Christian Leadership Alliance

Strategic HR Planning

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Attracting and Developing Future Leaders

Christian magazines, newspapers, and job-search firms specializing in nonprofit organizations are constantly advertising job opportunities for Christian leaders.

Have your read ads like this?

"Seeking a dynamic leader with impeccable integrity, superior administrative skills, excellent communication skills, and superb counseling abilities. If you have fundraising experience, the ability to plan and channel an organization's growth, the knowledge and experience to build a winning team, and a track record of successful fundraising, with a servant's heart, a love for people, devotion to family, please send your resume to. …"

One of the most difficult challenges for nonprofits today is attracting and keeping talented emerging leaders.

Developing Christian leaders able to lead a complex nonprofit is not easy. It requires viewing leadership development as a core value and making it a focus of our organizations. We must intentionally give time and finances to achieve this goal. Sadly, few organizations do this. Oh yes, they nod their heads in intellectual ascent to the concept, but they don't often produce visible results.

A few years ago, Arrow Leadership undertook a study of transition and determined that by 2010, about 50,000 Christian leaders would leave behind their leadership roles due to death, retirement, or failure. We focused on seminary and college presidents, large churches' ministers, denominational leaders, mission leaders, evangelists, and thousands of parachurch ministries.

The past three years have seen an acceleration of transition and a churning of leadership positions. We are watching baby boomers step away from senior leadership positions and organizations scrambling to find leaders able to handle the complexity of mature ministries. At the same time, we have seen an explosion of startup organizations, all of which are also seeking exceptional talent to lead and guide.

Ted Engstrom once shared with me his secret of staffing: "Put round pegs in round holes!' Find the right person with the right skill set, character, and capacity to fit the right job as perfectly as possible.

Many young leaders I work with tend to be looking for the right position or opportunity as though it will suddenly appear. I think this is because they lack mentoring and clear career paths in their current positions. Their "peg" has not been shaped or rounded sufficiently to fit any specific position. They have not been put in positions where they can risk or fail—and we all know how much failure can teach us. Many are just uninterested in taking a leadership role in an organization that they have little opportunity to shape.

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