When Jesus first called His disciples, He did not say, “Follow Me, and I will make you healthy leaders.” He said:

"Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19)

His goal went beyond making His emerging leaders healthy and mature. Jesus was preparing them to fulfill His purposes and to do the greater works that lay ahead (John 14:12). They grew and matured as they followed Him in the work.

Leaders grow through challenging assignments because people learn by doing. The challenge itself therefore has a strategic place in building leaders. A “Big Challenge” is a significant ministry assignment given to an emerging leader, designed to stretch them beyond their present capacity. It brings all the elements of leader development together.

Jesus Built His Disciples Through Big Challenges

Jesus used the work itself to form His disciples. He did not separate the ministry work from leader development; He intentionally wove the work and the building together.

From the beginning of His ministry, He gave His disciples significant responsibilities and taught and encouraged them as they carried them out. Again and again, they grew through Big Challenges.

Early in His ministry, He had them baptizing new believers (John 4:1-3). He sent them into the villages to preach, with authority to heal the sick and cast out demons (Matthew 10:5-8). He told them to feed the 5,000 (Matthew 14:16). He called Peter to come to Him on the water (Matthew 14:28-31). Some assignments exposed their weakness, and He used their failures to teach them (Matthew 17:14-20). The challenges increased in difficulty over time, and the disciples matured through them. Finally, He entrusted them with the greatest challenge of all: the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).

Mark shows us the simplicity of Jesus’ method:

And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him. And He appointed twelve (whom He also named apostles) so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. (Mark 3:13-15)

This passage joins two principles: leaders build leaders, and challenging assignments are central to that work. The disciples were called to be with Jesus and then sent out to do the work.

Jesus also modeled everything He asked of them. The disciples watched Him do the work before He sent them out to do it themselves, and every challenge was grounded in relationship. He did not wait until they were perfect; He guided and corrected them through each assignment.

Peter denied Him three times on the night He was arrested. Jesus knew Peter was going to fail and had already prayed for him:

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31-32)

Even in the prayer, Jesus gave him his next assignment. After the Resurrection, Jesus restored Peter, drawing out his love three times and each time charging him to feed and tend His sheep (John 21:15-17). In the same way, in Mark 16, Jesus gave His disciples an extraordinary assignment (the Great Commission) immediately after they had failed three times (vv. 8, 11, 13-14).

Two thousand years later, the global spread of the Church demonstrates the wisdom of Jesus’ strategy. His disciples made some errors along the way, but in the long term, His strategy worked. Like Jesus, experienced leaders often see potential in emerging leaders before those leaders can see it in themselves.

Paul followed the same pattern. He built his emerging leaders as he took them with him in the work of planting and strengthening churches. Timothy and Titus grew through the responsibilities Paul gave them, while he supported them through his presence and letters. Paul says of Timothy:

But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the Gospel. (Philippians 2:22)

God built them through those challenging assignments. Paul tells Timothy to pass the pattern on:

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2)

Four generations are in this one sentence: Paul, Timothy, the faithful men and the others they will teach.

Although 2 Timothy 2:2 focuses on teaching, Paul built Timothy through far more than instruction. He shared the whole of his life and mission with him, as he reminds Timothy:

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra – which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. (2 Timothy 3:10-11)

Timothy followed both Paul’s doctrine and his manner of life. Through persecution and suffering, he saw Paul depend on God and experience His deliverance. God used all of it to form Timothy.

Paul’s emerging leaders were to become builders themselves, and they were to build others in the same way: through shared life and mission, not instruction alone.

God Has Always Built His Leaders Through Big Challenges

Jesus and Paul did not introduce a new method. This is how God has always built His leaders: He gives them work that stretches their capacity.

Joshua was built through decades of assignments under Moses, beginning at the battle with Amalek at Rephidim:

So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” (Exodus 17:9)

The assignment stretched Joshua, with Moses supporting him. While Joshua fought, Moses stood above the battle with the staff of God raised, and Israel prevailed (Exodus 17:8-13). Joshua then served at Moses’ side for 40 years. He went up the mountain with him (Exodus 24:13) and maintained the tent of meeting when Moses was absent (Exodus 33:11). When the 10 spies discouraged the hearts of the people, Joshua stood with Caleb against them, in the face of an angry crowd ready to stone them for doing so (Numbers 14:6-10). The greatest challenge came later: leading Israel into the land that Moses himself could not enter. Now God Himself gave the charge:

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9)

David’s preparation followed the same progression. As a shepherd he faced the lion and the bear long before he faced Goliath:

And David said, “The Lord Who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!” (1 Samuel 17:37)

Harder assignments followed Goliath: commanding Saul’s fighting men (1 Samuel 18:5) and then leading 400 distressed, indebted and embittered men in the wilderness (1 Samuel 22:2). Through them, God prepared the future king.

God delights to entrust Big Challenges to weak and overlooked people. Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from Midian, when God came to him:

And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?” (Judges 6:14)

In reality, Gideon had no might of his own. The assignment required him to depend on God, Who then reduced the size of the army until only 300 men remained, so that Israel could not claim the victory for itself (Judges 7:2-7).

Mordecai, who had raised Esther, challenged her to act at the risk of her life:

"And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14)

Deborah judged Israel and spoke for God as a prophetess, and God stretched her through the war against Sisera. She summoned Barak, gave him the Lord’s command and, when he would not go without her, accompanied him into battle:

And Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the Lord go out before you?” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. (Judges 4:14)

This pattern appears elsewhere in the Old Testament. Moses was sent to Pharaoh (one of the most powerful rulers in his world), despite his fear and protests that he could not speak (Exodus 3 – 4). Nehemiah rebuilt the ruined walls of Jerusalem against open opposition in 52 days, and even his enemies saw that the work had been accomplished with the help of God (Nehemiah 6:15-16). God gave His servants work beyond their capacity and built them through it.

Mary was called to bear and raise the Son of God. She could not carry this responsibility in her own strength, and her obedience placed her social standing at risk. The angel brought God’s word, and she answered in faith:

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

God Is the One Who Builds Leaders

God also designs Big Challenges Himself, sometimes through circumstances no one would choose. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, after which he spent years in Potiphar’s house and in an Egyptian prison before finally standing before Pharaoh. Through those years, God prepared Joseph to preserve Egypt and his own family through the famine. At the end, Joseph said to his brothers:

"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." (Genesis 50:20)

Paul’s affliction in Asia was another such challenge (2 Corinthians 1:8-9) – no one assigned it to him. James explains how believers should receive such trials and what they produce:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

When God gives such a challenge, we do not need to design another assignment. Our part is to recognize His work and surround the leader with the support a designed assignment would include: a mentor alongside and a community that prays and encourages. A leader who walks with God through loss or opposition may be formed as deeply as through any assignment we design.

A Big Challenge Stretches the Leader Beyond Their Present Capacity

A Big Challenge is a significant ministry assignment entrusted to an emerging leader, intentionally designed to stretch their capacity and require them to grow. At least one mentor should walk alongside the leader throughout the assignment.

The assignment must genuinely challenge the leader. An assignment the leader can easily accomplish may still be useful, but it is unlikely to produce the same growth. The pressure of a Big Challenge requires leaders to develop new capacities, learn and change as they go and depend on God to do what they cannot do on their own.

Paul experienced this in Asia:

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God Who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

Growth through a Big Challenge is never automatic. The leader’s response largely determines what the challenge produces. God builds the leader as they respond to Him in faith and obedience. All 12 spies saw the same land and the same giants, yet only Joshua and Caleb responded with faith (Numbers 13 – 14). The same pressure that drives one leader to deeper dependence on God can harden another. A mentor therefore helps the emerging leader respond in faith and return to dependence on God during the challenge.

A well-designed Big Challenge is connected to a genuine need and a legitimate ministry vision. It should not be an artificial exercise created merely to give someone a growth opportunity. The assignments Jesus gave were the actual work of His mission. The challenge must be significant enough to require faith, and it must correspond both to the purposes of God and to the developmental needs of the leader. The strongest challenges engage several transformational dynamics without adding unnecessary complexity.

Jesus’ assignment to feed the 5,000 was simple to state but a serious challenge for the disciples to carry out.

Lifting up His eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward Him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” (John 6:5-7)

Jesus gave them another very demanding assignment in Matthew 10:

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics nor sandals nor a staff, for the laborer deserves his food.” (Matthew 10:5-10)

He told them to preach the Gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead and take no money with them. Again, this assignment was straightforward and yet deeply challenging.

A Big Challenge must remain achievable: it should stretch the leader, not crush them. It should also produce observable outcomes that the leader and mentor can reflect on and assess before designing the next challenge.

A challenging assignment need not involve a positional promotion; in fact, some assignments stretch the leader more without one.

Whatever form the assignment takes, an emerging leader should never be given a responsibility beyond the level of their character, lest they become puffed up and fall (1 Timothy 3:6, 10; 5:22).

The Big Challenge Is the Integrating Mechanism

The Big Challenge shifts the fundamental question of leader development. Instead of asking, “How do we help this person grow?” we ask, “What challenge could this person take on that would require them to grow while accomplishing the purposes of God?” Growth is not pursued as its own end; it happens as the leader engages in a mission that demands it.

In a well-designed challenge, the Four Dynamics of Transformation (4Ds) converge:

• • The assignment is beyond what the leader can do on their own, so it brings them into deep dependence on God. The leader prays more because they need Him more, and the Holy Spirit uses the pressure to expose what must change in their heart. This is the spiritual dynamic, occurring naturally in the work itself rather than as an item on a growth plan.
  • Because few significant challenges can be accomplished alone, the leader must draw on mentors and the surrounding community. This activates the relational dynamic.
  • The assignment itself is the experiential dynamic: the leader carries the responsibility under pressure and is accountable for the result.
  • The leader must learn in order to act effectively, seeking biblical understanding and practical wisdom they did not need until the challenge demanded it. This is the instructional dynamic.

The Big Challenge also engages the whole person, expressed in the 5Cs of the healthy leader (Christ, Community, Character, Calling and Competencies). Its pressure and uncertainty expose character, require new competencies and clarify calling as the leader directly engages God’s purposes.

And through it all, the leader’s union with Christ deepens, because the challenge cannot be accomplished apart from Him. In Jesus’ words:

"I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)

The leader’s connection with the Church also deepens. The leader needs the people of God around them, and as they share the work and support one another, that connection grows deeper. As Paul writes:

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.” (1 Corinthians 12:21)

No part can do without the others, and the body is built up only as each one “is working properly” (Ephesians 4:16).

Union with Christ (pros, face-to-face with God) is the center of Christian leadership. The 5Cs, the 4Ds and intentional design are all essential, and the Big Challenge is the single concrete assignment within which they all operate; it integrates and focuses them.

Instead of an abstract growth plan with the transformational dynamics attached to each goal, the leader has an assignment before them, and the goals and the dynamics integrate and converge in it.

Challenging Assignments Are Worth the Risk

Leaders who build leaders must balance current and legitimate organizational needs with their emerging leaders’ needs for growth. A leader who only puts immediate organizational needs first will likely be reluctant to give challenging assignments but will instead play it safe and assign the emerging leaders “tasks” that lie well within their capacities to accomplish.

Giving challenging assignments can carry organizational risk. If the emerging leader fails, there may be a significant organizational cost. Some critical tasks must therefore be assigned conservatively. Even so, leaders who build leaders should choose appropriate risks so emerging leaders can grow while the work advances.

Leaders who prioritize building future leaders will design Big Challenges; those focused only on short-term organizational needs will default to safe tasks.

Safe tasks primarily benefit the organization; challenging assignments benefit emerging leaders while still advancing the work. Tasks focus on the present; challenging assignments focus on the future. Tasks serve the immediate situation; challenging assignments serve the emerging leaders and the future mission. Leaders who build leaders design appropriate challenging assignments for them. It is through fire and challenge, with dependence on God and support from the community, that strong men and women of God are built.

Big Challenges Change How We Design

The Big Challenge reshapes design at every level, from life-on-life mentoring to cohort programs for emerging leaders. Design often begins with assessment: identifying growth needs, setting transformational goals and building a four-dynamic plan for each. These steps are useful, but a stronger question is: what assignment can we give this leader that will require them to grow in those areas while advancing the purpose of God for their church or ministry? The answer unites God’s purposes for the work with His purposes for the person.

Over time, an entire training program can be organized around a series of well-designed Big Challenges.

Design begins with vision. The challenge must emerge from the mission God has entrusted to the church or ministry. We therefore listen before designing: to God for His vision and to the emerging leader regarding their needs and present capacities.

The mentor and emerging leader should then design the challenge together. A challenge imposed from above may be politely received and quietly ignored. But participation in the design creates ownership. The initiative should pass back and forth as they work. The emerging leader should do as much of the design work as possible, because designing the challenge also builds the leader.

We must be careful to keep support and challenge in balance and build progressively. The assignment should stretch the leader without driving them toward burnout. Begin with something small and concrete. After the leader completes it, reflect together and take the next, larger step. Faithfulness in a small assignment prepares the leader for a larger one. As Jesus says:

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." (Luke 16:10)

Often the right challenge already exists in the life of the leader or the church: a new church to plant, members to mobilize into their callings or a community need to meet.

Jesus and Paul gave both group and individual challenges. Group challenges develop collaboration, while individual challenges address a particular leader’s calling and growth.

Instead of asking only what participants need to learn, we ask what they need to do to advance the mission God has entrusted to them. Every training event, then, should move toward implementation. Participants should leave with a concrete plan – exactly what they will do in the coming weeks – not vague intentions. Our responsibility as mentors does not end when teaching ends. We must accompany implementation, because leaders are built as they act. Regular conversations about progress and obstacles help the emerging leader reflect on their experience and design the next step.

The design will rarely be perfect, and a necessary dynamic may accidentally be omitted. Even so, two or three dynamics working together can still produce significant growth. As the challenge unfolds, the missing dynamic will often become apparent, and its absence may teach the leader its importance more deeply than explanation alone.

God is the One Who builds leaders, and He works even through imperfect designs. As Paul says:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God Who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6-7)

Big Challenges Change How Leaders Learn

A Big Challenge moves much of a leader’s learning into the work itself. Formal learning is provided by an institution and leads to a recognized credential, such as a degree or diploma from a seminary or Bible college. Non-formal learning is organized teaching outside a credentialed program, such as a short course or structured study with a teacher. Informal learning takes place through life and work as the leader watches a mentor and carries out the assignment. What separates formal from non-formal is the credential. Non-formal teaching can be as substantial as formal teaching.

When the work becomes the place of formation, informal learning is the heart of the process, occurring as the leader does the work with a mentor alongside. Non-formal teaching supports that work in two ways. First, some instruction arises from the assignment itself. The leader encounters a question or problem and seeks the understanding needed to address it; here the instructional dynamic emerges directly from the work. Second, other instruction is planned in advance to give the leader breadth and depth in the knowledge of God beyond what the immediate assignment requires.

The first kind of instruction is not enough by itself. A leader who only ever learns what the immediate challenge demands may become capable in ministry while remaining weak in the knowledge of God. Movements that have grown almost entirely through informal and non-formal means have repeatedly run into doctrinal shallowness, syncretism, prosperity teaching and authoritarian leadership, because their biblical formation lagged behind their practical growth.

Sound doctrine is essential to leader development and equips leaders to guard the people they serve. Paul tells Titus that an overseer must hold firmly to sound teaching:

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:9)

The instructional dynamic needs the same deliberate attention as the spiritual, relational and experiential dynamics. Alongside the teaching prompted by the assignment, the mentor should provide carefully chosen instruction that broadens and deepens the leader’s understanding.

This planned teaching should remain closely connected to the leader’s work rather than becoming a separate, disconnected track.

Formal theological education still has a place. Every nation needs Christian scholars who have spent their lives studying church history, the biblical languages and doctrine. Their scholarship nurtures and protects the Church. For most emerging leaders, however, formal education is not the primary way they are formed.

This is how Jesus built the Twelve. They had no formal theological training. Luke records what the authorities observed:

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

Yet these men had been taught thoroughly. Jesus taught them as they traveled together and also through extended periods of teaching, including John 13 – 17 and the 40 days after the Resurrection, when He spoke to them about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). He explained His teaching privately to His disciples (Mark 4:34). He gave them no formal education but an abundance of non-formal and informal teaching.

Paul had received formal training under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). Yet he did not make it his method for building others. He built Timothy and Titus through a shared life and instruction in the field; he never sent them to a school.

Designing a Big Challenge therefore includes planning the teaching that will accompany it. Anticipate the instruction the work is likely to require, and add teaching that broadens the leader’s knowledge of God beyond the immediate demands of the assignment. The work creates the need to learn, and a wise design provides the teaching that meets that need.

Big Challenges Draw the Local Church into the Work

The larger vision is church-integrated leader development: leader development woven into the normal life and practice of the church community. It is the only adequate response to the shortage of leaders and the need for healthy leaders across the nations. Jesus spoke directly to the shortage:

Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)

His immediate response was to send out the Twelve. Big Challenges serve the same vision by forming leaders in the work.

Many local church leaders recognize the need to build the next generation but feel too busy with present demands. When the growth of emerging leaders is presented as a separate program, exhausted leaders may experience it as one more demand.

The Big Challenge changes that. Leaders begin with the vision God has already given the church and build emerging leaders through the work of fulfilling it. Leader development now advances the mission instead of competing with it, while the next generation is built in the process. What once felt like one more burden now grows out of the work they are already doing, and the responsibility for building leaders stays with the local church where it belongs.

For this reason, LeaderSource’s frontline training concludes with two simple instructions rather than complex design requirements: give the emerging leader a challenging assignment and build relational support around that leader. Jesus’ two principles in Mark 3:13-15 provide the starting point: spend time with the emerging leaders and send them out. These two practices begin the work of building the next generation while we learn the rest along the way.

Some leaders hesitate because they believe they must reach a certain level of maturity in their own lives before they are qualified to build others. Yet none of us will be perfect in this life, and Paul built leaders despite his own imperfections.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. (Philippians 3:12)

God will complete what He has begun in all our lives (Philippians 1:6), and He will use the work of building others to continue forming us. Designing a Big Challenge for an emerging leader, and then walking with them through it, is itself a Big Challenge. It stretches the builder beyond their present capacity and drives them to depend on God. The builder grows along with the emerging leader.

Emerging leaders do not need to know everything about the models behind this approach to begin a well-designed challenge. At first, the mentor can keep technical details in the background and design sound assignments; the emerging leader will learn by doing. As the work bears fruit and curiosity grows, the mentor can explain the models in greater depth. As each element is introduced, the mentor should explain its purpose. That explanation activates the instructional dynamic and nurtures the emerging leader’s capacity to build others.

A concrete challenge can also provide a less threatening entry point than a comprehensive assessment. In many cultures, starting with assessment overwhelms people. They see how much growth they need in every area, and they quietly withdraw. Undertaken with a mentor, the challenge can bring about the same growth without creating the same sense of shame. Growth occurs as the work requires it.

We Must Avoid Two Extremes

This approach must avoid two dangers. The first is treating personal growth as an end in itself – a self-focused spirituality. When personal transformation becomes the whole goal, leader development turns inward. Emerging leaders can become absorbed in fixing themselves while concern for the lost and the Church fades. Maturity becomes a private project. Movements that have pursued spirituality this way, existing for their own sake, have lost the mission entirely. Jesus says of His own purpose:

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (Luke 19:10)

The second danger is using people to keep the ministry machine running. Many church leaders around the world are exhausted, driven from task to task with little attention to their lives as workers. Used carelessly, the language of Big Challenges could reinforce that pattern. Mere activity is not a Big Challenge. Jesus gave His disciples work deliberately designed for their growth, not merely jobs that needed to be done.

Jesus worked with great intensity, yet He regularly withdrew to be with His Father (e.g., Luke 5:16) and taught His disciples the same practice.

And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. (Mark 6:31)

At times, leaders who built the Church before us poured themselves into the work while giving too little attention to building and caring for people. Their vision for the work often arose from love for God, and the work itself was good. Yet when the work was not integrated with the building and care of the people, the people themselves could be neglected. A well-designed Big Challenge weaves both together: the work fulfills the vision while also providing the context in which the people are built and cared for.

A well-designed Big Challenge therefore avoids both extremes, integrating the purpose of God and the building of the leader in one assignment, as Jesus did.

Leaders Are Built as the Work Is Done

As Paul writes:

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)

God has prepared the works, and our part is to walk in them while building the next generation. Ephesians 4 describes this pattern:

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 … (Ephesians 4:11-12)

The saints are equipped for ministry and continue to grow as they serve. An emerging leader who takes on a well-designed Big Challenge, with a mentor beside them and God’s purpose before them, grows through the work. One challenge prepares them for the next until they begin designing challenges for others.

Leaders are built as the work is done. This is how Jesus formed His disciples. Union with Christ is the source. Every leader must grow in the 5Cs, and the 4Ds describe how that growth occurs. Big Challenges bring all of these elements together within God’s purposes for the leader and the Church.

Where to Go from Here

A Big Challenge is a significant ministry assignment, entrusted to an emerging leader and designed to stretch them and require them to learn, change and grow. It integrates union with Christ, the 5Cs, the 4Ds and the purpose of God.

To build leaders this way:

• • Start with the vision God has already given you. Don’t invent an exercise – connect the challenge to a genuine opportunity for the church or the leader, such as a church to plant or a community need to serve, and design it around that.
  • Choose the emerging leader with care. Don’t simply give the assignment to whoever is available. Look for those with strong character who are thinking and acting.
  • Design it together with the emerging leader. Shared design produces ownership, and the design work itself builds them.
  • Decide whether the challenge is for an individual or a group. Jesus and Paul used both. A group challenge builds emerging leaders’ ability to work together, while an individual challenge focuses on one leader’s calling and growth.
  • Deliberately identify the areas of life and ministry in which the emerging leader needs to grow (the 5Cs), and build the leader in those areas. Be careful to intentionally engage all Four Dynamics of Transformation.
  • Be concrete and specific. The leader should know exactly what they will do in the coming weeks, not just have a few good intentions.
  • Stretch them without crushing them. The assignment should require more than they can presently do, so they have to depend on God. It should not exceed their character, or they may be puffed up and fall (1 Timothy 3:6). It need not involve a promotion to stretch a leader.
  • Accept appropriate organizational risk. Don’t play it safe just to protect the organization. Some assignments must be handled conservatively. Even so, embrace acceptable risks that let an emerging leader grow while the work advances.
  • Let the work drive the learning. The leader will seek understanding when the assignment demands it. Learning prompted by a real assignment is often retained more deeply than anything taught in a classroom because it is immediately connected to the daily realities of ministry. Also provide teaching that deepens the leader’s knowledge of God, not merely practical competence.
  • Build support around them. At least one mentor should walk with the leader through the whole assignment, while the wider church provides prayer, encouragement and practical help. Match the support to the challenge: a hard assignment with no one alongside sets the leader up to fail.
  • Whenever possible, the mentor should model the work before sending the emerging leader to do it. As with Jesus and His disciples, the leader first sees the work embodied, then does it with support.
  • Stay close while they carry it out. Leader development happens as the emerging leader does the work, not when the plan is developed or the teaching ends. Keep walking with them through obstacles and adjust as needed.
  • Expect some emerging leaders to fail. Jesus’ disciples failed too, and He used those failures to teach them.
  • When the assignment is complete, reflect together and design the next step. Look back at what the challenge produced and how God met them. Their response and growth deserve as much attention as the outcome of the task. Then give a larger or different kind of challenge. One challenge prepares the leader for the next.
  • Aim for multiplication. The goal is not only that the leader completes the assignment and grows personally, but that they learn how leaders are built and eventually design challenges for those they themselves are building.

An effective Big Challenge avoids two extremes: personal growth pursued as an end in itself and ministry activity that uses people without building or caring for them. It joins the purpose of God and the building of the leader in one assignment. Jesus gave His disciples work designed for their growth, and He drew them away to rest (Mark 6:31).

If all of this feels too complicated, start with what Jesus did: give your emerging leader a challenging assignment, and stay close to them as they do it.

And He appointed twelve (whom He also named apostles) so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. (Mark 3:14-15)

They will learn the rest as they go, and so will you.

To go deeper, we recommend our video course on building leaders.