For the last sixteen years I’ve been building teams. Identifying and recruiting leaders has been one of if not my top priority. For the next week or so I’ll be unpacking some of the lessons I’ve learned. My interest is leadership in general but specifically leadership in a multiethnic context.

I asked, “What do senior pastors do to identify and recruit leaders in multiethnic churches?” Derwin Gray, Lead Pastor of Transformation Church answered, “For 93% of them, nothing!” That bothers me, how about you?

Leadership is vital in every organization. As John Maxwell has aptly stated many times, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” The impact of leaders is significant across every domain of culture, whether in business, non-profits, sports, or the church. In his book Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code, Samuel Chand emphasizes the importance of identifying the right leaders:

Having the right staff members and top volunteers is crucial to fulfill a church’s vision. Eric O. Long, general manager of the Waldorf Astoria in New York, observes that finding, recruiting, selecting, and placing outstanding staff are becoming more difficult in our society, but good selection yields amazing results. In an interview for Leaders magazine, Long observed, “Our organizational-development team recently made a presentation to our executive staff, sharing the results of several well-documented studies. It revealed that one great team member had the impact of multiple [mediocre] team members, and in some cases the ratio was as high as 8:1.”

In Aubrey Malphurs’ book, Leading Leaders, he writes about the importance of finding quality leaders and how significant that is in attracting more leaders:

Quality leaders shy away from bad boards, especially those packed with spiritually unqualified good old boys or good old girls. However, quality leaders are attracted to properly functioning boards with carefully thought-through processes led by spiritually mature people who want to have serious, spiritual impact in their ministry communities.

A plethora of literature addresses leadership issues. However, little has been written on the topic of identifying and recruiting leaders. Add to that the dearth of literature written to address leadership in multiethnic churches.

With the massive shifts in diversity in America, it is increasingly difficult to say there is little diversity in most places. For example, in November 2005 the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education noted the sweeping changes in the U.S. workforce:

The U.S. workforce (generally ages 25 to 64) is in the midst of a sweeping demographic transformation. From 1980 to 2020, the white working-age population is projected to decline from 82% to 63% (see figure 1). During the same period, the minority portion of the workforce is projected to double (from 18% to 37%), and the Hispanic/Latino portion is projected to almost triple (from 6% to 17%).

While Caucasians are still a large majority, most live in areas where more than 20 percent of the population is non-White. If the church should be a reflection of the community, then most churches should reflect the increasing diversity.

This series will be an attempt to encourage more dialog & resource leaders to turn the tide. The need for more and better leaders is obvious.

The question is, “What are we doing to address that need?”

I’m especially curious to hear from and engage with those leading, planting, or wanting to be involved in multiethnic churches.

Tomorrow I will write about the rationale for multiethnic churches. Followed by the three essentials for identifying and recruiting leaders to lead them.