book.  Rather than a model to copy, the path is more of a template on which to overlay the specifics of individual ministries.   

Ch. 3: Our great cloud of rag-tag witnesses. This chapter follows the lives of five biblical leaders as we see them developing through the text of scripture: Moses, David, Esther, Peter, and Paul. God works with each of them differently—they have different personalities, struggles, and missions. Yet we'll look at some common themes that emerge from their lives, and incorporate these into our understanding of the path of leadership.   

Ch. 4: The path of faith: becoming a follower of Christ. Jesus began the path of leadership with evangelism—he started with people who were not yet disciples and took them from there into leadership. When Jesus called his disciples, he did not start with the religious people; he started with people who genuinely needed to experience deep life change. Then he told us to go and do likewise. Leadership development does not start with churched people, but with unchurched people. 

Ch. 5: The path of serving, growing & praying: spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is critical to leadership development. Fruitful, growing disciples form the pool out of which future leaders are drawn. So how can we be more intentional about helping people develop? How do people become formed spiritually? And how can we best help others along that path of becoming formed into the character of Christ?   

Ch. 6: The path of developing: emerging leaders. When people begin taking on new challenges and new roles, how do they learn best? Emerging leaders need support that is relational, hands-on, and skills-based. They need the freedom to both fail and succeed, then the time to reflect on their experience. They'll also need to be growing in character—through engaging with others, through life situations as they arise, and through the examples set by others. 

Ch. 7: The path of leading: support and guidance. As people come into their own, discovering their gifts and calling, and developing competence in ministry, they'll go on to lead groups and teams of others. This new role, of not only being responsible for oneself, but others, brings with it new challenges. How can we provide continued support for leaders as they begin leading others? 

Ch. 8: The path of multiplying: investment in others. Jesus told his disciples to go and do to others what he had done with them… developing others not just so they can be developed themselves, but so those people can go on to develop others in turn. Helping people learn to lead teams is not the end, but—in a very real sense—the beginning. If we are intentional in our leadership development, the process begins to re-create itself.  And there are others awaiting a journey. 

Ch. 9: Where do I go from here? First steps on the path. This final chapter looks at the "What's next?" and provides several different options for those who want to continue to move forward in developing leaders in their own ministry settings. New resources on the CoachNet website (www.coachnet.org) will address ways to create customized paths for specialty areas such as NCD and church planting.   

Bob Logan is President of CoachNet International Ministries. An internationally recognized authority in church planting, church growth and leadership development, Bob develops innovative strategies to cultivate healthy, reproducing church movements worldwide.

Tara Miller serves as a writer/resource developer for CoachNet.