A Word to the Wise
 
Discipleship isn’t just about teaching someone to live like Jesus—it’s also about helping them lead like Jesus.
 
Too often, we overcomplicate leadership development. But when you strip it down, it's simpler than we think—and far more powerful when we make it personal.
 
Here are three practical ways to put it into practice starting today:
 
1. Ask more, tell less. Instead of always giving answers, start asking better questions. Jesus rarely just “told” His disciples what to do—He asked questions that made them think.
 
2. Invest in the few to impact the many. Jesus spent most of His time with 12 people. He knew that multiplying leaders happens best through deep relationships, not big events.
 
3. Teach people to see decisions as discipleship. Every decision a leader makes is a chance to grow in wisdom, faith, and character. Helping someone make better decisions is one of the best ways to disciple them.
Discipling leaders isn’t about filling their heads—it’s about forming their hearts.
Mac Lake, 3.17.25, Leadership Development Isn’t Complicated – It’s Discipleship

A Word to the Wise
 
Discipleship isn’t just about teaching someone to live like Jesus—it’s also about helping them lead like Jesus.
 
Too often, we overcomplicate leadership development. But when you strip it down, it's simpler than we think—and far more powerful when we make it personal.
 
Here are three practical ways to put it into practice starting today:
 
1. Ask more, tell less. Instead of always giving answers, start asking better questions. Jesus rarely just “told” His disciples what to do—He asked questions that made them think.
 
2. Invest in the few to impact the many. Jesus spent most of His time with 12 people. He knew that multiplying leaders happens best through deep relationships, not big events.
 
3. Teach people to see decisions as discipleship. Every decision a leader makes is a chance to grow in wisdom, faith, and character. Helping someone make better decisions is one of the best ways to disciple them.
 
Discipling leaders isn’t about filling their heads—it’s about forming their hearts.
​
Mac Lake, 3.17.25, Leadership Development Isn’t Complicated – It’s Discipleship

A Word to the Wise
 
Gallup identified four key expectations followers have of their leaders. They need leaders to provide hope, trust, compassion, and stability.
 
Pastors and other leaders often feel responsible for providing countless benefits to those under their care. But what is it people actually need from those leading them?
 
Gallup released the “Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want” report after conducting a worldwide study to discover the types of leaders with the most positive influence on people’s daily lives and the most dominant need among followers.
 
Gallup asked respondents to list three words that best describe what their most positive leader contributes to their life. Using this open-ended question in multiple leadership studies in the U.S. and additional countries, Gallup identified four key expectations followers have of their leaders. They need leaders to provide hope, trust, compassion, and stability.
 
Of those four, followers most need hope. Of all the attributes individuals list about their most impactful positive leader, 56% are tied to hope, particularly attributes of inspiration, vision, and personal integrity.
 
Additionally, however, pastors should be inspiring people with a positive vision for the future of the church, overcoming obstacles to trust, displaying compassion for the needs of their people, and serving as an example of stability in times of chaos.
Pastors cannot generate these feelings in and of themselves, but as they lean on Christ, He can ensure the congregation has their leadership needs fully met.
​
Aaron Earls, Lifeway Research, 3.7.25, What do people want most from their leader? Hope
 

A Word to the Wise by Paul Tripp
 
Suffering Is Never Neutral
We never suffer only the thing we are suffering; we also always suffer the way we are suffering. We never come to our suffering empty-handed. We always drag a bag full of experiences, expectations, assumptions, perspectives, desires, intentions, and decisions into our suffering.
 
Thus, our lives are shaped not only by what we suffer but by also what we bring to our suffering. How we think about ourselves, life, God, and others will profoundly affect the way in which we think about, interact with, and respond to the difficulties that come our way.

​Fight the Enemy by Counting Blessings
When we are suffering, we must force ourselves to pay attention to our private conversation, that is, the words we say to ourselves that no one else hears. We are always talking to ourselves about ourselves, life, God, others, meaning and purpose, relationships, trouble, solutions, hope, the past, the future, and so on. Because of this constant internal conversation, we influence ourselves more than anyone else does, since we hear what we ourselves have to say more than we hear anyone else. But every sufferer must ask, ‘Has my suffering caused me to begin to believe things that are not true and therefore to say to myself things that are not true?’ We need to question our own assumptions. We need to argue with our own hearts. We need to confront evidences of unbelief in our private conversation.
 
There is no more powerful tool against debilitating doubt than gratitude. It is exactly at the point where we are tempted to doubt our blessings that counting our blessings is the most important. A thankful heart is the best defense against a doubting heart. Recounting evidences of God’s presence, his grace, his faithfulness to his promises, his provision, and the reliability of what he has told us in his Word reminds us of God’s goodness—and, because it does, it protects us against the lies that tempt us to deem him as less than good.
 
No matter how difficult or long-lasting our suffering may have been, there are blessings to be found.
 
Our battle is not merely the difficult thing we are facing but also encompasses the impact of the difficulty on our hearts.
​
Paul Tripp, 3.1.25, excerpts from “Grace + Knowledge: When Suffering Knocks”

A Word to the Wise: www.KarlVaters.com
 
Here’s a simple piece of advice for my generation of seasoned pastors. If you want to make your Sunday messages more effective for how people live and listen today, do this one thing: Stop making your sermon notes rhyme or alliterate.
 
Rhymes and alliterations used to make speakers seem credible, authoritative, and prepared. That’s no longer the case.
​
Hey Boomer, Stop Making Your Sermon Notes Rhyme Or Alliterate, Karl Vaters, 2.17.25

A Word to the Wise: Evangelism for Everybody
 
My mentor in the ministry, Matt Queen, has a simple evangelism strategy that anyone can do, which begins by asking, “Has anyone told you God loves you today?” Inevitably, the answer is no, at which point you can ask to be the first and say, “God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to live a perfect life for you, die a sacrificial death for you, rise victoriously for you, and save you if you turn to Him in faith. Would you like to hear more about that today?” If they do, go for it. If not, you leave them with a gospel tract, information about your church, or even your contact information if they have questions later.
 
I began sharing that strategy from the pulpit and during other teaching opportunities, and our people got after it. In fact, during Easter, one of our members went to the grocery store next to the church and asked the cashier if anyone had told her God loves her, and the cashier said, “Actually, yes! Someone from that church (she pointed toward our building) was just here and told me, and I plan on coming this Sunday.” Story after story started coming in, and fast. I’d often share some of them from the pulpit with encouragement to keep up the good work.
 
By the end of the year, we were averaging almost 400 people in gathered worship and had seen over 80 decisions of some kind. Now, instead of starting with a handful of folks committing to a big training and weekly visitation, we have hundreds of folks taking the gospel with them as they go, wherever they go, and God is blessing their faithfulness abundantly.
Matt Henslee, Pastor, Plymouth Park Baptist Church, Irving, TX, Baptist Press, 2.13.25, Evangelism for Everybody, https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/bptoolbox/evangelism-for-everybody/

A Word to the Wise: Kie Bowman
 
A visionary leader can see a future others haven’t considered and can mobilize people to accomplish what they would have never attempted on their own. As we have often heard, “People don’t follow a vision. People follow a leader with a vision.”

Kie Bowman, 2.11.25, Baptist Press, How Pastors Cast Vision to Create a Culture of Prayer

A Word to the Wise from Dr. Jim Shaddix
 
When asked to give advice to young pastors, Shaddix told SEBTS, “Everything comes back to the Word. We have to trust the Word to do its work. … Depend on that, start there, and stay there and trust that.
 
“Trust that to be where your content comes from, where your authority comes from, where your power comes from. Everything comes back to the Word, and I know it begins to sound trite when you’re constantly saying just preach the Word. But the reality is that’s what Paul said to do.”
​
2.3.25, Jim Shaddix, ‘champion of prayer and expository preaching’ dies at 64

A Word to the Wise by Mac Lake
 
Leadership development is not fast, easy, and linear.
 
Top 3 Challenges (Reasons pastors are not discipling leaders)

1. Fear
2. Inexperience
3. Pride (an unwillingness to train others because of a desire for control)

 
You get to choose your pain – the current pain of a lack of leaders, etc., or the pain of a leadership pipeline.
 
Use a Transformational Approach to Leadership Development
 
Dumping information doesn’t produce transformation.
 
Think smaller, not bigger, slower, not faster.
 
Strategy:
Individual development: Prepare
Team Development: Equip
Organizational Development: Inspire
 
Triad of Development That Leads to Transformation:
Knowledge, Experience, Coaching
Mac Lake, 1.28.25, Georgia Baptist AMS Retreat

A Word to the Wise: What’s your purpose, your God-given mission where you serve?
 
No one drifts toward their purpose, only away from it.
 
Like a ship at sea, staying on course requires constant correction.
The difference between those who fulfill their purpose and those who don't isn't in having fewer distractions - it's in having a disciplined approach to realignment.
The best leaders understand that this discipline comes from three things: the confidence to begin, the commitment to continue, and the consistency to adjust course when they've strayed.
While many have the confidence to start, fewer commit to regular reflection. And fewer still maintain that commitment when the winds blow hard.
One leader we know keeps a simple note on his desk: "Is what I'm doing right now moving me closer to or further from my purpose?"
It's not about never getting knocked off course - it's about how quickly you notice and correct for it.
When was the last time you checked your heading?
​
Admired Leadership Field Notes, 1.18.25, Drift Demands Redirection