Pray, Identify, Engage: How to Spot Emerging Leaders

Leadership development is rarely accidental. It begins with intentional relationships. So often we think we need to hire this person or that person, we think we need people with specialized degrees, years of prior experience, a lifetime growing up in the church...But have you ever stopped to think that God has already provided the leaders you're looking for? They may be sitting in your church right now...

Series: Growing Leaders Where You Are 
Speaker: Ryan Lutz 
Episode 2 of 3: Pray Identify Engage
Episode Transcript: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2627823/19464165-pray-identify-engage-how-to-spot-emerging-leaders/transcript

Welcome to Let's Talk: Life, Leadership & Making Disciples. This podcast is designed as a resource for pastors, church staff, elders, ministry leaders, volunteers, church planters and disciple makers. Every week, we strive to provide valuable insights to train, inform and inspire healthy leaders who will go on build healthy churches. 
Follow our podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2627823 

This is the second episode of a three-part series featuring Ryan Lutz, titled Growing Leaders Where You Are. Ryan is the senior pastor of Bethany Missionary Church in Elkhart, Indiana. He also oversees our full-time and part-time residency program here at the North Central Region of the Missionary Church. As the director of our leadership development program, Ryan is passionate about empowering leaders in churches of every size. 

"You don't need a larger church, a bigger budget, or a perfect system to develop leaders. You simply need to believe God has already placed potential leaders around you and take intentional steps to invest in them. Many pastors are praying for leaders while sitting in a room full of future leaders." - Ryan 

Elevate Church Leadership Conference.
November 2, 2026
Nappanee Missionary Church in Nappanee, Indiana
Learn more and sign up at mcncr.org

The Timothy Project (Youth Leadership Conference)
November 14, 2026
St. Mark Missionary Church in Mishawaka, Indiana
Learn more and sign up at mcncr.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Let's Talk, a podcast about life, leadership, and making disciples. Let's Talk is brought to you by the North Central Region of the Missionary Church, where we want to empower everyday people to love like Jesus and live like missionaries. To find out more about our events and ministries, go to mcncr.org.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hey, thanks so much for joining us once again on the Let's Talk Podcast, where we want to help you live better, lead better, and make more disciples. My name's Kevin Moore. I'm the regional director here of the North Central Region, but I'm also your host on this podcast. And today we are kicking off episode number two of Growing Leaders Where You Are. Last time, Ryan Lutz led us through a conversation on believing it before you see it. And today he's going to talk about pray, identify, and engage. How can you actually spot emerging leaders? So without further ado, grab a notebook, grab a pen, and let's get ready to grow.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Let me tell you about my friend Austin. Austin, right now, is one of the leaders of the student ministry at my church, Bethany Missionary Church, and he is doing an incredible job there. But it wasn't too long ago, just a few years back, where Austin and his wife, both army vets that met uh at base in California, got married, have two kids, were invited to a church because their daughter was at the vacation Bible school in the neighborhood church that they were uh in the neighborhood they were living. They hadn't gone to church or anything like that. They had a little bit of a faith background, but not much. I was an associate pastor at this church that we're talking about, and they ended up coming to church on Sunday because their daughter had such a great time at the vacation Bible school that the church had, and they started attending regularly. Over the the next few weeks, months, whatever it might have been, they started really feeling the Spirit of God move and stir in their hearts to the point where they both said yes to Jesus. And then they not only made the internal decision to say yes to Jesus, but they wanted to externally uh proclaim their faith in Jesus by entering the waters of baptism. And I had the privilege of baptizing Austin and his wife, and we got to celebrate that in incredible ways. A few weeks or months later, again, timelines all are all crazy and whatnot. I was having a meeting with our the youth pastor at the church that I was at. And we were looking and praying over, you know, what are who are some leaders that we could have come in and really invest in the next generation? See, because the the reality was is the ministry that we had had some great quote unquote numbers of students that were coming, middle school and high school students that were coming to be a part of it, but we were lacking in adult volunteers. And those of you who have worked in student ministry know that there is a clear ceiling on the amount of reach and growth, discipleship that can happen when you only have a limited number of adult volunteers, but you have a lot of students. And so we spent some time in our one-on-one, our weekly one-on-one, me and this youth pastor praying. God, who is someone that can rise up and lead within this student ministry? And as we were both praying, we spent some time praying, discussing. We prayed about it at home, all that stuff came back the next week, and for whatever reason, God had laid the same person on our hearts, and it was Austin. Just been baptized, all that stuff is great. He was a young adult, younger guy in his late 20s, young kids, all this stuff would be the perfect candidate for most youth pastors. The only thing was is Austin wasn't necessarily the most extroverted person, right? He's an electrician, so he works with his hands all day. He was an army vet, a little more introverted, drawn back. He's also a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. So I don't know how how well Pittsburgh Steelers fans serve in youth ministry, right? Y'all can relate to that, I guess. But God was saying, hey, I think this is the guy that we're supposed to kind of reach out to to see if he'd be interested in leading in the student ministry. So our youth pastor approached him on a Sunday morning and said, Hey, I just want you to think and pray about what it would look like for you to serve in our student ministry. And after some time of praying and whatnot, Austin decided, yeah, you know what, I'm going to take this step to step into a leadership role within the student ministry. And he wrestled with it, he said. But he believed it was the right next step that God was calling him to. Fast forward a few years, Austin had been serving faithfully in that student ministry as a small group leader. Came over to the church that I had uh uh stepped into a senior pastor role, and he stepped into our student ministry director role. Where he was faith, he is faithfully serving as the director of our student ministries, middle school and high school student. We launched a student ministry back in September, and we have seen faithfully, week after week, go by where he and his his group of adult volunteers leaders are serving these students so faithfully. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, he led, he and another leader led a mission strip, a local mission strip, three days, two nights with students where they were just serving in our communities. SOS, summer of service. Other churches, other youth groups were all involved, they were gathered together. Our church at Bethany, they were sleeping out in tents in the field at the church. He was doing the youth pastor stuff. In fact, the Sunday after SOS, I asked he and the other adult volunteer to come share some of the stories, some of what they did at this summer of service students event, that type of stuff. And so they they got to share where God was moving, the different areas that they served, the different things that they did. And as they were getting ready to close, and I was getting ready to get up there to give the message for the day, our adult, our other adult volunteer Brenda, she goes, Austin actually learned a new dance move. And so they're on the stage, this introverted Pittsburgh Steelers fan, army vet, guy that I couldn't have imagined if I just met him the first time we met him, that he would be leading in student ministries. Got up there and was doing this crazy dance on the stage, and I was just loving it. You see, the reality is, is so often we can find ourselves thinking that we just need to hire this person, hire that person. We need the person with this degree or that degree. We need the person with this many years of experience or this many years of hours of this type of stuff, the person who grew up in a youth group, the person who knew how to serve as this, that, and the other. But the reality is, is I believe that God has what you are looking for when it comes to leadership development, maybe sitting in your church right now. If you remember last episode, we were talking about, you know, belief. Leadership development starts with belief. And I talked about three different things. Leadership development starts with belief. Stop waiting for the ideal church, start stewarding the church that God has given you and cast vision for multiplication. This all comes under the umbrella of believe, identify, and multiply. And so today, what we're going to be talking about is the second part of that believe, identify, and multiply, and that is identify. When we're talking about building a culture of leadership development within any church context, I believe that these three things, believe, identify, and multiply are going to be the driving force to get leadership development to happen in your church. Believe, identify, and multiply. You don't need a larger church or a bigger budget or a perfect system to develop leaders. You simply need to believe that God has already placed potential leaders around you and take intentional steps to invest in them. Believe, identify, multiply. Today we're going to be talking about identifying and what it looks like to identify potential leaders for the ministry context that you might be in. How do you spot emerging leaders? Because honestly, leadership development is rarely accidental. It typically begins with intentional relationships, with casting vision, with the right type of work that way. And so I've got three main points for this podcast today, this episode today, when we're talking about identifying how to spot emerging leaders. And the three main points are this. I'm going to give you all three of them and then we're going to break them down. Here are the three main points pray, identify, engage. Pray, identify, engage. When you think about that story of Austin emerging as a leader, that's how we kind of were able to uh quote unquote identify him as a potential leader. It started with prayer, as everything should. Then it was identifying who God had laid on our hearts, and then it was engaging in conversation. It wasn't a, hey, here's your next step. Hey, here's the packet of information that you need. Hey, here's this training manual of what you need. It was just engaging in relationship. And it probably took a little longer to get Austin to commit to being in serving in student ministries, and I'm remembering, but again, timelines are fuzzy. So the three main points for identifying for how to spot emerging leaders are this. Pray, identify, engage. So let's start with point number one. Pray. Ask God to show you who He's already preparing. Now, this is an area that I think as I look back on that story at Austin, God's grace was sufficient because I, to be completely honest with you, what I was praying was, God, can you show me a student ministry leader? Can you we have this open spot, we have this slot, we have this need as a church for a ministry area. I need someone to fill it, right? And that I don't think that prayer is necessarily wrong. I think probably within your ministry context, you have holes or gaps in your volunteer areas. Maybe you need a bass guitar player for your worship team. Maybe you need a new greeter to welcome at the front door. Maybe you need someone to serve in the third to fifth grade room in your kids' ministry space. Maybe you need a student ministry leader. And I think it's good and right to pray, God, can you provide for this gap, this hole that you have? But I think it's also really powerful for us to sit and rather than giving God our plans and saying, God, can you help us fill out our plan? We go to God and say, God, what is your plan? Who are you already preparing? I might have needs in my ministry context and my strategic plan for the way that our church is going to operate. But God, I lay down at the altar my strategy for your will. I lay down at the altar my plans for this church for your purpose. And so, God, who are you already preparing? We start to pray. And the youth pastor and I, we started to pray, who, God, who are you preparing? And the way that the Holy Spirit works, He put on our heart to the same exact person. God is just so cool. But we start to ask God, who are you, who are you already preparing? We pray for discernment. Friends, there are times where you can be praying and you can be so deceived by different things that you think you need to, different boxes that you need to check, right? So you ask God, you pray for discernment. God, who, what, what opportunities are from you, and what opportunities are from me? What opportunities are are you pointing me to, and what opportunities are I'm am I taking my own personal agenda, my vendetta, my own count, what I learned at this conference of what I need, this, that, and the other. What what is my will and what is yours? Give me discernment. Then you pray for opportunities to invest. Friends, I don't know about you. I've worked at different churches and I've been that leader, that youth pastor, that associate pastor, that senior pastor that has roles, volunteer needs, that type of stuff. And so I turn very quickly into the salesman of our kids' ministry volunteer team, right? Very quickly turn into the used car salesman of our youth ministry team, very quickly turn into the used pushy car salesman of trying to get more greeters at their front door, that type of stuff. And I don't know about you, but there's probably been moments where you feel a little icky when you start to pitch serving the house of the Lord. But I don't think that we need to be a salesman to serve our volunteer teams. I don't think we need to be pushing a used car off the lot in order to try to get the mission of God to develop leaders within our church context. I think if we pray for opportunities, God's gonna open the doors. Now, the power is not just having a door open for you, but it's actually stepping through that door as well. So we pray for opportunities. Leadership development begins on your knees before it begins in a meeting, before it begins in a training session, before it begins in a classroom, before it even begins in a relational conversation. It begins in prayer. I believe that God is always preparing someone. We just simply need to have our eyes to see them. We say, Lord, open our eyes for what you are doing. Prayer changes what you're looking for oftentimes. And God will often answer prayers for leaders by pointing you toward people you might have overlooked. I'll be honest with you. As a hardcore Detroit Lions fan, I mean, I don't have any hatred toward the Pittsburgh Steelers, but they were not my ideal NFL fandom youth ministry leader. But man, God is moving in incredible ways through the leadership and the direction of Austin. So point number one, we got to pray. How to spot emerging leaders? Start with prayer. End with prayer. And in the middle, you can pray some more. Point number one, pray. Point number two, identify. Now, this is the one where I tried to get a little practical, but I don't want to give you a copy and paste things. Some of the things that I often look for, that the Lord will often reveal potential leaders are through this. It's people who are faithful, teachable, they show initiative, they have a little bit of influence, and they demonstrate some spiritual hunger. I'm not just looking for platform gifts, the great speaker, the charismatic person, the funny person, that, this, that, and the other. I'm looking at character and potential because potential is usually quieter than talent, right? And we all know that character whispers while charisma shouts, but character lasts while charisma often sometimes, without the character, can find itself burning up pretty quickly. Don't just look for the most gifted person, look for someone who's very teachable. And faithfulness is often the first sign of future leadership. We've all heard the stories, we've experienced it. Some of you are living it. The person who showed up day in, day out, day after day after day, faithfully serving, faithfully serving, faithfully serving. And God then blesses and gives more opportunity. God sees people, God sees who people can become, not just who they are today. That's why we need to start with prayer and we move into I identify. We start with prayer and we let God do the identifying. We start with prayer, we ask, God, can you give us eyes to see the way you want us to see? And that's how we find ourselves into identifying the next leader in our church. Point number one, we pray. How do we spot emerging leaders? We pray, we identify, and then we engage. We invite them to coffee, invite them over for dinner. We hear their story, we ask how God is working in their lives, we learn about their passions and their burdens. Leadership development, friends, listen, leadership development starts with conversations before it starts with curriculum. I am all for leadership development curriculum. In fact, I am way too much all in on different leadership development curriculum. Every leadership book, leadership development book, all this type of stuff. You know, growing up, truthfully told, when I was growing up in middle school and high school in the summertime, we'd have three months in summer, June, July, August. That type of school typically ends somewhere in June and begins somewhere in August. But June, July, and August, my dad would give me three different leadership books that I would have to read and do PowerPoint presentations to him on what I learned from those leadership books. I love leadership development curriculum. Probably too much. But the reality is, is leadership development starts with relationship. Leadership development starts with getting to know who the person is. Leadership development is not something you can simply copy and paste from one person to another. Leadership development, the best leadership development, happens in relationship. Look at the early leaders of the church, friends. Peter, the rock. Jesus didn't start by giving Peter a platform. He started by having a conversation. Jesus didn't develop Peter by just putting him into, you know, this class or that class. He developed Peter by being in relationship with him. Some of the greatest leaders in the history of mankind were often developed through relationship before they were ever developed through any sort of curriculum. Leadership development starts with conversations before it starts with curriculum. The reality is, friends, is people don't become leaders because they're recruited. They become leaders because they're invested in. And leadership grows at the speed of relationship. Every leadership journey starts with a conversation. One thing that I'm learning, and again, I'm giving all these different thoughts and whatnot. And if you were to come to my church and watch me, I am no expert. I fail constantly. I am trying my best to get better each and every day. But one thing that I'm really starting to focus on is this before you ask someone to serve, ask them their story. Before you ask someone to serve, ask them their story. Friends, we all have holes in our volunteer schedule. We all have needs in our ministry context. But in a world that is constantly pulling people toward this and pulling people toward that and trying to get them to do this and trying to get them to do that. How many things in our world, people in our world, are being asked, What is your story? I no hidden agenda, no secret sauce, no you know, bait and switch. Let me just hear your story. And so maybe as you're getting ready to to to spot emerging leaders and you begin to pray and you begin to identify and you begin to engage, maybe you set aside the volunteer schedule that you need to fill. Maybe you set aside the strategy that you're trying to develop just for a moment and pray, God, whose story do I need to hear? Who who is someone that I need to engage relationally with? Because if you want to spot emerging leaders within your church, it starts with prayer. You then move into identify and then you engage. Friends, I believe that right where you are is right where you need to be for God to get you, where he wants to get you, but it starts with believing that he wants to get you somewhere. And then it's identifying who God is putting in your path and who you can steward. Believe, identify, multiply. You don't need a larger church, a bigger budget, or a perfect system to develop leaders, friends. You simply need to believe that God has already placed potential leaders around you and take intentional steps to invest in them. Believe, identify, multiply. How do we identify? We pray, we identify who God's placed in our heart, and we engage and we step. We pray for God to open doors. We recognize the doors that God has opened, and then we step through those doors relationally, not sales pitchy, friends. Pray, identify, engage. We got one more episode in this series on developing a culture of leadership development at your church, growing leaders right where you are. And I'm excited about this next one because we're talking about something that's very passionate on my heart, and that's multiplying. So at this point in time, you're believing that God is providing leaders for you for your church. You're believing that God wants to develop leaders at your local church context. You are praying to him, you are identifying, you are engaging with those leaders that God has given you. And now what do we do? What now? What's next? How are we going to steward what God, the gifts that God has given us? I'm so excited to dive in. Next week, we're going to be diving into how do we multiply the leadership within our church context. Can't wait, friends. I'm excited. Remember, believe, identify, multiply. As I just whacked my hat on this microphone. Have a great week, friends.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Well, hey, Ryan, thanks so much for that incredible information, helping us identify and engage with emerging leaders. I I really hope. No, no, I don't hope. I know. I know that you are walking away from this podcast with some practical information that you can actually use to begin to spot emerging leaders and raise up emerging leaders in your church. I pray that God gives you insight on the steps that you need to take. Hey, before I let you go, let me remind you that on November 2nd, we've got our Elevate Church Leadership Conference with Carrie Newhoff. But also on November 14th, we have a youth leader conference called the Timothy Project, where we're taking 2 Timothy 2 2. These things that you've heard from me, Timothy, give to faithful people who are able to reach others also. And we are crafting a conference. We've got Josh Griffin coming in, who is a legendary uh youth pastor and communicator and trainer. He's our keynote speaker. But then also we have breakouts that are going to help your youth leaders grow to a new level of not only being able to capture vision, but to cast vision and to mentor and to raise up future leaders right in your community. So I really hope that you'll go to mcncr.org and find out more and register your team, not only for the Elevate conference, but also for the Timothy project coming up on November 14th. Hey, such a joy to have you with us. Can't wait to speak with you next time.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Thanks for joining us for Let's Talk. If you have any questions, topics you want us to discuss, or a story you want to share, email us at info at mcncr.org.