There are so many transitions, unknowns, and moving parts when new teams launch to the field. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is a document that most missions teams have to provide clarity in the midst of those unknowns. We would define an MOU as a non-binding agreement created between two or more parties explaining how they will work together and interact with each other.

As common as MOUs are on missions teams, there’s surprisingly few examples or short articles out there to help with how to write one. But, “can you help me with how to write our team MOU?” is one of the most common questions we get from team leaders. Vision of the Possible by Daniel Sinclair is a really good book about missions teams in pioneer church planting, and has a short appendix on MOUs/VSPs that we’d recommend.

One of the agreements in our MOU was no dating in the first year. The two single guys on our initial team took that to heart… and both asked out another teammate on a date at 1 year plus 1 day. I guess they technically followed the agreement. I’m happy to report they both ended up marrying those teammates.

Why are MOUs important?

I quickly wanted to address why this document even matters and why it’s worth the time for team leaders to work through this.

1. Clear Expectations. As I mentioned above, clarity is kindness. New teammates especially are being introduced to a new country, culture, community, career all at the same time. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to interact? What is success every day? These are questions that every new goer faces in their early season on the field. As much as is possible, an MOU can lay down some basic foundations of clarity and expectations for your team. 
   
   For a new TL, it can feel overwhelming and difficult to write down all of these expectations. Write down what you know, and put down a ‘TBD’ in the categories that you’re not sure about yet! But provide as much clarity as you can in this document for your teammates, and then you won’t have to answer it in person that many more times.
   
2. Sets Team Culture and Values. An MOU is also one way you can write down and reinforce your team culture and values. What you talk about and what you do on your team will influence your team culture and values more than a document, but it still acts as a cornerstone for your team.
   
   How often will your team interact? What values do you want to have as a team? What’s your expectation on learning language? Many of these things can be expressed in an MOU.
   
3. Guidelines for Challenging Situations. Team conflict is a guarantee on missions teams, and some of it will certainly come out in the early season of a team forming. A team MOU is a good tool for outlining solutions to potentially challenging situations.
   
   In our experience, topics that result in conflict tend to be things in the ‘personal’ realm – vacations, parenting, travel, money, decision-making that infringes on what people think to be their own personal boundaries, etc. Teammates will mostly be willing to discuss things like team rhythms and ministry approaches with openness, but those ‘personal’ topics will get teams and team leaders in hot water. It’s important to write down some basic expectations and guidelines for how those things will be approached before you get into conflict.
   
4. Brief Summary for Outsiders. An MOU can be a good document to share with people in your team’s ecosystem that aren’t teammates. Church support teams, sending agencies, potential new recruits, etc. It will give them an idea of who you are, what you’re there to do, and how you want to interact.

How to Write an MOU

Some tips: don’t worry about perfecting the language. It’s not a legal document. This was a huge roadblock for me in trying to ‘wordsmith’ the MOU into being really professional or airtight. That’s not the purpose – write in common language that your team can understand easily and discuss.

Think of your first draft as just that – a draft. It’s not something the TL writes and then the team just agrees and signs. You want the first draft to be something your team can discuss and then incorporate their feedback into the MOU. It’s an agreement you enter into with each other, not a contract between you and your team members.

Here’s our step-by-step guide for how to write an MOU for your team.

1. Consider the requirements from your sending agency or church. If they already have staff handbooks, you don’t (and shouldn’t) need to rewrite everything that is already in there as all your staff have to adhere to that handbook anyway. If there’s additional aspects that aren’t outlined in the staff handbook, then go ahead and include that in your team MOU.

2. Consider what categories you want included in your MOU. This isn’t exhaustive, but below we’ve outlined some potential MOU categories into “core” which we’d recommend most MOUs have, and “optional” which could be added on a team-by-team basis.

Core Categories

• Purpose of this Document
• Vision and Mission Statements
• Strategy Summary / Ministry Distinctives – short summary that should refer to a Vision and Strategy Paper (VSP) or Strategy Plan
• Team and Leadership Structure – potentially including decisions that the leader reserves the right to have the final say
• Process and Requirements to Join the Team – if your staff handbook already has this, only add the parts that are unique to your team
• Preparation and Language Learning – pre-field requirements, commitment to language learning, hours and timeframe, approach
• Decision Making Process – general description of how decisions are made, potentially can cover decisions that will be by vote, consensus, consultation, and command
• Conflict Resolution
• Vacations, Home Assignments (HMA), and Travel
• Communication and Reporting
• Crises and Emergencies – basic overview that should refer to a Crisis and Contingency Plan document
• Restrictions and Recommendations – including security considerations
• How Future Changes to this MOU Can Be Made

Optional Categories

• Core Team Values
• Philosophy of Ministry
• Accountability Groups
• Expectations of the First 2 Years
• Job Descriptions and Team Roles
• Partnerships with Local Churches and Believers
• Contextualization
• Statement of Faith / Theological Distinctives
• Family / Children / Parenting – becomes very important if there are children on the team, but not necessarily beforehand
• Team Life and Lifestyle – general guidelines about team life and lifestyle
• Dating and Relationships
• Team Funds – running a team will include expenses; it’s easier to pull a regular amount from each unit and be support raised before launching to the field than to figure out finances for every gathering
• Visas / Identity

3. Read other example MOUs. Contact the other TLs that you know, or ask your sending agency for examples if they can provide them. Add categories that you might be missing.

4. Write down quick points of what you know in each category. Feel free to just copy and paste whole sections from other MOUs if it says what you want. If you’re not sure, write down ‘TBD’ or the questions you need answered in that section.

5. Let your draft sit for a while and have some informal conversations with your team or other advisors on the topics you have not yet filled in or need questions answered.

6. Take your last pass through filling out the MOU with coherent language and incorporating the feedback you’ve heard.

7. Bring your MOU draft to your teammates during a team meeting and read through it, asking for their feedback. Again it may be good to explain the purpose of the MOU is for mutual agreement, not to be ironclad against all situations or to be wielded against one another as a ‘gotcha.’

8. Incorporate your teammates’ feedback as best you can. Bring it back to them for final review. Have everyone sign and date their agreement with the MOU. Our recommendation is for new teams to set a 1-year evaluation period for the MOU because there are so many things you don’t know yet and may need to change. You could possibly edit the MOU earlier than that if needed. With future teammates, it will most likely be that they are joining an established team and simply need to read it, ask any clarifying questions, and sign it. But with your initial team (if you have one), it’s good to solicit feedback in the MOU’s creation.

9. Update the MOU as needed. Our recommendation is when there are significant team transitions – from language to ministry season, when teammates start having children, moving cities, changing platforms, changing ministry approaches – it’s a good idea to take a brief look at the MOU and see if everything still aligns or if anything needs to be added. 

Attached is an example of our original team’s MOU with some of the specifics removed, just so you can have a place to start. We have other team MOU’s that we can share as well. If you want some other example MOUs, want some guidance on how to write your MOU, or just someone to review your current MOU, please reach out at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d be happy to help you!

Remember, as a team leader, your role is to serve your team members and help them to thrive and stay on task. Bringing clarity to some major categories through an MOU is one way you can serve them. The goal isn’t to be directive or controlling – a pushback you may receive – but to provide guardrails for your team members so they can move forward through all the unknowns.

Feel free to also directly subscribe to the Dare to Multiply Podcast on whatever application you use for podcast listening!

In this episode, Jenn is introduced as a co-host for Dare to Multiply and gives practical advice around leading teams toward a multiplication vision.

Our first year on the field we established a rhythm of monthly team fellowships. At these fellowship times that Steven and I led, we ate together, worshipped together, and did a quick Bible study. Usually people stuck around afterwards to play board games. Seems simple enough, right?

Except that everybody had a problem with team fellowship. Some didn’t like the food. Some didn’t want to do Bible study. Some wanted more Bible study. Others said – why are we playing games when people are dying without the gospel?! Some didn’t like the game choices. With a team of 13 all storming and adjusting to a new context, there was always someone unhappy. It was frustrating that such a simple thing meant to help our team bond and fellowship was such a source of conflict and disagreement.

Fast forward 5 years to our last team retreat before we expanded into 3 teams and moved to different locations. Every part of this retreat was delegated and divvied up among the team members. Some led worship, and others facilitated prayer times. Our “fun” teammates coordinated a kickball tournament and a coffee tasting activity. Some teammates gifted at administration helped coordinate all the logistics, our teaching-gifted teammates led Bible study parts, and other shepherding-gifted teammates facilitated a time for celebration and remembrance. Steven and I kept the part that we were good at – vision casting for the future – but almost every other part of the retreat was owned and executed by our other teammates. It’s one of our most memorable, enjoyable, and fun times that we’ve had with our team. We left feeling renewed and refocused on the vision. What changed?

I believe that one of the significant reasons for the change in this team retreat, and in the thriving and multiplication of our team, was the valuing and empowering of each person’s spiritual gifts to edify the body. By delegating each part of the retreat to those that were gifted to lead it, each person had more ownership and had the opportunity to exercise their gifts. Steven and I are not fun, we can’t lead worship, we’re bad at logistics, and we’re bad at celebration. Our other teammates are not just good at these things, but gifted by the Spirit to serve others in these ways. And in seeing all the parts of the body use their gifts, our team was able to look more like the body of Christ.

Why Spiritual Gifts Matter on Teams

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many…

1 Corinthians 12:12-14

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out some foundational truths about spiritual gifts and how we are to view the giftings in both ourselves and other people. Despite a variety of giftings, believers are one in Christ and are part of one body made of many parts. Contrary to our instincts, diversity of giftings in the body of Christ should lend itself to greater unity and mutual love and concern for one another! And when we display this type of unity on our teams, we present a powerful witness and example of Christ to the world.

Later in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul instructs the early church to seek or to “…try to excel in [spiritual gifts] that build up the church.” For many goers, moving overseas means surrendering many of the spiritual inputs that we consistently used to rely on. Our teams often become our greatest venue for spiritual development and community, and may even become the closest expression we have for church. If gifts are for the edification of the body (Ephesians 4:12-13) and Paul encourages us to seek gifts that build up the church, which is the body of Christ, then we should regularly be using our gifts in our team life.

Using Spiritual Gifts for Team Life

In the last post, Steven already mentioned how different giftings serve and supplement one another in the work of ministry and pioneering. Similarly, when spiritual gifts are turned toward edifying the body, team life can become a source of vibrant community, encouragement, and development.  

Here are some examples of different ways spiritual gifts can be harnessed on a team: 

• Helps and hospitality – A common experience for all goers is tiredness or weariness. We can often feel physically, mentally, and spiritually drained as we pour out for the people we are trying to serve. While our teammates with service oriented giftings like helps or hospitality may not be “front of room” types of people, they are supernaturally able to sense who is discouraged or is feeling need, and meet that need. Those gifted in hospitality have the unique ability to create a space where all feel welcomed, rested, and served. 
  
  I am not gifted in these types of service oriented giftings. On our team, we regularly hosted team fellowships, events, meetings, and gatherings. It feels silly to say that these were some of the times I felt most anxious or drained. Was everyone enjoying themselves? Is the house clean enough? Will I have energy to clean afterwards? But by God’s grace, many of our teammates were gifted these ways. Without being asked, they would come early and stay late to help with cleaning. On hard days, they would ask the incredibly loving question of, “is there anything I can do for you?” And then follow through on what I said! Those with hospitality giftings would take ownership in hosting, leading games, welcoming guests, creating festive settings for holidays, and coordinating logistics. 
  
• Shepherding / Encouragement – Ministry overseas is often compared to a crucible – hurts, suffering, crises, failure, and discouragement create a constant pressure that bears down on a goer. In this type of environment, wounds can fester and turn into bitterness, crises can turn into long-term trauma, temptation toward sin increases, and it can feel very easy to give up. Shepherds are drawn to people who are hurting and long to see the people of God cared for, restored, and healed. Encouragers, similarly, find joy in speaking uplifting words and truths to help others grow and to keep going in the work. They help those in the crucible of overseas missions find 1 Peter 1:7 type success, the testing and refining of their faith that is revealed to be more precious than gold. Roles that a shepherd or encourager can take include facilitating personal development plans, transition or term debriefing, providing care for teammates, consulting with team leaders about the needs on the team, or (if trained) counseling. 

• Administration / Government – Administrative types excel in things like project and systems management and often serve as foils to open-ended idealists. They are the ones asking, “how are we going to get this done?” Those with administrative giftings are able to understand and manage details, often freeing up leaders from having to think about these things.
  
  Though we can do them, working on logistics and details are not mine or Steven’s strength. Before launching, we invited a couple to join our team specifically for the sake of helping carry the administrative and logistical load. In watching them work, I quickly realized that the power of the Holy Spirit can turn administrative tasks into as supernatural a work as miracles or healings. In their first year on the field, this couple had identified and secured health insurance for our entire team (and later, the organization!) and created and managed our visa platform! They uniquely sharpened Steven and myself, helping us to clarify our often abstract ideas and put things into writing for the benefit of current and future teammates, other workers, and national partners.

• Teaching, Knowledge, Wisdom, Exhortation – Sanctification and growing in holiness is a lifelong process. Those with teaching gifts are able to explain, instruct, and expose biblical truth in understandable ways for other believers. Similarly, the Holy Spirit moves through those gifted in knowledge, wisdom, and exhortation to be able to speak His heart towards certain people at specific times. Teammates with these giftings can be called upon to help develop and instruct other members of the team through things like leading Bible studies, discussions on topics pertaining to ministry, or facilitating worship and prayer times that create space for hearing the Holy Spirit.

Teaming is a Means of Grace

“Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-man as a help to remain humble before God. It is by the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit that God reveals Christ fully in you.”

Andrew Murray, Humility

There is a reason that almost every passage on spiritual gifts is accompanied by instruction towards love and unity. Learning to work with and live in community with people who are different from us is difficult! In our flesh, we like to be right. Our different giftings will cause us to perceive the same situation from completely different perspectives. A shepherd gifted person might view an evangelist as flighty and inconsistent with new believers. A prophetic leader might prioritize speaking truth over caring for the heart. And yet, the picture of 1 Corinthians 12 is that this one body NEEDS all the parts. 

Spiritual gifts are gifts given and allotted by the Holy Spirit. They are gifts that we did not earn. Instead of fixating on differences, we are commanded to be humble and realize what we don’t have so that we can appreciate others with the giftings that we lack. Andrew Murray, in his book Humility, teaches that we should see other believers, especially the ones that vex us, as a means of grace to grow in our character. In this type of community, we are developed into Christ-likeness. This friction with our teammates develops humility, servant-heartedness, and surrender. And as we grow in Christ-like character, we are able to persevere in the work and bear fruit of the spirit along with ministry fruit!

Implications for Leaders

For leaders, knowing about spiritual gifts is critically important not just for yourself but also for those that you lead. 

Many times as leaders we fall into the trap of thinking that we need to carry everything ourselves. We need to lead the ministry, lead and develop a team, solve every conflict, handle every administrative task, and interact with organizational responsibilities. All the while maintaining our own personal abiding, rhythms, and responsibilities to family and friends. Being the answer to everything is a dangerous rut to fall into, and often speeds leaders along a path to burnout. 

Instead of doing it all, we recommend leading out of your giftings while proactively building a team around you, along with structures and rhythms, to supplement your weaknesses. As a leader you will still need a base level of competency in your weaknesses, but having a team with complementary gifts means that you won’t have to forever lead out of your weaknesses alone.

Recruit the Gifts That You Need

Knowledge of our own spiritual gifts helps us understand what kind of leader we are. For example, I am gifted in evangelism and prophecy. The strengths I bring into a team are a focus on the lost and in offering feedback and development to teammates. However, what I lack is shepherding and administrative giftings. With that knowledge in hand, I can keep my mind focused on finding shepherds and administrators while recruiting. For some reason, in our initial team of 13, not a single person had a shepherd gifting! And we saw that while our team excelled in strategy and personal development, we needed help in areas of healing from trauma, debriefing, and care. In those cases, we looked for outside sources – counselors, mentors from our church at home, and professionals – who could help supplement the lack. 

A simple grid you can use is from Ephesians 4:11:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Ephesians 4:11

Generally, leaders in the apostolic / prophetic / evangelist camp will tend to be more outward and ministry-focused. Shepherds and teachers conversely will focus more on inward care and development. As you consider your own giftings and leadership style, where do you feel like you need help? What kind of co-leader, subteam leader, or teammate could you recruit to balance out your own giftings?

Honor All the Parts

For those of us who have more visible spiritual gifts that seem more applicable for direct ministry work, it can be tempting to judge or disparage lesser seen giftings. Gifts like helps, hospitality, giving, shepherding, and administration are often most comfortably utilized behind the scenes as supportive roles. Although people with these types of giftings are not “flashy”, the Bible has a special word about them. 

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor…

1 Corinthians 12:21-23

Paul calls these types of people indispensable to the body and deserving of even greater honor! If not for the faithful servant-types on our teams, our team would never have been able to become a safe space where true and authentic community could form. They set an example of selflessness that is truly Christlike and something to be emulated by all.

As much as you can, cultivate a heart and a team culture that proactively celebrates these humble servants. Speak well of their deeds to others on the team, have celebrations to thank them for their unique contributions, and create space for their voices and perspectives.

Developing Your Team

As you recruit people with different types of spiritual gifts onto your team, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your team is suddenly rounded out. Spiritual gifts are not static things. We are encouraged to practice our giftings and develop them. As leaders, one of our main jobs is to develop the people on our team, both in character and skill. Here are some suggestions for ways you can start developing your team in spiritual gifts.

• Create Opportunities for Exploration – Many of our teammates may have landed on the field without explicit knowledge of or confidence in their spiritual gifts. While assessments can be helpful, teammates may lack the experience in ministry to really answer assessment questions with confidence. After language learning and acculturation, create opportunities for your teammates to explore different types of ministry activities and debrief them regularly. This debrief could include reporting on outward disciple-making ministry, but also potentially about roles within the team. What activities did you most enjoy? Where did you feel energized? Where did you feel discouraged? What is something you uniquely could contribute to the team?
  
  As your teammates dip their toes into these opportunities, it may become obvious what they feel supernaturally empowered to do and where they begin to see supernatural fruitfulness.

• Create Personal Development Plans – As your teammates begin to identify and practice their spiritual gifts, help them to form development plans that will help them to grow in their gifts. The goal is to create a consistent habit or practice that can be tracked over time, and to introduce helpful resources. What are Bible passages, books, mentors with the same gifting, podcasts, etc. that can be used to help supplement your teammate’s growth? We go more into detail on how to create personal development plans here.

• Develop Roles – Finally, we found that our teammates most thrived when they were able to work out of their giftings in the ministry. A task that one person finds taxing might be another teammate’s greatest joy to do! As much as you can, without sacrificing what is necessary for each person to do for the team to effectively pursue its ministry vision, try to work with your teammate to create a job description that fits them and the needs of the ministry best.
  
  In order to figure out everyone’s ideal roles, we had our team run through an activity. Every teammate wrote down on post-it notes every task they did in their role. After writing everything down, we then asked them to categorize each activity/task into “I love to do this”, “I could take it or leave it”, and “I would rather not do this”. Then we compared notes and, for areas where it made sense, divided up responsibilities based on who had giftings for those tasks.
  
  Obviously, some things like maintaining communication with your supporters or language study cannot be passed off, but it can be revealing to see where you can build more synergy on your team according to giftings! For example, leaders on our team tended to dislike logistical work or hosting, and this responsibility was easily given to those who were more service or administrative oriented.
  
  This activity also helped us understand where we could team up people with different giftings. Evangelists struggled with followup and deep discipleship of new believers, while those with more teaching bent were drawn to those types of tasks. Naturally, it made sense to pair them up to have the people-gatherer and the deep relationship builder work together!

Perseverance is a Team Game

Teams can be a pain. And so, the Holy Spirit, out of His great mercy and love, gives us supernaturally empowered spiritual gifts not just to accelerate the ministry, but to edify and strengthen our teams. And these teams are where we can find the deep community, mutual sharpening and development, and encouragement we so desperately need in a ministry so far from home.

In the ten years that our team has existed, we have been afflicted and tested by sicknesses, criticisms, conflicts, and seemingly unending crises. And yet, most of our original teammates have remained on the field and are still faithfully pursuing the vision. People have asked us – why do you think so many of your team are still on the field? The first answer is purely because of God’s grace to sustain us. But the second reason might just be that having a strong community that loves each other and has each other’s back in any situation could be the critical component that has kept most of us on the field. Perseverance can be a team game, where we help one another as different parts of the same body to complete the vision that God has given to us!

Reflection Questions

• How are you feeling about team life? Why? 
• What do you hope team life on your team could look like? What needs to happen to reach that ideal? 
• How do your spiritual gifts affect how you lead your team? 
• Are you seeing teammates contribute their spiritual gifts to team life? Why or why not?  
• What are the spiritual gifts of those you lead? Where do they need to be developed in their giftings? Are they in a role that activates and allows them to live out of their giftings?

In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field.

As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our eyes to spiritual realities. It also made us begin to seek out the Holy Spirit and learn about spiritual gifts. As we discerned our calling to go and sought out development and preparation before launching, this category of the Holy Spirit (listening prayer, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare) was a blind spot for us. As we heard stories from movement practitioners on the field, they shared about healings, demons being cast out, Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and supernatural usage of spiritual gifts. We studied Acts and saw miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of the gospel.

It made us ask the question – how come these supernatural acts seem so prevalent on the mission field but feel so rare in our home context? And, if these things are happening and are critical to the work, what can we do to learn about the gifts and access them?

Part of the answer has to do with our own cultural and theological perspectives about the spiritual world, what Paul Hiebert calls The Excluded Middle. Another reason is that we simply are more self-reliant on our ‘natural’ skills and giftings rather than the Spirit’s power when we are in our own comfortable culture. Laboring cross-culturally can humble you quickly and turn you towards looking for power beyond yourself.

The truth is that we need the Spirit’s power for supernatural impact just as much at home as we do on the mission field – it just isn’t as apparent to us. But the field has a unique way to draw out the reality of our need for the Spirit’s power.

The Missions Field is a Pioneering Environment.

Floyd McClung coined the term ‘apostolic passion,’ which he defines as “a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations.” It’s drawn from Paul’s ‘ambition’ in Romans 15:

“And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

– Romans 15:20-21

I think many, if not most, cross-cultural workers have this apostolic passion. We not only desire to see Jesus worshipped among the nations, but have what McClung calls the apostolic abandonment and focus to give our lives and time and efforts towards making disciples among the unreached.

Those with apostolic passion will go to start new work among people and places where Jesus is not yet known. These missions fields are what I would call pioneering environments, where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers needed to reach a people or place do not yet exist. As such, pursuing disciple-making and church planting in a pioneering environment requires different approaches than in reached areas, including increased innovation, more flexible methodology, a higher rate of experimentation and failing forward, and more agile teams that can adjust quickly to change.

But above everything, pioneering environments require spiritual breakthrough.

The Pioneering Environment Requires Spiritual Breakthrough, Including Spiritual Gifts.

And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

– Mark 16:20

As much as I believe that strategic and innovative approaches can be helpful in starting movements, too often we see cross-cultural workers put their hope in their strategies and tools rather than in the Spirit’s power. These unreached communities have been resistant to the gospel for potentially hundreds of years, and there are too many cultural, religious, historical, and most of all spiritual barriers to the gospel in these pioneering environments for human ability to make a dent. Even the perfect persuasive evangelism tool has no power to change the heart of someone who lives in darkness. Seeing people among the unreached repent and believe the gospel requires the Spirit to move in power!

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Throughout the New Testament, we see signs, wonders, gifts, and power coincide with the proclamation of the gospel in the mission field, whether through Jesus himself (Matthew 9:35), in the disciples (Luke 10:19), or through the early believers in Acts (Acts 14:3).

These spiritual realities of warfare that faced the early church should inform how we approach the pioneering environments that we are in! For every hour of planning, how many do we give to prayer? For every resource we develop, how much do we focus on receiving and using the Spirit’s power and gifts? Do our approaches even allow for “divine power to destroy strongholds,” or are they weapons of the flesh and human wisdom? These are questions that I need to ask myself often!

If we can see the battle is spiritual, just as Elisha’s servant had his eyes opened (2 Kings 6:17), the good news is that the “weapons of our warfare” are already promised and given. I love that in every one of the Great Commission passages, power is promised to accompany the commission to make disciples and preach the gospel. One significant aspect of this power is through the spiritual gifts that each believer is given.

We should expect, depend on, and regularly use the gifts of the Spirit in the work of pioneering movements.

Our Thai partners greatly outpace us in this category. Their primary method of entering new communities is by praying for needs. We train and practice praying for people with a simple prayer, and then see if God moves and opens their hearts to hear more about Jesus. Often, people request prayer for physical ailments and illnesses.

Early on in our partnership with Mint, we went with her to visit one new believer’s house that was 40 minutes down a dirt road. After going through a new believer lesson with the new believer Sarah, she introduced us to her mom. Sarah told us that her mom hadn’t been able to stand or walk for several months, and a doctor told them that she would likely never walk again because of severe osteoporosis. Together with Mint, we gathered to pray for Sarah’s mom. Nothing happened. We said our goodbyes and Mint told Sarah that she would come back next week to go through more discipleship lessons.

A week later, Mint and her team went back to Sarah’s house. And they prayed again for Sarah’s mom.

And Sarah’s mom stood up and walked down the stairs for the first time in months.

The next week, she walked into the nearby creek to be baptized by her daughter.

As more and more disciple-makers were trained to engage the harvest, reports of healings, miracles, and salvations began coming in weekly. 

• One new believer was beaten by her husband so severely that her right eye swelled and she was blinded in that eye. She came to the local house church and had the believers pray for her. The next day, she woke up, and the swollenness was gone and she could see! 
• In another province, a new believer discovered he had the gift of healing and met a sick woman while selling bus tickets. After praying for her, she invited him to her nearby village where he healed an entire group of elderly ladies and started a new group! 
• Another new believer was in the hospital and prayed for a person in the bed next to them that had stopped breathing and was declared dead – and they came back to life! 
• At one training, we heard one leader yelling “Go out! Go out!” into the phone which is the same word in Thai as the go in “go and make disciples” from Matthew 28, so we thought he was training. But one new believer was working on a rubber farm and a coworker put on an amulet and became possessed by an evil spirit. She didn’t know how to cast it out so she called this leader to cast it out over the phone!

Over the past 7 years of partnering with this network of church planters, we’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of answered prayer stories like these, and probably have missed hundreds more. We start almost every meeting or training with the question – is there anything you would like to praise God for? And stories begin flowing out. One of my favorites is where one new believer prayed for rain on their farm, and the storm poured out rain just on their land and stopped exactly at the border between their farm and their neighbor’s!

These types of supernatural breakthroughs are common and normative in movements, like those in the book of Acts. When normal, faithful disciples (and almost all of the above stories are from new believers) are released to operate in power, God shows up! Are we expectant of these things? Are we asking the Spirit for them?

Though All Gifts Are Useful, Certain Gifts Are Particularly Helpful in the Pioneering Environment.

Certain spiritual gifts are particularly useful in pioneering ministry work, and others are more useful for building up the body in the context of a local church or mission team.

To give some examples:

• Healing and Miracles – We see this as a standard aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world. Accompanied with the proclamation of the gospel are signs and wonders like healing and miracles. The several stories from the previous section are examples of what it can look like!
  
• Evangelism – Obviously, evangelism gifts are valuable to pioneering environments! All believers should share the gospel regularly regardless of gifting, and, those gifted in evangelism should use it frequently! People with an evangelistic gift just seem to very easily connect with people, and can have more effectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ.
  
  Before we launched as a team to Thailand, we tried to live out disciple-making rhythms in preparation for overseas work. Out of our team of 12, one teammate who was evangelism gifted had led more people to Christ than the rest of our team combined! We will talk more about Ephesians 4 later, but evangelism-gifted leaders shouldn’t only exercise their gift in sharing the gospel, but need to use their gift to equip others to share.

• Teaching / Training – At first glance, it’d seem that teaching would be a gift more appropriate for within the local church. But for teams trying to start movements with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach, catalyzing near culture believers to share the gospel means there’s a lot of training! It means that those with a teaching gift who are able to handle the Word simply and equip near or in-culture believers to share the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches is extremely valuable! Also, teaching gifts can be crucial in developing simple, reproducible, biblical curriculum that can be used in new multiplying works.

• Helps – Another gift that seems like it would be more suited to within the local church is helps. But a Be Barnabas approach means that the National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) leader is the “Paul” that God has chosen to pioneer new ministry among their people, and our role as outsider is to serve and support that leader. If we want to Be Barnabas, it requires a humbling of ourselves to serve that leader, and those with the gift of helps will be particularly suited to caring for, supporting, and providing whatever is needed for that NAV leader to thrive and multiply.
  
  One of our teammates gifted in helps walked alongside a local believer who was going through burnout. That believer wasn’t implementing movement practice or actively making disciples, so Jenn and I questioned if that was really the best use of that teammate’s time. But after helping this Thai friend take a sabbatical, this local believer came back and said – I want to devote my time to multiplying disciples! – and has recently started a number of new groups! As people not gifted in helps, we saw that time investment as questionable, but to our teammate, she was drawn to serve through her gifting. That’s why it’s critical that all the gifts have an opportunity to participate in the Great Commission! Side note – this is why we love the Be Barnabas approach! The apostolic and evangelist will clearly have value in supporting the NAV’s ministry, but so do the teachers, shepherds, and helpers in a very different and much needed way!

We Should Have the Ability to Identify and Develop Spiritual Gifts In Our National Partners.

Lastly, it’s critical that we have studied, practiced, and developed our own gifts and gifts in others so that we can identify and develop spiritual giftings in our national partners. When we’re looking for a “Paul”-type national partner who can catalyze movements, part of that is looking for a specific type of gifting. It’s in the name – a National Apostolic Visionary leader. We break down some of that in our article about what a NAV is. We’ll also have a future post further exploring the word “apostolic” including the apostolic gifting.

Although we have a certain eye out for apostolic leaders, we should also partner with local believers that have other giftings. Anyone who is ready to be obedient to the Great Commission to share the gospel and make disciples is worth investing in! At the end of the day, the goal is to multiply healthy churches, and that requires all of the gifts, though different gifts might be emphasized at different phases of ministry. For example, apostolic and evangelistic gifts might be most helpful in pioneering in a new area to win people to faith. But as churches grow, gifts like pastor/shepherding and teaching will need to be emphasized. As issues needing correction come up in the church, giftings like exhortation and prophecy will need to be elevated.

Do we know what the Word says about each of these giftings? Are we able to identify them in emerging leaders? Do we know how to develop these giftings and encourage local partners to use them to advance the work of multiplying churches?

In our next post, we’ll explore how different spiritual gifts can help edify the body, either in the local church context or on missions teams. Below are some questions for reflection about spiritual gifts and the missions field.

Reflection Questions

• Are you expectant for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and in your ministry? Why or why not?
• Have you seen the Holy Spirit’s power working actively in your ministry? In what situations, experiences, or people have you seen this most clearly?
• Are you, your teammates, and your national partners regularly using spiritual gifts in ministry? Why or why not? Where do you, your teammates, or national partners need greater development in this topic?
• How could God specifically use your spiritual gifts to move your ministry forward?

This is one of the lessons that God has impressed on our hearts over the last decade of ministry on the field. Scripture tells us that apart from abiding in Christ we can do nothing, but our pride, our selves still default to being self-dependent in trying to achieve success in ministry. For some reason, we think that our intelligence, hard work, strategies, and skills can make a dent in winning entire people groups that have been resistant to the gospel for 2000 years. It’s ludicrous!

The nature of the work of disciple-making and church planting among the unreached is spiritual! Meaning, it is not a physical or mental problem – for people to turn from darkness into light, for the Enemy to be pushed back, for believers to obey the Great Commission – it requires the Holy Spirit to move! We cannot do a supernatural, spiritual work without supernatural, spiritual power. The good news is that we have been promised and given this power!

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Acts 1:8

How much clearer can it be? Now the question is – will we by faith receive this power? Do we know how to receive this power?

In this series of posts, we’re going to address what we’ve learned about spiritual gifts and missions – on missions teams, in missions work, and an overview of the term ‘apostolic.’ It’s a critical topic that we feel many cross-cultural workers are under-experienced in, especially when  they come from theologically conservative backgrounds. But it’s one of the questions that comes up the most when cross-cultural workers come to the field because of the prevalence of the spiritual world in different cultures and the necessity for guidance and empowerment from the Holy Spirit in an impossibly difficult work.

Our posts on spiritual warfare address why cross-cultural workers can be generally unaware of spiritual realities. Spiritual realities for goers can cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare, and listening prayer.

What Are Spiritual Gifts?

Type in ‘spiritual gifts’ in google and you’ll be inundated with spiritual gifts inventories and articles breaking down each gift. It’s almost too much information! The blog posts we’re writing aren’t trying to be an exhaustive study around spiritual gifts but more so how spiritual gifts are applied in the missions field and on missions teams. However, we’ll give a quick definition and some key points so that we can be clear about what we mean for the sake of application.

“A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.” – Wayne Grudem

Our best suggestion in understanding spiritual gifts is to study what the Word says about gifts as there are several key passages about them! I think we can get overly fixated on ‘what is my gift,’ which is important, but miss the general purpose and essence of why gifts are given. Here are some of the key passages concerning gifts, and at the bottom of the post we’ll give a few resources that have been helpful to us in understanding gifts.

• 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
• Romans 12:3-8
• 1 Peter 4:7-11
• Ephesians 4:11-16
• 1 Timothy 4:14-16
• 2 Timothy 1:6-7
• Exodus 31:1-11
• Acts 2:1-21
• Acts 6:1-7
• Hebrews 2:4
• Matthew 25:14-30

From our study of these passages and in practical usage, here’s what we would conclude about spiritual gifts:

1. Every believer is given at least one gift from the Holy Spirit, but you can have more than one.

Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that each person is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This means that our question is not, “do we have a gift?” But, “what gift have I been given and how should I use it?”

A gift has been given explicitly by the Holy Spirit to you! We can and should desire other gifts (1 Cor. 13:31) but it’s also critical for us to be content with the gift we’ve been given because it means the Spirit has good works prepared for us to do with that gift! It means that He has a vital role for you in the body of Christ to play. Don’t ignore the gifts you have been given!

In terms of having more than one, even in Paul’s breakdown of tongues and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14, he basically admits to having at least both of those gifts. Robert Clinton concludes that leaders in particular are given a cluster of giftings, where a core leadership gift is supported by other supplementary gifts (e.g. a faith gifting to accompany a missionary gifting, or an exhortation gifting to support a prophetic gift). One of our mentors, Char, also notes that gifts can potentially change according to the season of life or ministry assignment that you are in, and the Holy Spirit equips you for those new works appropriately.

2. We know we are operating in our giftings when we sense supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness.

We learned this key point from Matt Carter’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. He shares his own story about how he identified that his spiritual gift was prophecy exercised through preaching. For him, most ministry activities were draining, but his first time preaching he felt empowered and energized. Not only that, people were impacted by his preaching and there were supernatural results.

We’ve seen these two aspects of supernatural empowerment and supernatural fruitfulness affirmed over and over again in our own discovery of our gifts and helping others to find their gifts. Some people describe the empowerment aspect almost like an ‘out-of-body’ experience, where the Spirit is the one speaking, moving, acting through them and they are simply being used by him.

For me, I started to discover that I had a teaching / training gift in college. Soon after I started following Jesus, I began to volunteer at our old church’s youth group. I had just learned about Inductive Bible Study and how the Word had so much to offer when we are willing to dig deep and learn. I would facilitate a Saturday night IBS with a bunch of high schoolers that would go for 2+ hours. If you’ve ever been in youth ministry, you’ll know that getting the attention of high schoolers is like herding cats. Their attention span, even before iPhones, usually lasted about 20 seconds.

But the Spirit impacted our time in such a way that we had all these easily distracted teenagers deeply studying the Word, with earnestness, curiosity, and passion. It would get to the point where their parents would be there to pick them up and they would shoo them away or ask for more time so they could get to the end of the Bible study for that day. For me, I would receive so much energy and excitement, and as a person who normally wasn’t great at public speaking, I would feel the Spirit give me not only the words but the passion and wisdom to say the right things in the right moment.

I started to say yes to more opportunities to teach and train, and ended up leading our campus ministry’s weekly large group gathering of 300 students during my senior year, which required giving some kind of teaching at least 2 out of every 4 weeks. I repeatedly saw a pattern of the Holy Spirit empowering me with the right words, energy, and authority during opportunities to speak, and by God’s grace, saw the supernatural fruit of people being impacted by the things the Spirit was speaking through me. That has continued even to our time on the field, even being empowered to teach and train in another language! My Thai language ability is 10 times worse when I’m in normal conversation compared to when I train, which is normally the opposite for most people. That is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit!

3. Spiritual gifts are not to be used for personal pride, but to serve others in a spirit of unity.

Repeatedly throughout these passages about gifts, there is an emphasis on humility, serving, and unity in one body. It’s like the writers know there is a potential for the Enemy and our pride to twist this wonderful gift from the Holy Spirit into opportunities for comparison and dissension. Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

The point of this post is that the gifts given by the Spirit are wonderful and should be used with joy. But there’s a dangerous line when we start to be identified by our gifts instead of identifying with Christ. On his teaching about gifts, Paul emphasizes unity in the body of Christ and then inserts a teaching on love right in the middle with 1 Corinthians 13. We often use this at weddings because it sounds good, but it’s a teaching given in the context of unity in the body among diversity in the gifts. In some ways, it’s the litmus test of if we are using the gift correctly: patiently, kindly, not envying or boasting, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way, not irritable or resentful.

When we say, I have a certain gift and therefore shouldn’t waste my time on menial serving tasks, we’ve missed the point.

When we say, our doctrine and beliefs about how we should use the gifts is different from that group so we can no longer fellowship or work together, we’ve missed the point.

Whenever we are elevating our gifts and our preference over the oneness we have in Jesus, over unity in the body, over love that serves others – we’ve missed the point.

If we are approaching the gifts appropriately, it should create immense humility in us. Firstly, because the gift is not your own – it’s literally given by the Holy Spirit! When you’re using your gifts, God is the one to be glorified, not us! And secondly, knowing that we have a gift but not all the gifts means that we need other members in the body. If the church is working correctly, all the different members of the body should be operating in their gifts together to make the body grow!

…from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:16

4. The purpose of the gifts is for the edification of the church and expansion of the Kingdom.

Lastly, the second litmus test of our usage of the gifts is whether or not it’s being used for others. The gifts were not given to edify ourselves, but to “strive to excel in building up the church” (1 Cor. 14:12), for “the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), for “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), and “to be witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We are given so much by Jesus for our own growth and edification. We are given the free gift of salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, we are given the Spirit to be comforter and helper, we are given the Word to guide our steps into daily obedience, we are given the community of believers to receive encouragement and love. But the gifts are not given for our own growth or desires. The gifts are given to be others-focused.

It can be exciting and make us feel special that we’ve been chosen specially to be given a gift! And we should joyfully receive it and be thankful to use it! But Paul gives a warning in 1 Corinthians 14 against using the gift to “build up” ourselves. He specifically calls out tongues, that it needs to be paired with interpretation so that it is beneficial for others around them. Not coincidentally, tongues remains one of the more controversial gifts in the current day.

Use your gift to serve others in the church or to bring others into the Kingdom!

Application

Now we have some clarity around spiritual gifts – you have at least one, it is accompanied with supernatural empowerment and fruitfulness, it is not for pride but for serving in unity, and gifts are meant to edify the church or expand the Kingdom. What next?

Gifts need to be identified, practiced, and developed.

Identify your Gifting

The first step in identifying is knowing what the gifts are. Study the passages in the list above! Certain resources can give you an idea of what a certain gift looks like – we recommend Robert Clinton’s resource “Understanding our Giftedness Set.” Inventories and surveys like this can help but only as a way to understand what you’ve experienced in ministry that you’ve already done.

Secondly, serve in a lot of different types of ministries! Whether at your local church, on a disciple-making team, or on a field missions team, volunteer and initiate to serve in multiple ways. As you try different things, be on the lookout for where you feel supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness. Do ministry in team and community so that others can give you feedback about where they see your gift!

Lastly, identify by praying, asking, and listening to the Holy Spirit! If the Spirit is the one who has given you the gift, he can most surely tell you what gift you have and how to use it. Ask others to pray for you to receive gifts and help you discern! We see in the New Testament that the laying on of hands leads to imparting the Spirit and gifts (2 Tim. 1:6), and we’ve also had people pray over us to awaken certain gifts!

Practice your Gifting

Now that you know what your gift is – practice by using it! Paul encourages Timothy repeatedly to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Tim. 1:6), and to “not neglect the gift that you have” but to practice, immerse himself in it, and see progress in it (1 Tim. 4:14-15).

One disclaimer is that receiving a gift is not an excuse to disobey other parts of the Bible. Too often we hear “I don’t have an evangelism gifting’ as a reason to not share the gospel. This should go without saying but practicing your gifting can never supersede obedience to the Word and to the Spirit. That’s just our pride making an excuse.

Develop your Gifting

Develop your gifts through practice, but also by learning more specifically about them. Study the Word concerning specific gifts, and look for examples of people in Scripture with those giftings. Find and read books about these giftings. Find mentors that have those giftings and ask about their story and experience.

Often we see people begin with somewhat of an immature usage of their gifting, and over time as they gain experience and knowledge, they’re able to use their gifts more proficiently. For example a young prophet could see someone living in unbelief and desire to call them back towards the Lord but may be overly blunt and lack the wisdom for how to do it tactfully and graciously. A young apostolic might be sensing God call them towards a big vision and starting something new, but trample over everyone else on the way towards that new thing in a posture of judgment and criticism. More than developing the practical skill of your gift, the focus should be on the development of our Christ-like character and humility in using our gifts.

As a general guideline, we’ve heard that developing your gift can be a lifelong endeavor. In your 20s and 30s as you try lots of different ministries, you begin to identify your gifting. In your 30s and 40s you’ve learned what your gift is and begin to practice and use it more. And in your later life you become more proficient with your gift, and ideally, can align your ministry and leadership role primarily with your gifting and experience.

Conclusion

Now that we have a better idea of what spiritual gifts are, and how to identify, practice, and develop them, our next posts will address how these play out on the mission field and on missions teams. Below are some questions for personal reflection and some resources we’ve found to be helpful on the topic of spiritual gifts.

There’s plenty of reasons to learn and use your gifts. Beyond the fact that the Holy Spirit has specially given you one, and that Scripture repeatedly tells us not to be ignorant about our gifts or to neglect them, we’ve found that using our gifts results in our joy! There’s something amazing about being used uniquely by the Spirit, to experience that supernatural empowerment and to see supernatural fruitfulness. It is God being pleased to use us! It’s like trying out a bunch of different sports or extracurriculars as a kid and struggling and failing in them over and over again. And then, all of a sudden, you pick up the violin or dive into the pool or throw a football for the first time and it feels natural. Like you were born to do that thing. Don’t miss out on what He has uniquely created and designed you to do!

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

Questions For Reflection

1. Do you have personal or theological barriers that keep you from studying or embracing spiritual gifts? 
2. Have you identified your gifting? If not yet, what steps can you take towards identifying your gift?
3. If you have identified your gifting, how can you grow and develop in the usage of your gifting? How can you create more opportunities to practice and work out of your gifting in your ministry? 
4. Have you observed any aspects of pride, comparison, or dissension emerge in the usage of your gifting? Why do you think that is? Are there certain situations, people, or contexts that trigger and bring out pride? If yes, then repent and surrender these things to God.  
5. How can you create a culture and space for your teammates to grow and develop in their giftings?

Additional Resources

• Unlocking Our Giftedness is Robert Clinton’s booklet on spiritual gifts detailing how leaders can develop in their giftedness and help develop others. Understanding Your Giftedness Set is a spiritual gifts assessment that goes with the booklet.

• Systematic Theology (chapter 52-53) by Wayne Grudem – an overview of spiritual gifts and addresses continuationism v. cessationism
• Get in the Fight! – Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 by Matt Carter

In the last post, I broke down some of the most common ways I have noticed women leaders in ministry tend to self-sabotage. In this post, I will continue with two more examples of internal barriers. If you are a female leader reading, ask the Holy Spirit to help identify areas that he would have you grow in, without shame or guilt. For male leaders, ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom for how to navigate these issues with women that you may lead or work with.

Not Leveraging Our Emotional Intelligence as Leaders 

For years, I felt like being soft-hearted was one of my greatest weaknesses in leadership. When people shared their hardships with me, I would cry openly. Steven teases me that I can’t hide my face – if I’m angry, frustrated, sorrowful, or amused, everyone will know it. I was ashamed of this trait until one day, a woman I was leading told me “I love that you are a strategic leader, but also an emotional one.” What I hadn’t realized was that my tears were actually key to building trust with her, and that my openness created space for her to feel like she could be authentic in how she felt too.

What it is: One of the greatest strengths many women leaders bring to the table is emotional EQ and empathy. Many female business leaders tend toward empathetic and collaborative leadership styles that involve deeper relationship building and personal connection. And while both men and women have emotions and express them, many professional and leadership contexts still hold to the tradition of “keeping emotions at the door”. Women who show emotion will more quickly be stereotyped as “hysterical” or more “irrational”, while men are usually given a pass. Ironically, women who are less prone to showing emotion can be stereotyped as “cold”. Consequently, women who are more connected with their emotions are often not trained to appreciate or leverage their emotions in their leadership for God’s glory, but instead may feel pressure to stuff down their emotions to avoid a stereotype.

Underlying beliefs: When we have weaker emotional control or understanding, we may believe that our emotions are simply too much. We may feel like we are out of control and weak, or that emotions sabotage our leadership. As a result, we fear portraying our authentic selves to others because we internalize that who we truly are is embarrassing, could never be accepted, and would end up only burdening others.

What Poorly Leveraged Emotions Look like:  

• Suppressing emotions – Western society has generally limited what emotions are appropriate for women to essentially always wearing a smile. But women experience a whole gamut of emotions, including negative ones! So we often associate emotions with weakness or disapproval, and will do everything in our power to not express them. This creates dissonance within ourselves and causes others to perceive us as unapproachable. In addition, the longer we bottle up our emotions, the more likely we are to overreact.
• Manipulation – Sometimes, our emotions can take over. We may lash out in anger, gaslight, or cry to manipulate and win sympathy from others. Women without control over their emotions may be seen as volatile and untrustworthy.

How to address poorly leveraged emotions: God created women in his image, and a unique thing about God is that he also experiences emotions! Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (John 11:35), turned over tables in righteous anger (Matthew 21:12-13), and rejoiced in the Spirit (Luke 10:21). Our emotions help us to connect with God’s heart, and to reflect him to the world when we express our emotions out of the security, safety, and union that we experience in Christ. We don’t have to be ashamed of them. If you want to learn more about how to leverage emotions, we wrote an article on emotional thriving on the field.

When women leaders are unable to properly express their emotions or understand how to leverage emotions into their leadership, we lose a huge opportunity. Being vulnerable in our emotions allows us to display our authentic selves and to invite others to do the same. More often than not, properly leveraged emotion draws others towards us. The heart of ministry is always the people, and people are complex, messy, and emotional. Learning to be comfortable in our own feelings allows us to understand and be comfortable with others’ emotions too. This allows us to build empathy and collaboration into our leadership. 

Application:

• Learn to be curious about your emotions. At any given time when you experience strong feelings, pause to consider where those emotions are coming from. What are your emotions telling you about your values, motives, situation, needs, and your place in it? What are they telling you about the values, situation, motives, needs, etc. of those you lead? A helpful tool to use is the Emotions Wheel.
• Step away when feeling emotionally overwhelmed and surrender your feelings to Jesus to carry. An easy tell for when you are emotionally “flushed” can include behaviors like complaining about others, speaking poorly of others, feeling overtaken by a feeling, or dumping raw emotions and venting onto a listener. It may take at least 10 minutes to calm down when you feel “flushed.” Learn to ask for time to process. “I want to take some time on this one and I’ll get back to you.” In that time, pray and ask Jesus to carry your emotions for you, and to help you sort through them.
• Share your feelings, not just information or directions, while maintaining proper boundaries! If you are emotionally aware and comfortable in expressing your emotions, those you lead will likely feel more comfortable being authentic with you. Ask those you lead for feedback, if you are uncertain how they received it.

Perfectionism

One of our best leaders in Thailand was a self-proclaimed perfectionist when she first launched overseas. And for her whole life, perfectionism served her well. She was excellent at almost everything she attempted and was the one you always could depend on. But when she landed in Thailand, language learning nearly broke her. No matter how hard she tried, planned, practiced, she couldn’t ever hear the tones of the Thai language. In a matter of weeks, she went from the consistent excellence she was always used to, to bottom of the class, just struggling to keep up with her husband and teammates. She had never not attained what she worked for, but the ability to pick up language was completely out of her control. Everybody around her had a front row seat to her failures. What must they be thinking of her? Every day she went to class, she experienced more shame at what a failure she was. 

What is it: Perfectionism is the tendency to demand an extremely high or even flawless performance, in excess of what is required by the situation. Perfectionists maintain this high standard by controlling their own behavior, others, a narrative, or circumstances.

Perfectionism particularly impacts women because social messaging often portrays ideal women in confusing contrasts – beautiful but not tempting, nurturing others but never expressing personal needs, smart and assertive but not bossy, and always smiling – leaving women spinning as they try to be all things at once. 

Underlying Beliefs: Perfectionists learn that people value them for what they do instead of who they are and come to see their worth as contingent upon other people’s approval regarding their contribution. This leaves them dependent on external validation and highly vulnerable to criticism. To protect themselves, perfectionists adopt the false belief that being “perfect” or achieving “perfect work” is their best defense against criticism and is the way to secure the future they desire. Perfectionist thoughts sound like, “if I can get this right, I can attain what I need and God will come through for me (or love me). It’s up to me. I can’t make mistakes.”

What Perfectionism Looks Like: 

• Having a standard for yourself that is higher than the standard you would say is appropriate for others.
• Overwork and the inability to rest or delegate. Perfectionists will often take on the work of others (including work that really belongs to the Holy Spirit and not us!). Over time, working too hard leads to joylessness. 
• Deep shame in failures and mistakes creates an inability to learn from those failures, admit mistakes, or receive critical feedback. 
• Lacking grace for others when they make mistakes. Judging and competing with others. If other people perform better, they may become a competitor for the validation you seek. 
• Oftentimes, those who are led by perfectionists may feel anxious, controlled, and pressured to be similarly perfect.

How Jesus Addresses Perfectionism: Freedom from perfectionism is found in the truths of the gospel. Perfection is impossible for us apart from Christ, and no amount of effort, discipline, or control will ever attain it. That’s why Jesus achieved perfection for us (Hebrews 2:10)! And through his death and resurrection, the inheritance of Jesus is yours by grace, not works (Colossians 1:12, Ephesians 1:3). Therefore, there is no need for striving, anxiety, or fear. Your work, your vision, and your fruitfulness is ultimately God’s responsibility, and he will accomplish it through you if you will surrender your methods for his (1 Corinthians 3:5-7)!

We also can remember the examples of biblical leaders who “failed” or did not have a perfect reputation, like David, Rahab, Peter, the Samaritan woman, or the sinful woman. How did God respond to these people? Despite making major mistakes, God still chose, anointed, and used these people in powerful ways. In fact, many times it was their weakness that magnified and enhanced the perfection of God (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). 

Application: For perfectionists, battling perfectionism can feel like a lost cause because a mistake can trigger intense shame and hopelessness. But keep learning to extend grace to yourself every step of the way, and trust that it is Jesus who will give you freedom!

• Acknowledge your limitations and take intentional time to meditate on and receive God’s love for you, and how much he desires to show up for you in your weakness. Figure out what triggers your feelings of perfectionism / control. In what situations do you most feel like God won’t come through? What are the worst case scenarios that constantly play in your mind? Who are the people you most need to impress? As you learn to better recognize your triggers in the moment, take a step back, surrender whatever it is you’re trying to control, and remind yourself of your identity in Christ. 
• Set reasonable goals that make sense for yourself and for others, and preemptively surrender the outcomes. Sometimes it helps to run your goals through others to make sure they aren’t unrealistic. Practice delegating responsibilities to others. And fight the urge to hover or dictate how other people complete these assignments. 
• Set strong personal boundaries to prevent overwork. Schedule in times to rest, connect with community, and to disconnect from work.
• Own mistakes gracefully and view them as an opportunity to learn. Practice self affirmations when receiving feedback – “I make mistakes and that’s okay. God can use my mistakes for His glory.”

In reading lists like this, it is easy to feel discouraged. I know that I have personally struggled with each of these internal barriers, and sometimes become overwhelmed at what it will take to keep growing in order to be the leader that God has purposed me to be. But my encouragement to you is that finding freedom from these obstacles is not your sole responsibility. In fact, your sanctification and growth is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit, and he has every resource and wisdom to do so. Philippians 1:6 is a great comfort to me: 

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1:6

The leader I mentioned in the section on perfectionism experienced this promise. Here is the rest of her story:  

“The language learning season was the most painful, prolonged, and difficult season of my life to that point. I was the kind of person who never did anything that I wasn’t good at and only focused on the things that I was good at and that ‘worked’ for most of my life. I fell into a deep and dark depression, wrestled with suicidal thoughts, and became a shell of a person.

Even in the midst of that darkness, I knew the Lord was with me and was doing something in me. I know now that God was using that season to show me the ugliness and wickedness of my sin. Perfectionism which is rooted in pride is sin. Ironically, I prided myself on my perfectionism because it was how I achieved many things in my life. I finally saw perfectionism for what it was and realized it was not just an empty promise or a bad coping strategy but that it was destroying me.

The Lord lifted me out of the pit. Once I understood what perfectionism was and what it was costing me, I wanted it gone forever. I didn’t want to be ruled by it anymore. The Lord supplied the faith I needed in the moment to believe and trust that He could heal me forever of perfectionism, and He did. 

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

Acts 13:38-39-38

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

These verses were so precious to me in that season. The heart of Christ is to free his people from their sins. Christ has purchased our freedom and the FULLNESS of our freedom. It’s so much more rich and vast and beautiful than we could ever imagine. But sometimes we fail to take Jesus up on his promise and live out of these truths. This doesn’t mean that process will be easy and pain-free, but it’s so worth it. I would walk through that season again just to live out of the freedom I have been walking in.” 

This story happened ten years ago, and this leader would say confidently that God healed her of her perfectionism. She hasn’t struggled with it since. Not only that, in the past ten years she has gone on to disciple and develop women on our team and dozens of Thai women (speaking in Thai!), and take on leadership of her own team. Currently, their team and their Thai ministry partners are seeing weekly baptisms and churches planted in some of the least reached parts of Thailand!

God knew what he was doing when he called you into leadership. He knew who you were and still desires to not only work with you, but IN you! He wants to finish the good work he began in you at salvation by helping you find freedom from impostor syndrome, perfectionism, the need for approval, and uncontrolled emotions. Our job is to simply surrender these things to him in faith, trusting that the Holy Spirit will give you the power, guidance, and desire to overcome. 

Take a moment to pray with the Lord: 

• What would it look like if he freed you from all the obstacles in your heart that hinder your leadership? 
• What would you attempt for God? 
• What could he accomplish through you?

This content was co-written with my friend LB who previously served as a team leader in East Asia and is currently serving in member care.

In the previous post, I shared about my leadership journey and the unique internal tension I felt about being a woman leader in ministry and on the mission field. Though I felt called and affirmed by God to step into leadership on our team in Thailand, I also continually struggled with doubt, anxiety, fear, and anger. While it was easy for me to blame these feelings on outside circumstances or people, I eventually came to the difficult conclusion that many (if not the majority) of my tensions were self-generated.

When God calls someone into leadership, he is primarily concerned with that person’s character and heart. Who we are is just as important to God as what we do for him. A person could learn every leadership development framework or tool, but without a heart freed from lies and filled with the identity found in Christ, their leadership will never reach its fullest potential.

In this post, I will focus on the most common ways that women leaders (including myself!) sabotage ourselves in the secret places of our inner lives and hearts. Before we can even begin to address external barriers or specific contexts, we want to always start by looking inward. While this list could also apply to men, I have noticed women in particular tend to struggle with these areas. Research suggests that one reason for this comes from gender-role stereotypes, which means that our social understanding and expectations of what it means to be a leader coincides more with an expression of male leadership than female leadership. Because of this, women leaders find they often need to navigate through unspoken rules and expectations that society does not necessarily place on men. For example, male leaders who speak up are applauded as confident and assertive, but women who speak up can often be labeled as “bossy” or “pushy.” So we often end up adopting self-sabotaging mindsets and behaviors as a way to cope (Playing By the Rules, 12).

As you read through these examples, ask the Holy Spirit to highlight any you may struggle with and ask how He might help you find freedom.

Imposter Syndrome

A few years ago, Steven and I were invited to a meeting of other team leaders around the world to discuss strategic ways to onboard and train new missionaries. Those attending, mostly men, seated themselves at the multiple tables in a large conference room, but I hung back paralyzed about where I was supposed to sit. It felt like the middle school cafeteria all over again! 

All the women in the room, mostly stay at home moms who were not involved in their teams or in ministry, fit around one single table. Do I shrink over to the women’s table, simply there as “Steven’s wife?” Or do I join the tables with the other men and get to talk about ministry?

Would they acknowledge me as a leader?

I ended up shuffling over to the table of women and sitting with them. Because discussions were organized by table, I ended up not being able to participate in any of the discussions as my table was assumed to be non-participants. After the meetings, Steven asked me, “why didn’t you sit at the main tables? You have just as much experience and just as much to say as anyone else here.” I felt ashamed by this question, because what Steven said was true! I did have experience as a leader and had unique things to contribute. But instead of trusting that God had called me to be a leader and to bring my unique perspective, I chose to hide (literally!) and diminished my own voice.

What Is It: Imposter syndrome is a feeling of unworthiness tied to our self identity, particularly in leadership spaces. Kate Coleman describes imposter syndrome as “…profound feelings of self-doubt and pervasive feelings of being unqualified” (7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership, 7). In a 2020 KPMG study of 750 female executive leaders, 75% reported regularly experiencing imposter syndrome, mostly because they never expected they would ever attain such a position. In that same study, over half of the participants revealed a fear that they would never meet expectations. 

We can experience imposter syndrome for a variety of reasons, from societal messaging that presents men as ideal leaders, the roles we played in our families, or our own lack of self esteem, just to name a few. Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry.com, elaborates on why women tend to experience imposter syndrome more – “this feeling is even more acute when you are ‘the only,’ someone who doesn’t look like everyone else. You feel singled out. You are not only being judged on your merits but also feel the weight of being different (Take Back Your Power, 63).” Many times, women leaders are the only women in the leadership room. It can be hard to feel like you belong when no one else looks like you.

What Impostor Syndrome Looks Like: The way we display impostor syndrome can take a multitude of forms. Here are some of the ways I have seen it play out for myself and other women leaders: 

• Inauthenticity or “shrinking to fit” – pretending to be the ideal person who actually belongs in the leadership role and becoming less of your authentic self. Changing yourself to match the archetype of who actually fits.
• Fear of taking risks or of volunteering for assignments that carry a risk of failure.
• Inability to take feedback well. Constructive feedback will feel like a confirmation of all your insecurities and positive feedback will feel like a lie.
• Inability to ask for help for fear of revealing that you don’t have everything together, and isolating to make sure no one finds you out. 

Underlying Beliefs: When we experience impostor syndrome, common messages we tell ourselves may sound like, “I’m not good / smart / talented / liked / experienced enough. I don’t belong in leadership because I don’t look or sound like other leaders. Everyone, including God, was wrong to think that I might have something to contribute because they don’t know who I really am. I have to hide who I really am from everyone else or else they all will be disappointed.” 

How Jesus Addresses Impostor Syndrome: We must battle the lies of impostor syndrome with the truth of who Jesus says we are. The Bible says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8-9). Jesus fully knows who we are and he chose to love us, save us, and adopt us into his family. Not only that, he has given you a leadership assignment and good works that only you can do (Ephesians 2:10). He promises to finish the good work of sanctification that he started in us (Philippians 1:6). And in fact, you are not a fraud because the Bible says that you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:21) and a royal priest (1 Peter 2)! 

When we believe the lies of impostor syndrome, we reject the identity that Christ died to purchase for us. We defy God’s vision of who he wants us to be and replace it with a lesser identity based on our fears and insecurities. But you don’t need to change yourself into a certain kind of person to “belong in the room”, or shrink back from faithful risk-taking in your leadership. God knows who you are and desires for you to lead as you are.

Application: If you find yourself falling into impostor syndrome in your leadership, here are some things you can do.

• Memorize scripture about your identity. Remember your leadership call and find confidence in your identity from Jesus first. Remember that if Jesus was the one who called you to leadership, then you absolutely belong in the room because he was the one who placed you there. 
• Know and celebrate what you bring to the table, as well as what you don’t. This helps you to portray your authentic leadership, and also keeps us from drifting into pretending to be who we are not. Find mentors and peers who you trust to guide and speak truthfully to you about who you are and to help you not deviate towards pretending. 
• Learn to accept feedback and mistakes gracefully, without shame or over apologizing. All leaders have weaknesses, and we miss out on crucial development when we are terrified of constructive feedback.

Desiring the Approval of Man over God

Early on in our team, I led a girl who was very talented in the ministry work but struggled with anger. We were good friends and I knew where these struggles had come from and that she wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt people with her sharp comments. However, though it was my job to manage and develop her, I found myself often pulling my punches. I withheld feedback and made excuses for her behavior (despite often being on the receiving end of her frustration) because I feared hurting her feelings, making her dislike me, or of having to deal with the fallout that might come my way if I did share what I truly thought. I prioritized winning her approval – or avoiding her disapproval – over being faithful to do or say what I knew the Lord was asking me to do in order to lead her well.

What is it: Desiring man’s approval is the act of placing others before God in your life. This includes being afraid of someone, holding someone in too high esteem, being controlled or mastered by people, putting excessive trust in people, or needing people to fill needs that God should fulfill.

What Needing Man’s Approval Over God Looks Like: 

• Needing constant validation from people – our leaders, those we lead, peers, family, anyone! When it’s not received, we can shut down in despair, or try to hunt for it in the form of attention seeking. It might look like fixating on trying to guess what other people are thinking of you.
• Needing man’s approval leads to people pleasing behavior. When we people please, we change ourselves to match other peoples’ expectations, thus affecting our ability to say “no” or to have proper boundaries with others. We may deprioritize our own responsibilities, ideals, or values in order to not rock the boat. But over time, this may cause us to feel like we are compromising ourselves in order to maintain approval. 
• Fear of making decisions and being held responsible for those decisions. Leaders often will be the lone voice or final decision maker for a team, and this is a daunting and heavy responsibility. It is almost impossible to make everyone happy all the time, and people who struggle with approval will have trouble trusting their own perspectives and logic enough to confidently own the responsibility or repercussions of their decisions.

Underlying Beliefs: My value / security / protection is found in how people perceive me. I am not enough and need affirmation that only other people can give me. God’s approval of me is not enough or not guaranteed.

How Jesus Addresses Fear of Man: When we struggle with a need for the approval of man over God, we forget that we are called to love and fear God above all else. When we love God first, we find that he is perfect, deserving, and the safest person to anchor our value and security on (Proverbs 29:25). We cannot call ourselves a servant of Christ if we value man’s approval over God’s (Galatians 1:10). His is the only approval that matters. From there, we find hope in the things God says of us. God loves us so much that he invites us to enjoy the fullness of union with Christ (John 15:1-10). How could God disapprove of us when we are one with the Son, who is absolutely approved of by the Father? We are valued, seen, and secure in God, and so we have freedom from needing it from fallible and imperfect people.

Application: 

• Have mentors and peers who you can consult and process with in your leadership decisions, and who you can trust to give you loving and trustworthy feedback.
• Know your triggers for when you start falling into patterns of approval seeking from people. In what situations and with whom do you start to dwell on what people are thinking of you? In what situations and with whom do you find yourself assuming peoples’ expectations or  intentions? Who can you never disappoint? 
• Plan well before meetings where you will have to make decisions, especially those with people whose approval you seek. What are you there to say? What are your non-negotiables, limits, and requests? Pause before saying “yes” and take 1 minute to assess your motives. If you say yes, what is the cost? 
• If you are hesitant to give feedback or to say hard things, consider what the cost of not saying something might be. In many cases, leaders are the only ones with the visibility into a person’s life and authority to be able to speak in, and our silence may rob a person we lead of critical development. 

These two internal barriers both come from not viewing ourselves rightly compared to how God sees us. When we judge our own value based off of things like other people’s opinions or societal stereotypes of what a leader should be or look like, we will often compromise ourselves to fit. We shrink back from risks and acts of faith that are required for bold leaders. This deeply saddens the heart of God, as he doesn’t see us or value us through any of those lenses. Instead, he desires that we would embrace fully the way he has created us and lead out of a confidence that our value is found in Christ alone!

Processing Questions

• Are internal barriers preventing you from stepping into greater influence or leadership?
• What are some internal barriers that keep you from being the leader God has called you to be? 
• Where do your internal barriers come from? How have you seen them play out in your life?
• How does God see you today? What are some truths from scripture that can help you remember this? 

In the second part of internal barriers for women in leadership, we’ll address two other significant topics – perfectionism and shame in our emotions.

Filter Selectively

Even though we cast vision to anyone that will listen, team leaders should filter who actually joins their team very selectively. There are a few different things you can do to find out if a recruit is the type of person you truly want for your team. This requires asking many questions to understand them more, probing into things like motivation and passion. If you’re curious or unsure, don’t be afraid to ask – it’s always better to hear a potential recruit’s response over guessing or assuming.

Prioritize character over gifting. All goers have to hit a minimum standard for spiritual maturity and character, or they will be difficult to lead in the stress of a cross-cultural field context. Do they have a rich and abiding relationship with the Lord? Do they have any spiritual bondages that they haven’t seen consistent victory over yet (generally, the minimum is 6 months of sobriety or freedom over a sin addiction before launching to the field)? Is there anything significantly lacking in their character or in bearing fruit of the Spirit? Look especially for humility, patience, perseverance, flexibility, and faith, as these are critically important on the field. Many times, agencies will have a clear standard for who to deploy, and evaluations to help determine a goer’s readiness. It’s a good idea to take their list and even add more of your own values from your own team. If your agency does not have a list like this, you can use the personal evaluation we developed as a baseline. 

Consider their experience and track record. Can they do the job or role you’re inviting them to do on your team? Ask questions looking for demonstrated competency. Anyone can answer that they are ‘passionate’ about something, but see if they have at least some proven experience in doing the main activities in your ministry (e.g. training, evangelism, disciple making, etc.).

Check their references. A potential recruit will always put their best foot forward when going through the recruiting process, not unlike the first few dates with a new person! Ask them for references – their peers, their leaders, people they’ve led – and ask thorough and direct questions about the areas that you need to check them on like character, calling, strengths, and weaknesses.

Don’t be afraid to say “No” or “Not yet.” If you’re hearing from God that they won’t be a good fit for your team, don’t be afraid to tell them that. Sometimes as leaders we feel bad about influencing such a significant decision in a recruit’s lives and then closing the door. But ultimately, it’ll be better for them and for the team to not continue on in the process if they aren’t a good fit. This can happen at any point in the process. It can sometimes be helpful to provide gentle but clear feedback about why they might not be a good fit for your team, and propose areas of development. However, once you say no or not yet to joining the team, don’t be the one to take responsibility for their development. This can cause you unnecessary burden when team leaders already have so much they need to focus on. Let them have the opportunity to work on their own development in their home context, as this is a good indicator of their humility and initiative. We’d also heavily caution you to not just take whoever your mission agency proposes – each team is different and you should do your own homework about whether the potential recruit is a good fit and has acceptable character and calling to persevere on your team. Take the agency’s recommendation as one proof point and continue to discern and filter yourself.

Discern Their Fit

Along with evaluating their character and competency, you’ll be simultaneously getting to know their giftings, strengths, and personality to see if they’ll be a good fit with your leadership, your team, and your ministry.

Role, Strengths, Weaknesses: Get to know a recruit’s strengths and weaknesses and think through what potential role they play on your team or ministry. Find giftings that are generally complementary to your leadership and your team. For example, if you have no administratively gifted people on your team and need that help, try to find those that might have that gifting. Other than just asking questions, helpful tools to discern giftings and aptitudes include spiritual gifts inventories (like this one from Robert Clinton), Clifton Strengths, enneagram, etc. in order to get a generalized view into what their strengths and weaknesses might be. As weaknesses surface, also factor them into your team makeup to see if there’s any glaring deficiencies on your team as a whole.

Responsive to your leadership: See if the potential recruit is a person who is responsive to your style of leadership. For example, if you are a hands off type of leader that expects a lot of self initiative and the recruit is a person that needs more directive and detailed leadership, that is an aspect to consider. Or, a family might have reservations being led by a single person. Perhaps another person on your team could help provide some more leadership, but ultimately you want to make sure they are willing to submit to your leadership decisions and work with your style.

Look for diversity / variety on your team: Although you’re looking for the potential recruit to be responsive to your leadership, you also want to value and look for diversity and variety on your team. Recruiting a team that all thinks and acts like you means that you will lack perspectives and giftings that could help your team to thrive or be effective on the field.

General chemistry: How is the general chemistry between this person and you and your team? Learn about their hobbies, values, family of origin, lifestyle, etc. These might not be make or break issues but it’s good to be aware of where there might be friction points. 

Let teammates or others you trust interact with them: Lastly, let your teammates or those you trust interact with the potential recruits! As the TL, you’ll likely drive the process of getting to know them, but try and set up times for teammates to get to know their potential future teammates and solicit feedback from them about the recruit. Your experience may vary, but because adding a new teammate is such an impactful event, we ask that all of our current teammates have consensus with adding them before we make a formal invite. Adding a new teammate at the disapproval of a current teammate is like one step forward and five steps back.

Pray, fast, and ask the Lord: Selection is a critical component of discipleship, as we see from Robert Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism. And a huge aspect of selection is hearing from the Lord. We can see Jesus model this for us in the choosing of the 12:

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. (Luke 6:12-13)

We set time aside to pray and fast all throughout the process of considering a recruit, and ask the recruit and our current teammates to do so as well. Don’t skip this step! There are few decisions as impactful on a team as who you recruit, so spend the necessary time to bring recruits through the process and have clarity from the Lord.

Provide Clear Next Steps and Process Overview

At each point of the process, you want to provide clear expectations and next steps as much as possible to the recruit. A next step could include praying and processing what they’ve learned, talking to a teammate, taking a vision trip, or inviting them to a ministry or team event. Remember that this is a weighty decision for their lives and calling, so clarity is kindness.

If you’re serious about having them enter the recruiting process to potentially join your team, give them a clear expectation of the process and timeline. A simple one-page document outlining this can be very helpful. Also make it clear to them that you’re inviting them to start the recruiting process, which is different from an invitation to join the team!

Work together with your sending agency in terms of assessments and other logistical aspects. As the TL you will probably drive more of the personal connection and discernment parts, as well as connecting them to the right people in your agency.

Once you’ve had the initial conversations and done the relevant assessments and evaluations, we’d strongly recommend that the recruit comes on a vision trip for at least a week if possible. Interacting with them in-person and with the team is completely different than on Zoom calls. And allowing them to engage with the culture, people, and environment of your field is a critical piece of the discernment process, for both you them. Some recruits that we thought were slam-dunks came on vision trips and felt strongly from the Lord or personally that Thailand wasn’t a good fit – which is way better to know before they join the team than after!

Make A Compelling Ask

Lastly, after you’ve gotten to know them, gone through all the necessary assessments and meetings, discussed with your team, and prayed and listened to the Lord, if you still feel that they are a good fit for your team, make a clear and compelling ask! “We feel like you could be a great fit on our team and we’d love for you to join us. We’d like to invite you to join our team! Take some time to pray and consult others and let us know in the next 1-2 weeks.” If possible, try to make the occasion special through a nice meal or a gift! In all likelihood, unless they are also looking at other teams, by the time you’re ready to make an ask they are probably ready and expectant to join.

Conclusion

Recruiting is much more of an art of discernment than a scientific process, but hopefully the guidelines above give you a grid of what to think and work through in recruiting someone to your team. As a TL, there will be different seasons where recruiting may take up a lot of your time versus other seasons when it’s quieter. As you pray and plan for the future of your team, consider the resources you have – your people! – and whether you need to add more. The onramp for a recruit from when you get to know them to when they are on your team, through language and culture, and contributing as a teammate is VERY long, potentially multiple months or years depending on language learning. Even if you don’t think you need a teammate today, be open to casting vision broadly and seeing who God might bring in front of you! Remember, recruiting leaders will almost always help to multiply your team, ministry, and impact.

To bring the soup terrine story to its conclusion, this couple that first gifted us the soup terrine now leads one of the new teams in Thailand after our team expansion in 2020, and are some of our closest friends in the world. The night of Jenn’s seizure, when they heard what was happening, they immediately booked flights to be with us in the hospital without even asking me first. After 10 years on the field, our relationship with them has gone far beyond ministry teammates.

Our prayer is that the Lord would provide teammates, partners, and friends of this quality on your teams!

Questions for Reflection

• How much do you prioritize recruiting and casting vision as a key responsibility for a leader and why? How high of a priority should recruiting be for you in this next season?
• What areas of the recruiting process do you feel confident in? What areas do you feel less confident in? What can you do to improve in those areas or invite others to help?
• Do you have other potential leaders on your team that you can develop or rely on?
• Are there any specific roles or giftings that you feel that your team has a need for?
• Do you have networks of potential goers that you can recruit from? Is there someone you know from your home context that can advocate for your team and need, and find potential leads for you?
• How many leaders and teams could potentially be needed to fulfill the vision God has called you to?

One of the responsibilities of a Team Leader is to recruit the right teammates onto your team. We’re often asked many questions around the area of recruiting, including:

“How do I know if someone’s right for my team?”
“How do I cast compelling vision for someone to join?”
“Should I prioritize role fit, gifting, or character?”

We hope to answer these questions and more to help you figure out the process of recruiting and building a thriving team overseas! In part 1, we’ll address the overall process of recruiting, and more of the front end activities to find potential recruits. In part 2, we’ll talk about how to filter for the right teammates and discern their fit on your team, as well as how to close the deal and invite them to your team!

The Legendary Soup Terrine

When we first were preparing to launch, Jenn and I [Steven] were the team leaders and about to get married but everyone else on our team was single at the time. We knew for our relational thriving that it’d be important to recruit another married couple on the team. We also needed some teammates that were administratively gifted to help us navigate all the needs on the field.

One couple in particular seemed to fit the bill. The wife had been in a year-long development cohort at our church with Jenn and had developed a good friendship with her. This couple were looking to launch overseas but had several other invites from way more established and impressive team leaders than our extremely inexperienced selves.

We invited them to start the process, shared our vision with them, and even brought them on a vision trip to Thailand (one month before our wedding – much to Jenn’s displeasure as she tried to plan our wedding). And then we formally invited them to join our team, asking that they would give us a response in two weeks.

After two weeks, they asked us to come over to their apartment to talk about their decision. By then, they had already gone on another vision trip to visit another team and had three other very good options on the table. As we pulled into the parking lot, Jenn and I were sure that we were going into a breakup conversation and that they would tell us they were joining another shinier, more impressive team. “Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me!”

We trudged up to their apartment and had an hour and a half of small talk and catching up. Inside, I thought, “Just rip the bandaid off already and tell us you’re not joining!”

Finally, they said, “we have an early wedding present for you!” And brought out an enormous cardboard box that could have fit a person inside of it. As we tentatively opened it, there were more boxes and more newspaper wrapping. Finally, we opened the last box, and inside was a large soup terrine like the one in the picture below.

As I opened the soup terrine, there was a small folded up piece of paper with the text “เราอยู่ข้างใน” – of course I had no idea what this meant. And in 4 point size font in the bottom corner, the translation: _{(we’re in!!!!!!)}

Jenn immediately burst into tears as I gave a huge sigh of relief. We had new teammates! 

Funny enough, three years later, we found out the Thai was completely wrong, and translated more to something like “we’re inside [the box]” but that just makes it funnier. As we recruited more teammates or current teammates got married, the soup terrine was gifted to 5 more couples over the next 10 years! And of course, no one has any use for it and it refuses to fit in any normal cabinet. It’s simultaneously an annoyance and a heart-warming reminder of how God has blessed our team not only with great teammates, but life-long friends.

Recruiting is (kind of) Like Dating

When you’re looking for a new job in the for-profit world, many times there’s an application and one or two interviews before you start at a new job. That’s not very much to figure out if someone is a good fit at a new job. But there’s always the option of firing them if they don’t fit!

Recruiting someone to an overseas missions team is very different from hiring for a job. In many ways, it’s more akin to dating than hiring! Unlike marriage, being a part of a missions team isn’t “until death do us part.” But it takes a lot of momentum and cost for a new teammate to go through a process of preparing, selling everything, saying goodbyes, and transitioning to the field. And it takes the team leader and the team a lot of energy to welcome a new teammate and go through another round of Team Formation (forming-storming-norming-performing) with every new teammate. Just one teammate that is not well prepared, relationally difficult, or a bad fit can cause a ton of sideways energy on an otherwise healthy and effective team, or in the worst-case scenario, cause enough carnage to send the whole team home. We unfortunately know more than a few stories of friends that were on teams like these.

At the same time, it’s critical that a team leader knows how to identify, discern, and compellingly invite new teammates to the field. For one, there’s so much turnover and attrition on missions teams for various reasons like unstable visas, health emergencies, or unavoidable circumstances – though hopefully not for team conflict or character reasons if a team leader does a good job recruiting the right people. Secondly, the vision that God has given you should outpace your own ability to see it to completion! That requires recruiting leaders and teammates to either add to your team, or to help expand and multiply to start new teams that own a piece of that vision.

For those of you that are married or who have friends that are married, how many dates did it take to pop the question? Obviously, a recruiting process can’t be that robust. But we’d encourage team leaders to take recruiting as a process, and not just a one-and-done event.

In our time as team leaders, we’ve onboarded 20 new teammates, had 30+ go through our recruiting process, and had initial vision casting conversations with 75+ people. Below are some of the guidelines and lessons we’ve learned in the process of recruiting new teammates to overseas work.

Recruiting Guidelines

Always have a mindset of recruiting leaders.

If it wasn’t clear, this is a blog about leaders. In our experience, the greatest bottleneck of seeing expansion and health in your team and ministry is a lack of leaders. Our recommendation would be that every TL have someone on the team that they are developing to either replace themselves or to expand to a new team. Part of that is redundancy if you have to leave the field, but it is also the potential to grow into new opportunities that the Lord provides. Even if you feel that your team is “full,” always be willing and open to receive more leader-type people.

Connect with networks to recruit from.

In order to even begin recruiting and casting vision, you need a pool of potential goers to recruit from. Many times, being a part of a missions agency will provide that pool. Find local churches that are passionate about deploying goers, or keep an eye out for other missions-related networks like conferences or prayer groups. Having a home-side advocate keep an eye out for potential recruits can be a huge help.

Cast vision broadly and specifically.

Cast vision broadly to anyone who will hear, but also cast vision specifically to the audience you’re speaking to. When you meet potential goers that could join your team, cast vision broadly! As a leader, you should always be casting compelling vision for the need and opportunity in your ministry to anyone who will listen – they may end up being interested as a teammate, or a supporter or advocate.

Sometimes casting vision will be to a group of people, and other times it will be 1-on-1. Try to shape your vision casting to your audience. You want to be a “sniper” not a “shotgun” in your vision casting; cast vision to the desire you hear in them when they share (e.g. impact, purpose, community, etc.). What does the person you’re talking to value in a team or ministry opportunity?

In order to cast vision specifically, listen well and ask good questions:

• How did you come to start following Jesus?
• How did you get involved or feel a call to missions?
• Where have you felt God has been leading you recently?
• What types of spiritual gifts or strengths do you have?
• How has your experience been in preparing to go overseas?
• What passions do you feel like God has given you? (What makes you “pound the table?”)

Listen well to how they answer these types of questions, and craft your vision casting to their passions and values. Listening to what they value also helps you to discern their fit on your team.

Ways to Cast Vision

How do you cast vision? Here are a couple of methods:

From the Word.

It’s always good to have a few verses that are your key convictions for the vision God has given you for your ministry. Many times, these Scriptural convictions could be shared by the other person. Some of our go-to verses are Matthew 28:18-20, Revelation 7:9-10, Matthew 24:14, Acts 19:10, Psalm 2, and Isaiah 45 among many others.

Sharing About the Need of the People and Place.

Hudson Taylor would constantly write and speak about the need among China’s 350 million people without the gospel. In his 54 years of ministry in China, he ended up mobilizing nearly 800 long-term workers to China’s Millions and influencing countless others to go. Is recruiting important? Hudson Taylor seemed to think so. In that 54 years, he took 10 round trips from the West to China and back, totaling 11 years(!) on a ship, with his 11th and final trip at age 73, which ended up as a one-way trip as he died in China in 1905. 

For your ministry vision, how many people don’t have access to the gospel? What are the spiritual needs among your people (addiction, spiritual bondage, social issues)?

What is God doing among this people and place? Tell stories of God answering prayers, people coming to faith, critical events that open doors to the gospel.

Describing the Role You Envision Them Playing.

Many people can get easily excited about the need and opportunity in most places among the unreached, but what they really want to know is – what’s my role in it? How can I make an impact in that? Cast vision about the role you could see them playing on the team and in the ministry – how do their gifts and values align with what your team is doing and what God is doing? Again, this requires listening to them well first.

Lastly, let your own passion and conviction come out when you cast vision. God has called you to give your life to see the gospel go forward among the unreached. Whether it’s a verse, or a story, or an experience that moved your heart to say yes to God, let that come out! People are drawn to the passion and emotion that a leader expresses when sharing about their vision.

Now that you have a decent pool of potential recruits that are interested in your team, it’s time to focus on making sure they’re the right quality and fit for your team. More in part 2!

Part 1 – Leadership Foundations Overview

Part 2 – Why are leaders needed?

Part 3 – How do I discern if I’m a leader?

Part 4 – How do I develop as a leader?

In Part 4, we talked about different ways that you can develop on your pathway towards becoming a team leader. One of the most important aspects of that is forming a personal development plan, or PDP. It’s critical for your own development as a leader, and it’s also important that leaders know how to develop other people.

Develop Towards Maturity

We’ve come back to Ephesians 4:11 a few times in this blog, and we think it also speaks to personal development.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:11-16

One of the main goals that Christ has in giving leadership giftings to the church in verse 11 is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, which will lead to the building up of the body of Christ. But in addition to that, there’s a goal for each of us to grow towards maturity and fullness and to grow up in every way into Christ. Leaders equip, not just for the sake of the ministry, but to develop those they lead into being more like Jesus.

One quick note on the difference between learning and developing. Leaders should be constantly learning and gathering knowledge and wisdom that will help them to lead well. But development happens when you actually have progression in who you are as a person and as a leader – whether in character, giftings, or competencies. I might learn a fact or an idea from a book I read, but until I can apply it, until I can internalize it, use it, and it actually affects how I live and lead in Christ-like maturity, it’s a fact that I learn and not something that I’ve developed in.

How to Form a PDP

In this post, we’ll walk through how to form a personal development plan, either for yourself or with someone you lead. In order to form a development plan that’s effective, we do a personal evaluation on different areas of our lives, ministry, and leadership. This is the personal evaluation form that we use on our team annually, and from this evaluation we can form a PDP.

As we’ve noted in other posts, we believe the inner spiritual life and character components hold more importance than skills or even giftings. When forming a personal development plan, we try to focus on one character / abiding aspect and one competency / skill / gifting. Any more than 1-2 things and you end up not really progressing in anything – it’s a principle of focus, in development and pretty much everything else.

Many people tend to think you need to develop primarily in weaknesses, and it’s true that sometimes addressing a weakness is important because it’s a core character issue or competency that you need to have. But development plans can be really great to help you grow in your strengths and giftings as well.

Personal Evaluation

We made this personal evaluation form during our first term in Thailand and have tweaked it over time. It’s split into 4 sections:

1) Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude
2) Cross-Cultural Adaptation
3) Personal Time and Work Management
4) Ministry Skills

There’s an additional leadership evaluation for those in leadership positions on our team. To create this evaluation, we looked at various biblical frameworks like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, as well as personal review and evaluation processes from churches, ministries, and professional development sources. Lastly, the ministry skills section would depend on your team’s ministry approach, so ours reflects a ‘Be Barnabas’ CPM focus.

In each section, you’ll evaluate yourself in the various aspects. Then, at the end of each section, you’ll give open-ended responses to what in the section was a primary area(s) of strength, primary area(s) of weakness, primary area of growth + development, and other comments. This allows the person doing the self-evaluation to draw out the important points in each section. At the end, you’ll take all the information together and form a PDP.

Below, we’ll have screenshots of the evaluative categories for each section and I’ll provide a few comments about it. The entire PDF form of the self-evaluation is attached at the end.

Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude

In our experience, pretty much all of these things are critically important to either an individual goer’s health on the field or how they affect the team. If we were to highlight perhaps the top risk 5 areas that, if unresolved, could send your people home from the field, we would emphasize: abiding, humility, freedom from bondages, health in singleness / marriage, and living out of identity. Each of these is a huge topic, and there are a variety of resources that exist to help a goer develop in health and freedom before and during their time on the field. If there’s any of these areas (or any of the following sections) that you have specific questions about how to address, please let us know at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d be happy to help consult!

Cross-Cultural Adaptation

These are aspects of cross cultural adaptation that are particularly important in the first 1-2 terms. For your first term of 2-3 years, the first two sections – abiding and health, language and culture – are the main goal. We had a very experienced missions leader give us great expectations and advice before launching that has remained true and that we’ve also set as an expectation for teammates that we transition onto the field. He told us, it can take up to 7 years on the field on average for goers to even begin doing the right things to pursue CPMs. If at the end of your first term of 2-3 years, you are loving Jesus, healthy in your marriage or singleness, have learned some language, and have even a few local relationships – that is great success.

It reframed success in the first few years for us, because with all of our passion and urgency and emphasis on seeing multiplying movements among the unreached, we can sometimes be a little over-enthusiastic in starting the ministry and not setting good foundations of health, language, and cultural adaptation.

After the early season of focusing on language and culture, when you start getting more into the ministry, the ministry skills and spiritual gifts will probably begin to take precedence over the cross cultural parts.

Personal Time + Work Management

For us, this section tends to be the least prioritized compared to the other sections, unless there’s a glaring weakness in a person’s reliability as a teammate and co-worker. Many of these are what would be called ‘permission to play’ type of requirements – good teammates need to embody these basic aspects in order to be effective contributors to the team and the ministry, and healthy in their own rhythms. Sometimes, missions teams can recruit people right out of college who haven’t been in a working environment before. This can lead to some misunderstanding or entitlement to think that support raising or being in ministry means you don’t have to come to meetings prepared and on time, communicate in a timely manner, or report to your supervisor. So this section helps us as leaders and them as teammates know that these things are expected.

Ministry Skills

As explained in the screenshot, this section is a bit different from the previous 3. Because we believe that there are a variety of giftings and skills within each teammate, we aren’t necessarily claiming that every teammate needs to be excellent at every ministry skill. Instead, we have a scale from basic awareness to expert, defined above in the screenshot.

There should be basic competency in some of the areas that every teammate needs to engage in ministry. For example, since our team focuses on training local partners to make disciples, every teammate is expected to be able to give the basic training, as it is the bread and butter of what we do. But some teammates are more proficient or gifted at training and they might get more opportunities to exercise those giftings, whereas some other teammates may be less proficient, and get to specialize in some other areas. How much you specialize depends on how your team is built and what stage of ministry you’re in, among other things. Generally, in the first 2 years of ministry, everyone on the team tries their hand at doing everything so that they can all obtain some basic competency in each area and explore where God has gifted them. Every year, we’ll continue to do personal evaluations and PDPs, and ask the question – where do you feel the Holy Spirit is asking you to focus your giftings and contribution? We’ll also do this in conjunction with a ‘SHAPE’ retreat (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Aptitudes, Personality, Experience) where we look at the different giftings and skills on a team to allow people to specialize and synergize as a team.

We’ll have a future post on how to do a SHAPE retreat and one on spiritual gifts. But as it pertains to personal development, spiritual gifts are a critical aspect! They are gifts that Jesus himself gave to you through the Holy Spirit to edify the body and expand the Kingdom. As leaders, identifying, developing, and using those gifts personally and on our team results in Spirit empowered ministry!

Leadership Evaluation

The last section would be only for those in a leadership position on our team – team leaders or sub-team leaders. Our definition of a leader is a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God, and we tried to help our leaders evaluate those aspects in this self-evaluation.

_______

When filling out a personal evaluation, people tend to fall into one of two pitfalls – either greatly overestimate themselves and pretend that they’re good to perfect in every area, or to underestimate themselves with either a low view of themselves or fake humility. Although it’s important for leaders to be able to give feedback into a teammate’s development, personal development has to be personal. Our belief is that a PDP formed through honest self evaluation and personal buy-in will be much more effective than leader directive PDPs. So this evaluation allows each teammate to be honest with themselves about where they are strong and weak, where they can grow, and how they can develop. And, it allows leaders an opportunity to give feedback and come alongside those they’re trying to help to develop.

Here is the link to the full evaluation:

Creating a PDP

Now that we’ve done the hard work of personal evaluation and trying to draw some highlights out of each section, we can go ahead and form the personal development plan from what we’ve learned in the evaluation. Forming a PDP is much more of an art than a skill, so below we’ve provided a basic guideline for how to form one. But again, there has to be personal buy-in for your PDP. If the topic you choose or the plan you create isn’t something that you’re personally invested in and driven to pursue, it’s an unhelpful PDP. Create a plan that you want to jump into!

1. Analyze your results. Take a step back and analyze the results of the personal evaluation as a whole. Overall, where are you strong and weak? What surprised you about your answers? Did anything upset you or make you anxious? Your emotions, positive or negative, or feelings of anxiety could be revealing that there’s a deeper heart issue surrounding that topic and that you might need to give it some attention.

2. Self-examine to try and get to the heart of the issue. This applies mainly for character and heart issues. For a development plan to really work, you need to target the aspect you want to work on as directly as you can. That means not just fixing an external behavior that is weak, but also understanding the root of our issues. Otherwise, all we are doing is behavior modification. For skills and competency issues, there may be an underlying insecurity that is at the heart of it (e.g. I’m poor at training because I’m insecure about what people think about me), but for the most part, skills just need to be developed through learning and practice. But for many character / heart issues, we want to ask some questions. What is at the root? Why is this a recurring issue? What keeps me from growing in this? 
   
   For example, if I marked myself as weak in “submissive to leadership”, I could just make a development plan that says “do what my leader tells me to do.” But that’s behavior management and my heart isn’t really impacted. I have to look at the root. Why is submission difficult for me? Maybe I don’t really respect my leader and think I know better than them. Maybe I think I’m a better leader than they are and the actual issue I need to work on is pride. Whatever the root reason is, that’s what you want to create a plan around.

3. Pray and ask God what He wants you to work on and how. Even with our PDP results, we still are going to have a biased view of ourselves. The only one who truly knows where we need to grow is Jesus, so ask Him to search your heart and reveal areas that need to be developed. Pray and ask God, where do you want me to focus on? How do you want me to grow? Who or what have you put into my life to help me develop? 

4. Form the development plan. 
   
   Again, pick no more than 1 character / heart issue and 1 skill / gifting / competency for your PDP. Any more and we tend to lose focus. Just picking 1, preferably the character / heart issue, is totally fine!
   
   Once you know what area to focus on, think of some resources, mentors / coaches, or opportunities that you could use that would help you grow. It could be a book, article, podcast, class, or person who is strong in this area that you would spend time and learn from – whatever way helps you to learn best. One of the most effective development plans is simply to do a word or topical study over the area that you’re wanting to grow in – Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, humility, etc.
   
   Consider a head / heart / hands grid: head knowledge helps you understand what you’re trying to develop in. But head knowledge alone isn’t enough to help a person change and develop. Heart development gives you the why and an emotional connection. Hands helps you to apply the things you’ve learned.
   
   Continuing with the submission to leadership example, I might do a Bible study on Biblical submission and how Jesus exhibits this. For heart, I might set aside some time to consistently pray for greater humility – and to repent of my pride. For hands, I might consistently pray for my leader, or in my one-on-one meetings with them, ask them how I’ve been doing in the area of submission and if there’s anything I can do to improve.
   
5. Set a consistent and achievable rhythm for which you can be kept accountable over a 6-12 month time period. Try to think of an end point that answers – how will you know you’ve achieved your goals? What do you want to see happen? How can you break down your plan in month-long objectives or pieces?
   
   The above PDP put into consistent rhythms might look like:
   
   – First 3 months: topical Bible study on Biblical submission
   – Monthly: during Day of Prayer, set aside time to self-evaluate my heart and pray for humility; set aside time to pray for my leader.
   – Monthly: check in with my leader and ask them how I’m doing in this area and how to improve
   
6. Get feedback on your PDP from your leader. In our team process, our teammates will be notified at the end of the year that it’s time for the annual personal evaluation, PDP formation, and review with their leader. They’ll be given 2 weeks to fill out the personal evaluation and send it to their leader, and then take a first stab at forming their PDP, knowing that their review meeting with their leader might change that PDP.
   
   Be humble to receive feedback from your leader and be willing to tweak it. Many times, our leaders might have insight into blind spots that we have, things that we aren’t aware of that are negatively affecting the ministry, our team, or even ourselves. In our experience of leading people through PDP formation, either we agree pretty heavily on the topic and might just give some feedback on the elements of the PDP, or if there’s an area that we bring up that our teammate hasn’t considered, we’ll find a middle ground and make both those topics (ours and theirs) the 2 aspects of their PDP.
   
   Since we’ve done this process for several years with 12+ teammates and coached our leaders in how to lead their people through this process, we’ve been able to walk through a multitude of topics for personal development, including humility, perfectionism, anger and unforgiveness, executive presence, training and coaching, communication, self-awareness, leadership, among other things. We’re working on gathering all those development plans that can be used as example PDPs, and when we’re done we’ll post it here!
   
7. Work your plan and have accountability towards working on your plan. If you have a regular one-on-one with a leader or mentor (preferably on a monthly rhythm), that’s a great time for them to check in and make sure you’re accountable to your development plan and give you feedback in that area. It can be as simple as them asking, ‘how did you do with your PDP goals last month, and what are your PDP goals for this upcoming month?’

Walking Others through Forming a PDP

Lastly, we’ll just provide a few tips for current TLs who might be walking their teammates through this process and how to give constructive feedback well. Sometimes, this personal evaluation and review process can be a good opportunity to give feedback into a topic that can be challenging to talk about.

Pray and prepare beforehand. As much as we might want to control people’s development, only God can grow his sheep. Ask God how he wants to develop this person and for him to give you encouraging and truthful words that can spur them on. Make sure you’re surrendering any of your own bias or selfish motivations that you might have for bringing an issue up – is it truly what the Lord wants for their good and their development or just so that I can have an easier time leading? Think through and have concrete examples of areas you have seen this person in their strengths and in their weaknesses. Have bible verses that speak to the standards that you want to exhort your teammate towards.

Start by asking questions. It’s best if they’re able to self-evaluate these issues as opposed to hearing critical feedback right out the gate. What did you think about your self-assessment? Did you see any trends? Did anything surprise / encourage / discourage you? Ideally, they will self-identify. If they don’t bring up the topic that you are wanting to discuss, ask some more probing questions around the topic. Did you have any thoughts specifically about this topic? How would you rate yourself on this?

Seek to encourage as much as possible, but also don’t hesitate to speak truthfully. A basic tenet for difficult feedback is an ‘encouragement sandwich’ – encourage, give feedback, and end by encouraging again. Remind them that you are truly for their good and desire to see them grow and enjoy more of Jesus. We may want to spare someone’s feelings by avoiding hard topics, but your goal is to help them identify blind spots in areas they may need to grow in. If they’re not able to self-identify what the issue is, then give feedback as kindly but as clearly as possible, with clear examples of what is expected (even biblically), what has happened (with concrete examples), and where you’d like them to grow and develop. As leaders, we want to spur our people on and encourage them to mature into becoming more like Jesus and to operate in the ways God has created them.

A PDP can be one of the most effective tools that leaders can have for their own development and to help others grow as well. Many times, with the huge backlog of responsibilities and spinning plates that a leader has, personal development can be left to the side. But without proactive development, we’ll find ourselves perpetually at a deficit of having the knowledge or skills for how to lead, or worse and more likely, not dealing with the heart issues and obstacles that keep us from living out the fullness of who Jesus has created us to be. It takes time investment, hard conversations, and hard work, but seeing yourself and your teammates grow into maturity and fullness of Christ will be one of the most rewarding and impactful things that you will do as a leader!

If there’s any specific questions or need for consultation on how to form a PDP for yourself or a teammate, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d love to help you!