Your church leadership needs proper training to grow in their roles, take on crucial responsibilities for the growth of your ministry, help you fundraise, and guide and engage church members. In this article, we discuss what to include in an effective church leadership training program and where you can find free resources to enrich it further.
Your church leaders are the face of your organization. Each leadership role holds a lot of responsibility and pressure to live up to your church’s and community’s standards. Regardless of how hard they try, church leaders are not perfect. By providing training on how to preach and teach, maintain a Godly life, and communicate with visitors, you’ll be able to build a leadership team that will take your church into the future.
In this article, we’ll share things to include in your church leadership training program and links to free resources to help you get started.
Most church pastors and ministers decide on this career path because they’re called to preach or counsel their fellow believers. Preaching and counseling are the primary roles of pastors and other church leaders, but there are several other responsibilities they have.
Running a church is no less than managing a business, and someone must take charge of building management, human resources, security, fundraising and events, and more. The larger the church, the more responsibilities there are, and the more people must be trained to help run your organization and grow your ministry.
As you prepare to train your leadership, Donorbox MinistryMatters is here to help with giving tools, features, and services, as well as plenty of church-related resources on our website. Learn more about Donorbox MinistryMatters here and read our church leadership guide.
Church leadership training will include various activities; some spiritual in nature, others will be more business related. Each activity is necessary to ensure your church runs smoothly.
Paul shares how to build the church for new Christians in 1 Corinthians, chapter 3.
Paul states that he is laying the foundation, and God’s followers can build upon it. He also includes a warning that God’s temple is his followers. If Christians don’t keep God at the center of the temple, it will fail.
Whether you include a section detailing Paul’s message or intersperse it throughout, your church must keep this framework as the basis of your leadership training.
Church leaders are the face of your church. Church members, visitors, and the larger community will look to your pastor and other leaders first. This focus is a lot of responsibility for the individual. It can also be an issue for your entire organization.
During leadership training, you must focus on how to live an ethical and holy life. It’s best to lay out rules for leadership to follow and make sure everyone is on the same page. After addressing some of the more obvious legal and ethical rules, there are a few other topics you can discuss, including:
Personal growth is complicated. When individuals are in leadership positions, they may not feel comfortable discussing internal struggles. Your church can help your pastor and other leaders of your church with internal struggles by supplying external counseling, private meetings, and support groups to help them meet your church’s expectations.
If you search online, you can find six to eleven different leadership styles, ranging from autocratic to laissez-faire. The leadership style that best fits most pastors’ personalities and organizations’ needs is the Servant Leader.
Servant leaders think about the future of the organization and do their best to address the needs of everyone in their congregation. When your church is interviewing potential pastors, you’ll want to find individuals with this leadership style, but you can also train your entire leadership staff in the importance of stewardship and the steps they can take.
Stewardship is based on the belief that leadership is temporary. Your church’s pastor is not the head of your organization, Jesus is. The strength of your church is that it will continue after your current leadership is gone. Learn more about what the bible says about Stewardship here.
You may assume you don’t have to train pastors or ministers to preach, but since preaching is their primary responsibility, they can always improve with practice.
Larger churches may also have several pastors and associate pastors. Each of these individuals may be asked to speak to the congregation on several different occasions. Including occasional teaching opportunities for your pastoral staff will help improve their preaching and provide encouragement and confidence.
As your church grows, you’ll want to involve your head pastor in this training. Head pastors are automatically looked on as an example for younger staff. Asking them to lead training on how to preach encourages their involvement and gives auxiliary pastors more interest as well.
After preaching, a significant role for your leadership staff is to welcome visitors. This training should be offered to your entire staff if possible and can include:
Donorbox offers churches a quality donor database. Online donations and donor information get automatically stored in the database. Your church can also add offline donors and donations, and update existing information. When your leadership interacts with your supporters, these communication notes can also be added to their respective profiles on Donorbox. Learn more about Donorbox Donor Management.
Donorbox also integrates with popular church management software like Planning Center and Rock RMS, an efficient church management system. These integrations allow your donor data to flow from Donorbox into your church management software so all your key info lives in one place.
Your church’s leadership staff may be paid or primarily volunteer-based. Regardless, they’ll have to work with volunteers at several points.
Your church should already have a volunteer program that ensures all events and other activities run smoothly. Your leadership can also benefit from training in how to work with these volunteers, including how to interest, educate, and provide them with feedback.
Bonus: We’ve provided an article on the different church volunteer opportunities and how to build a solid volunteer base here.
Asking for money is never fun, but it’s critical for the long-term success of your church. Traditionally, churches could survive on cash and check offerings, but those days are gone. Today, most people don’t have cash on them. Your church leadership must find ways to make it easy for parishioners to give at home, during services, and at an event.
Donorbox MinistryMatters makes fundraising a breeze for your church leadership. We offer innovative and simple-to-use products and features such as Recurring Donations, Text-to-Give, QuickDonate™, QR codes, Donorbox Live™ Kiosk, Events, Peer-to-Peer, a native integration with Rock RMS and Planning Center, and more. Our conversion-optimized tools ensure that church donations and ministry outreach are boosted to help scale your church’s growth. Here, take a look at this video –
Sign Up for Efficient Church Fundraising
As you build a training program, you’ll want to rely on various training resources that are readily available and can enrich your church leadership training. We’ve curated the below list to make this simple for you.
Life.Church has been around since 2006 and offers free sermon notes, message series, kids’ lessons, worship, and more. Churches can also sign up for their two-year sermon series by Craig Groeschel that includes verses, topics, and graphics on mental health, marriage, money and giving, and more topics that aren’t easy to discuss.
Donorbox Nonprofit Blog includes a dedicated church fundraising category that offers free articles, guides, communication templates, and management resources for church leadership. Some of our articles your leadership would highly benefit from include:
And that’s not all. You can find many other forms of useful resources on Donorbox via Donorbox Webinars, The Nonprofit Podcast, Donorbox Library, and our YouTube channel.
Carey Nieuwhof is a best-selling leadership author, speaker, podcaster, and former attorney. His podcast, blog posts, and books provide churches and individuals with support to build a Godly life.
If you’re willing to spend some money, you can also sign up for his Art of Leadership Academy for seven on-demand leadership courses.
Over the last thirty years, Mac Lake has started a church and two nonprofits and worked for a corporation. These experiences have given him expertise in building leaders for various organization types. Each of his YouTube videos provides a variety of ways to develop your church’s leadership team.
Shawn Lovejoy is a real estate developer, megachurch pastor, founder, and consultant with Courage to Lead. His website offers podcasts, courses, and coaching to implement a growth framework and increase your church’s progress. Lovejoy and his team help churches and other organizations build a quality team and create systems that help your church grow.
Vanderbloemen works with churches, schools, nonprofits, family offices, and values-based businesses. Their articles on leadership give churches ideas on everything from planning an unforgettable Easter experience to having hard conversations with your staff.
Leadership training for your church is not one-size-fits-all. The decisions your church makes must work for your leadership team, your congregation, and the future of your organization. The tips we’ve provided are a way to get started. As you determine what to include in your church’s leadership training, add Donorbox resources to enrich it further.
Donorbox MinistryMatters is a dedicated pillar, designed to help churches and ministries take their fundraising to the next level with innovative and modern tools that fit into their strategy and help keep funds flowing to the church. Learn about all our features on the website. Sign up today to start fundraising for your church.
Keep learning how to grow your church and accept more tithes and offerings on our Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a curated list of our best resources in your inbox every month.
Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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Kristine Ensor