On Raising Leaders and Building Teams

I was listening to a conversation about Acts 16 (Timothy joining Paul and Silas), and it hit me again how “normal” leadership development is in the early church.

Paul does not stumble into momentum by accident. He is building people. He is forming teams. He is multiplying ownership. And Luke captures it with one small word shift that says everything:

Paul had the vision… then “we” set out.

That is the goal. Not a ministry that depends on one voice, one personality, one gifted leader. But a church where people can say, with integrity, “This is ours. God called us.”

Let me pull out a few leader-raising lessons from this passage and the discussion around it, and then translate them into practical steps you can actually use.

1) The first job is not finding leaders

It’s making disciples

Acts 16 starts with Paul noticing Timothy. But notice what Luke highlights first: Timothy is already a disciple. He is already known. He is already being talked about in a healthy way.

Before you “appoint,” you disciple.

When I’ve gotten into trouble over the years, it’s almost always been because I tried to skip the slow part.

What to look for in a “Timothy”

Not hype. Not charisma. Not raw gifting alone.

Look for:

• Faithfulness: they show up when nobody’s clapping
• Teachability: you can correct them and they stay soft
• Spiritual temperature: they actually walk with God
• Humility: they do not need a stage to be valuable
• Capacity: not just desire, but margin for the assignment

And here’s a phrase I love: character and competency, 100 percent both.
Not “either-or,” and not “50-50.”

2) Give away responsibility fast. Give away leadership slow

This might be the single most helpful distinction for team-building.

Church planters, pastors, and leaders feel a pressure to fill roles. So we hand out titles to calm our anxiety. That works… until it doesn’t.

A wiser path:

• Give tasks before titles
• Let people carry weight before they carry authority
• Let trust be built by reps, not by talk

Because the pain of an empty seat is almost always less than the pain of removing someone from the wrong seat later.

3) Teams are built with language

You can create “we” with your mouth.

Paul has the vision. But the team owns the direction. That does not happen by magic. Shared ownership is cultivated.

Start paying attention to your words:

• Not “my church,” but “our church”
• Not “my vision,” but “what God is calling us to build”
• Not “watch me do it,” but “come do it with me”

And one more: be careful not to accidentally create a church that revolves around one personality. That does not raise leaders, it raises spectators… or worse, it raises narcissists.

4) Alignment is more than doctrine

It’s philosophy of ministry. This one is sneaky.

You can agree on theology and still have constant friction because you disagree on methods.

Examples:

• One person thinks “discipleship” means a classroom
• Another thinks “discipleship” means small groups
• Another thinks “discipleship” means one-on-one mentoring
• One person hears “excellence,” another hears “performance”
• If you want a healthy team, you have to talk about the “how,” not just the “what.”

Team alignment questions I like to ask…

• “What does a win look like in your mind?”
• “How do you define discipleship in real life?”
• “What kinds of things are non-negotiable to you?”
• “What past church experiences are shaping how you see this?”
• “What do you do when you disagree with a leader?”

5) Do not be threatened by eager people

Be threatened by cynical ones

There is a type of person who is excited, full of ideas, and ready to serve. They might be rough around the edges, but they are gold if you shepherd them well.

Then there’s a different type:

• always skeptical
• always “knows better”
• always has a better plan from the sidelines
• quietly poisons trust

Do not confuse those two. A fired-up person needs shaping… A cynical person often needs confronting, or distancing.

6) Your “current” matters more than your program

Build a structure that pushes people downstream.

I love this picture: when someone steps into a river, the current carries them.

That’s what you want.

Not one perfect pipeline that only works for people with ideal schedules, ideal maturity, and ideal availability. You want a whole church “current” moving in the same direction.

Because not everyone can do the same thing:

• shift workers
• single parents
• seniors with health limits
• new believers who are still learning basics
• longtime believers who were never discipled well

The question is not, “Can they do our exact process?”

The question is, “Is our whole church structure moving people toward maturity and mission?”

7) Early on, you meet everybody

Later, you invest deeper in leaders

This is a tension pastors feel in their bones.

In the earliest phase, you do a lot of connecting. You are building trust. You are forming culture. You are gathering people.

But if you keep trying to personally carry everyone forever, you will eventually hit an Exodus 18 wall (Jethro corrects Moses).

At some point, what’s best for the church is:

• less access to you personally
• more access to equipped leaders
• more care happening through a healthy team

That shift is hard, especially if you have a shepherd’s heart. But it is part of loving the church well.

8) Development is not a system, it’s pastoring people

This matters.

If all we do is run people through steps, we can build a machine that produces volunteers but not disciples.

Paul did not just assign Timothy tasks. He encouraged him. Strengthened him. Helped him mature. Put wind in his sails.

Leader development includes:

• encouragement
• correction
• time
• trust-building
• real conversations about conviction and repentance
• modeling spiritual disciplines, not just teaching them

People do not learn prayer from a book. They learn prayer by being around people who pray.

People do not learn leadership from a PDF. They learn leadership by reps, feedback, and responsibility.

A closing thought

Acts 16 reminds me that God loves to build His work through people who are still becoming.

Timothy was not “the finished product.” He was a disciple with a good reputation and a soft heart. And Paul saw enough to say, “Come with me.”

That’s what raising leaders really is.

Not hunting for perfect people.

Seeing the faithful ones, inviting them close, giving them reps, and helping them grow until the ministry is no longer “Paul”… it’s “we.”