Leadership Development & Loving Your Neighbor

So I was at a meeting tonight for people interested in church planting. There were many things discussed, but one thing that was stressed was that people who are good church planters, are people who are good at leadership development. Leadership development basically means that you a good at identifying people who you can invest in and who grow into leadership positions. This has been one of the greatest incite that has come from the Evangelical church. Over the past 30 years there has been a lot of thought put into church planting, in particular leadership development, and it has greatly benefited the Church worldwide.

After the meeting I was reflecting on what was said, and it seams to me that the Evangelical church might be teaching that leadership development and loving your neighbor are the same thing. That the most living thing you could do for someone was invest in them and to develop them into a leader.

I would agree that leadership development is a form of loving your neighbor, but loving your neighbor is much more than leadership development. When Jesus talked about loving your neighbor he was talking about loving the poor and investing in people where you would not see a return. It's sad for me to see that we're picking up on the key incite of leadership development, but were missing a key discipleship principal of loving your neighbor.