Coaching Christian Leaders

Mark Jones
Podcast Coaching Christian Leaders

Coaching Christian Leaders helps ministry, business, and military leaders accomplish God's calling for their lives. This podcast will interview pastors, authors, Christian businessmen, and others. It will also provide Christ-Focused coaching that will help you get unstuck, build sustainable systems, stay focused, streamline tasks, reduce stress, and stay on time.

  1. The First Leader You Must Train

    22/03/2021

    The First Leader You Must Train

    Every pastor I've ever met wants to reach the lost and build disciples. I believe that’s you as well. I know you want to see people saved and for your church members to grow in their love and understanding of Christ. That’s why you got into this work. But now, after years of doing this work, you realize that it’s impossible to do it alone. You need help. You need others to come alongside and share the load. In part, that’s why you are listening to me. That’s why you found this podcast. You want to learn how to identify, train, and release leaders into the work. This is Mark Jones and I help pastors reach the lost, build disciples, and develop church leaders. Thanks for listening to Coaching Christian Leaders. If you want to know more about how I can help, then please visit www.CoachingChristianLeaders.com In today’s episode, we are going to focus on the most important leader you must train. You must train this leader before all others. And a failure to do so will cause problems. Who is that one leader you must give the priority to? It is yourself. Over the past four leadership development episodes you have: identified a leadership position to develop. You have written a short job description. I have asked you some questions with the hope of creating in you a sense of urgency. And we have brought the Lord into our planning. And today? Today we are going to focus on ourselves. We are going to work on our own leadership skills. Let me take a couple of minutes and tell you a bit about myself. My story will help you understand the value of personal leadership development. For me, becoming a pastor is a second career. Before I was a pastor I was career military. I retired from the Air Force in 1995 and shortly after that went into full-time ministry. The work I did in the Air Force – I was a Russian Linguist – had nothing to do with pastoring a church. So about one year before retirement I began to work on a Master of Divinity. Then about one year after retiring I went into ministry. I tell you this because early in my ministry career I realized something. Seminary did not prepare me to lead a church. In general, Bible colleges and Seminaries do not train pastors to lead churches. In seminary, I had only one class on pastoral leadership. All the other classes were on theology, Bible book studies, and language (Greek, and Hebrew). Those things are essential but they do not prepare you to lead a church. Where did I learn how to lead? The leadership skills I possessed, in the beginning, came from my years in the Air Force. The rest I learned on the job and from speaking to other pastors. And now I want to share with you what I have learned. Over the next few episodes, we will work on personal leadership skills. You need to learn to read with intention. You need to work with a coach or a mentor who will challenge you. You need to surround yourself with a small group of peers and meet with them regularly. Today we will focus on reading with intention. One of the best ways to learn to lead is to read with intent. If the internet is telling the truth, then CEOs read approximately 60 books a year. That’s five books per month.  You are the CEO of your church. I know you already read to preach. Books that help you with message prep probably equal 2-3 books per month. So why not use the other 2-3 slots and read for leadership development? About a year ago I came across an article by James Clear titled 7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read. James Clear is the author of the book Atomic Habits. I’ll put a link to this article in the show notes. But for the next few minutes, I will give you Mr. Clear’s seven points and put my spin on them. Quit More Books You do not have to read a book cover to cover. If it is not bearing fruit stop reading it. Not every book is worth the investment of time. And often you can get what you need early and then move on. Let me add this. If you want the

    14 min
  2. Where's God in Your Plans?

    15/02/2021

    Where's God in Your Plans?

    Pastors, God has commissioned you to make disciples. God has gifted you to equip your church members for ministry. And God has committed you to train up not one generation of leaders but to oversee the training of two additional generations of leaders. But are you? Are you doing these things? I know I have struggled to develop leaders. Why? One reason is that I got busy doing church. Each week was filled with sermon prep and then preaching; administration, phone calls, visits. Nothing wrong with that. But weeks would go by, then months. And before you know it a year has passed and I still have not developed a leader. But that’s changing. And I want to share with you how it is changing and what you can do to develop the next generation of leaders at your church. This is Mark Jones and you are listening to Coaching Christian Leaders. Today we are going to answer an all-important question. And we must know the answer to move forward in our leadership development. Here’s the question – How do you know if God is in favor of your plans? Does God support what you are planning? Let me share with you something that I do. And always when I do it I regret it. I get a great idea. I develop a plan. I identify the resources. I contact the people. And I forge ahead. But I forget to do one thing. And because I forget this, often my plans fall flat. What do I forget to do? I forget to include the Lord. I forget to seek His help and I forget to commit this plan or this idea to God. And you know what happens? Eventually, nothing, because God has not established these plans. If you have listened to the first 3 episodes on Leadership Development maybe you have noticed that I have yet to identify a person to train. I have not covered how to select a candidate. That’s on purpose. We are going to lay this whole thing out before we go and identify and recruit trainees. You see I am taking the Field of Dreams approach. Maybe you saw the Kevin Costner film where Kevin Costner’s character, a farmer, hears a voice in the cornfields “Build it and they will come.” And so he does just that. He builds a baseball field. That’s what I am proposing. We are going to build a leadership development program before we even pick out a candidate to go through the program. We are going to create each step and then we are going to ask God to give us the leaders to train. But what if we do all this planning and fail to include God in the effort? It’s possible that when the system is finished there will not be a candidate because we did not include God in the planning. So let’s bring God in now before we get too far down the road. Open your Bibles to Proverbs 16 and let’s consider the first three verses. I’ll read from the King James Version initially. The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord. 2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits. 3 Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established. Of the three verses, verse one is the most difficult one for me to understand. The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord. So I read through some commentaries, especially those that are language heavy, but they confused me even more. I also considered other translations. Here’s the ESV. The plans of the heart belong to man,     but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Or how about the NIV? To humans belong the plans of the heart,     but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue. On and on I studied and finally I selected Pastor John MacArthur Jr.’s understanding of the verse. Here is his note from his Study Bible, “Human responsibility is always subject to God’s absolute sovereignty.” Dr. MacArthur’s note seems to square with the majority of others and the other two verses, 2-3, support the idea. “Human responsibility is always

    12 min
  3. 05/02/2021

    Without This, Your Leadership Development Will Fail

    Often when we start a new project, when we begin to develop a new program, if we are lacking a certain ingredient, if we do not have one specific emotion, the project withers and dies. But when we possess it we will see the project through. This is Mark Jones the host of Coaching Christian Leaders and today I will share with you that one essential ingredient you must have to move your leadership development program forward. When we last met, you were taking your first steps in leadership development. You determined the leadership position to develop and then you created a one-page job description for that position. If you have not done that then take a few minutes to do so. What is that position you wish to develop? I am working on developing elders. Maybe you need to create youth leaders or build up your children’s staff. Maybe it’s a deacon or women’s ministry leader. Whatever, you need to identify it and then create a simple job description. In the last episode, I encouraged you to ask yourself this question – Why does my church need this leader now? And I wanted you to link your answer to your church’s mission statement. Here’s is what I mean by that. Our church’s mission statement is To Share Christ and Build Disciples. So when I ask myself Why does my church need elders now? – the answer must satisfy the mission statement. I need elders now to build more disciples. If your need does not satisfy your mission statement, then pick a different leader to develop. If you want some additional help with these steps just grab my worksheet titled First Steps. You can find it at CoachingChristianLeaders.com on the Worksheets tab. The First Steps Worksheet covers this episode and the previous two episodes. You can use it by yourself or print multiple copies and use it with your team. Go to CoachingChristianLeaders.com, open up the Worksheets tab, and grab your copy. Five Coaching Questions Today we are going to cultivate something essential. Very early in the creation of this leadership development program, we need this essential ingredient or the process will fail. What is it? It is a sense of Urgency. Why urgency? Without urgency, there will be no lasting motivation to take this on. There will be no passion in the process. And when there is no sense of urgency there is no forward momentum. How do create urgency? You will create urgency by answering the following coaching questions. So grab a piece of paper and something to write with or grab the First Steps Worksheet and let’s create some urgency. In order to create a sense of urgency, I am going to ask you five coaching questions. Take the time to honestly and fully answer each question. I wish I was sitting across from you. When I personally coach pastors, it is questions like the following five that I ask. And pastors grow dramatically as they think and answer each question. When I coach a pastor we explore each response and dive deep into the pastor’s situation. Since I am working with you via a podcast I want to encourage you to answer each question fully and honestly. Bounce these questions and your answers off of a close friend or mentor. Better yet, discuss them with a key leader in your church. Here’s question number one. Without this leader what is the current situation at your church? Take a minute and think this through. Then write down a short paragraph that explains the current situation without this leader. You are trying to assess the impact not having this leader makes on your church. I told you that I am working on developing some new elders. But for this question, I’ll use a different need as an example. I need a Children’s Ministry Director, someone to pull together our different children’s ministry teams and give them focus, training, and support. I have a Pioneer Club Director. I have someone overseeing Children’s Church. I do not have anyone overseeing Children’s Sunday school and I do not have

    12 min

Sobre

Coaching Christian Leaders helps ministry, business, and military leaders accomplish God's calling for their lives. This podcast will interview pastors, authors, Christian businessmen, and others. It will also provide Christ-Focused coaching that will help you get unstuck, build sustainable systems, stay focused, streamline tasks, reduce stress, and stay on time.

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