I spoke with Ryan Stigile a couple weeks ago. He generously spent time with me talking about leadership development at his church and at churches he serves through The Unstuck Group as a strategic analyst.

He covered some amazing stuff, but the Big Idea takeaway that I got from the conversation was that leadership development needs to be baked into every aspect of church life.

He said that volunteer training can’t just happen on a special Sunday morning or during a scheduled training event. And he said that leader development has to be more than a book reading group or special events.

Those things are good, but they should be supplemental to the process of leadership development that’s happening at all times, in every interaction. Ryan gave example after successful example of effective leadership development that didn’t look like a program.

Bottom line: leadership development needs to be a cultural value that weaves its way into every aspect of local church ministry.

Three things I loved about my chat with Ryan:

1. He knows leadership development like a Stephen Hawking knows the physics.
2. He sincerely loves local churches.
3. He talks as fast as I do…which makes it easy to have a 1-hour conversation in 30 minutes.)