This week, we’re focusing on the topic of leadership. You can find a lot of leadership resources on our Leadership topic page; but we’ll also be highlighting a few good resources in more detail here on the blog.

So where to begin? “Leadership” is a pretty broad topic—in a Christian context, it can cover a wide variety of roles. There’s “official” church leadership—pastors, worship leaders, and other church staff. You can also lead a small group or a Bible study. And you can be a Christian leader outside the church grounds: you might have a leadership role in your community or your business, or you might just be someone that other people look to for advice and direction.

To kick things off this week, one ministry with a special focus on leadership is Officers’ Christian Fellowship. Many of OCF’s resources use a bit of military-specific language (it is a military ministry, after all), but I think you’ll agree that their leadership guidance is applicable to just about anyone. Here’s a quick tour of some of their free resources for leaders:

• Leading Effective Small Groups is one of the best primers I’ve seen on managing a successful Bible study group. It includes a great list of 20 ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s for a Bible study, and even a section on a touchy subject: how to deal with disruptive people in your Bible study. (It’s also available as a PDF download.)
• The 100 Days Bible Study is a great resource for Bible study leaders. It’s a 70-page document with short Bible study topics and discussion points covering dozens of topics. It’d be very useful for an impromptu Bible study, or for use when your small group needs something to talk about.
• Follow Me is a short essay that looks at the type of leadership that Jesus demonstrated, and offers ideas for emulating him.
• Eleven Bible studies about leadership, thoroughly addressing each of the traits that makes for a good Christian leader, from your attitude to your role to your vision for your group. There’s also an essay about Leading a Bible study which is essentially a shorter version of the longer essay we mentioned above.
• And if that’s not enough, OCF has many more articles on the topic of leadership.

If you’re a leader in your church community—officially or otherwise—take a look at these materials!

By: Andy. This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Bible Study, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.