With the words above Paul presses home a leader's responsibility to train others to lead. If he is t
o carry out his trust fully, the leader will devote time to training others to succeed and perhaps e
ven supercede him. Barnabas's spiritual stature is seen in his entire freedom from jealousy when his
protege Paul surpassed his own leadership skills and became the dominant member of the team. It fol
lows that a leader must provide subordinates with opportunity to exercise and develop their powers.
John R. Mott believed that leaders must multiply themselves by growing younger leaders, giving them
full play and adequate outlet for their abilities. Younger people should feel the weight of heavy bu
rdens, opportunity for initiative, and power of final decision. The younger leader
should receive generous credit for achievements. Foremost they must be trusted. Blunders are the ine
vitable price of training leaders. At a recent missionary conference, an Asian leader spoke frankly
about the role of Western missionaries: "The missionary of today in the Orient should be less a perf
ormer, and more a trainer." This may not be true in every missionary setting, but it does highlight
one of the great needs in current mission strategy. Training new leaders is a delicate task. The wis
e trainer will not advertise the end he has in view. Bishop Stephen Neill spoke of the danger of thi
s task: If we set out to produce a race of leaders, what we shall succeed in doing is probably to pr
oduce a race of restless, ambitious and discontented intellectuals. To tell a man he is called to be
a leader is the best way of ensuring his spiritual ruin, since in the Christian world ambition is m
ore deadly than any other sin, and, if yielded to, makes a man unprofitable in the ministry. The mos
t important thing today is the spiritual, rather than the intellectual, quality of those indigenous
Christians who are called to bear responsibility in the younger churches.
Lesslie Newbigin goes so far as to question whether the church ought to encourage the concept of lea
dership, so difficult it is to use without being confused with its non- Christian counterpart. The c
hurch needs saints and servants, not "leaders," and if we forget the priority of service, the entire
idea of leadership becomes dangerous. Leadership training must still follow the pattern our Lord us
ed with His twelve.1 Perhaps the most strategic and fruitful work of modern missionaries is to help
leaders of tomorrow develop their spiritual potential. This task requires careful thought, wise plan
ning, endless patience, and genuine Christian love. It cannot be haphazard, hurried, or ill conceive
d. Our Lord devoted the greater part of His three years of ministry to molding the characters and sp
irits of His disciples. Paul showed the same concern for training young Timothy and Titus. Paul's me
thod for preparing Timothy for the church in Ephesus is deeply instructive. Timothy was about twenty
years old when Paul became his friend. Timothy tended toward melancholia, and he was too tolerant a
nd partial to people of rank. He could be irritable with opponents. He was apt to rely on old spirit
ual experiences rather than kindle the flame of daily devotion. But Paul had high hopes for him. Pau
l set about to correct Timothy’s timid nature, to replace softness with steel. Paul led Timothy into
experiences and hardships that toughened his character. Paul did not hesitate to assign him tasks b
eyond his present powers. How else can a young person develop competence and confidence if not
by stretching to try the impossible?2 Traveling with Paul brought Timothy into contact with men of s
tature whose characters kindled in him a wholesome ambition. From his mentor he learned to meet triu
mphantly the crises that Paul considered routine. Paul shared with Timothy the work of preaching. Pa
ul gave him the responsibility of establishing a group of Christians at Thessalonica. Paul's exactin
g standards, high expectations, and heavy demands brought out the best in Timothy, saving him from a
life of mediocrity. Paul Rees describes the experience of Douglas Hyde, onetime communist but later
a convert to Christ, as recorded in Hyde's book, Dedication and Leadership Techniques: Easily one o
f the most fascinating stories in the book-a story connected with his Communist years-involves a you
ng man who came to Hyde and announced that he wanted to be made into a leader. "I thought," said Hyd
e, "I had never seen anyone look less like a leader in my life. He was short, grotesquely fat, with
a great, flabby, wide uninteresting face. . . . He had a cast in one eye, and spoke with a most dist
ressing stutter." What happened? Well, instead of turning
him away as a hopeless prospect, Hyde gave him a chance-a chance to study, to learn, to test his ded
ication, to smooth out his stutter. In the end he became a leader in one of the most Communist-infil
trated labour unions in Britain.3 The observant leader may discover latent talent in some quite unpr
omising people. Frank Buchman, founder of Moral Rearmament, displayed many leadership gifts. He clai
med that if he failed to train others to do his work better than he did it, he had failed. For many
years he worked to make himself dispensable, a rare agenda for a founder.4 No work is more rewarding
to a missionary than developing leaders, for the survival and health of the new churches the missio
nary plants will greatly depend on the spiritual caliber of the national Christians. Once the pionee
r stage in any field has passed, the training of leadership should take high priority. One of a miss
ionary’s main goals should be the development of faith in promising young people who can, in time, l
ead the church. Lest our training programs become too rigid and we discourage the exceptional person
from service, we must always allow room for the unusual person, the one for whom there is no mold.
God has His "irregulars," and many of them have made outstanding contributions to world evangelizati
on. Who could have poured C. T. Studd
into a mold? Such men and women cannot be measured by ordinary standards or made to conform to any f
ixed pattern. One such missionary was Douglas Thornton, who made an indelible mark among Muslims in
the Near East. He possessed rare gifts, and even as a young man did not hesitate to express opinions
that seemed radical and impractical to his superiors. His biographer records: It is hardly surprisi
ng to learn that he felt constrained to write to his society a memorandum setting forth his views on
the past, present and future of the work in Egypt. It is not a precedent that young missionaries af
ter three and a half months on the field should be invited to follow, and on this occasion, too, hea
ds were shaken. But Thornton was an exceptional man, and time has proven that his views and even his
effusions were worthy of being studied. It was never safe to neglect them. Most juniors had best re
serve their observations for a more mature season. But when the exceptional man arrives, two things
have to be observed-the man has to learn to make his observations in the right way, so as to carry h
is seniors with him; the seniors have to learn how to learn from one who is possibly able, in spite
of his
want of local knowledge, to benefit them enormously by his fresh and spontaneous ideas. Each is a di
fficult lesson.5 Leadership training cannot be done on a mass scale. It requires patient, careful in
struction and prayerful, personal guidance over a considerable time. "Disciples are not manufactured
wholesale. They are produced one by one, because someone has taken the pains to discipline, to inst
ruct and enlighten, to nurture and train one that is younger." When a person is really marked out fo
r leadership, God will see that that person receives the necessary disciplines for effective service
. When God wants to drill a man And thrill a man And skill a man, When God wants to mold a man To pl
ay the noblest part; When He yearns with all His heart To create so great and bold a man That all th
e world shall be amazed, Watch His methods, watch His ways! How He ruthlessly perfects Whom He royal
ly elects! How He hammers him and hurts him, And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which Only God understands; While his tortured heart is crying And he lift
s beseeching hands! How He bends but never breaks When his good He undertakes; How He uses whom He c
hooses And with every purpose fuses him; By every act induces him To try His splendour out- God know
s what He's about! Author unknown