One idea that is often considered for recruiting new group leaders is that every group leader should find someone in their group to mentor as a future leader to then leave and launch another group later. It makes sense. We’ve tried it. It didn’t work.

Here’s why: First, we don’t start groups just to split them or to get people to leave.

We want people to build lifelong relationships that give them the support and encouragement they need over the long haul. We have plenty of groups that have been meeting for well over ten, even twenty years!

Second, the moment you ask a leader to mentor and “raise someone up,” they suddenly have an additional task that makes their job more complicated.

Whether they recognize it or not, every one of our leaders is mentoring and discipling their group simply by how they lead and engage their groups. Yet if you start with it on the front end as a given responsibility, your chances of getting them to lead decrease because you’ve grown the task. Most would anticipate this to entail extra meetings, conversations, and stress if they can’t find someone or even overtly try. Leading a group every week is challenging enough.

For years, we worked hard on trying to get this model to work. It sounded good in theory. Yet, no matter how much we tried to simplify their view of mentoring, it still came across as a subtle fail if they weren’t overtly engaging and developing someone to lead. The reality was they weren’t failing. The failure was our strategy.

And then it occurred to us that our leaders are no different than our staff. They all have great abilities, but they’re not all recruiters. What if we change the paradigm from mentoring to simply asking for a referral? Instead of giving them the task of raising up or recruiting a leader, let’s simply ask if they see anyone in their group with a possible leadership or hosting gene. It took the pressure off trying to get them to create vision and train up others to lead, and rather just look for potential leaders. Again, most were mentoring just by how they led and cared for their group.

This was a game-changer for us in getting referrals and put less pressure on our leaders. Instead of asking your existing leaders to mentor future leaders, merely ask if they could see anyone in their group potentially leading or hosting. Our Pastors and the work of the Holy Spirit take it from there.