Leadership Leads
YOU AS THE LEADER
    Maintain your relationship with God – devotional life, quiet days, reading and prayer.
    Understand your leadership style and value it.
    Do things you are good at- find and develop others to do those things you find harder.
    Develop a support network – mentors, friends, parent support group, administrators, prayer team.
    Limit the number of programs and ministries you are involved in.

YOU AS THE LEADER TO LEADERS

    Know your vision, mission, values, strategy and goals
    Communicate these to the Church and your leaders -continually evaluate these with   your teams -  reports to Church Board or Council. Newsletter items, reports to other staff  members, meeting notes or email.
    Develop a structure of carers for your teams (80/20 principle)
    Encourage your volunteers – hold celebrations, write notes to them, phone-text email. Give them chocolate and lots of it!

FINDING, RECRUITING AND DEVELOPING LEADERS
When recruiting leaders -
    Pray for the right leaders.
    Some people have the gift of recruiting. Find them and use them well.
    Know the task you are asking them to do.
    Spend time getting to know your congregation well
    Work out whether you are a phone, letter, email or face to face recruiter.
    As you ask them to be involved remember you are doing them a favor not the other way around.
    Describe the task in way that appeals to them and is also truthful regarding time commitment, skills needed etc..
    Are the right people in the task already or is it hindering you finding volunteers?
    What is the environment like you are asking your leaders to work in?
    Have job descriptions
    Encourage leaders to fill out an application form and code of conduct form
    Provide training and support for your leaders
    Liase with other staff members so that you all have a balance of leaders.
    Put people in the right ministries
    Include your leaders in the decision making process.

"We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing" Psalm 39:6

What is your most profound regret in life? One pastor put it this way..

  "Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me  I  cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
-Mark Buchanan

 "TIME is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow down time: When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention. I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment. And when I'm always looking for the glimpse of glory, I slow and enter. And time slows. Weigh down this moment in time with attention fully and the whole of time's river slows, slows, slows.''
-Ann Voskamp -"One Thousand Gifts".

Two Little Boys ~
After a hardy rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in the puddle through her kitchen window.

The older of the two, a five year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole.
As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother runs to the yard in a panic.
Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?!' she asks as she shook the older boy in anger.
'We were just playing 'church' mommy, ' he said.
'And I was just baptizing him..... In the name of the Father, the Son and in...the hole-he-goes.'

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you." Mother Teresa