week. Your weekly CORE time is when you carry on spiritual
warfare for your group and share insight with your disciples that will help
them develop in their maturity. This informal time together should begin with
prayer. This will bond you in unity in the Spirit, develop a greater
understanding of the heart of God for each person in your group, and put you
in an atmosphere of faith.
2. Help them to see the potential in others: Anytime
that you meet with your disciples it should be in an attitude of faith, that
is, looking to what the faith vision for each person might be. It is not to be
a time of criticism or hopeless talk concerning shortcomings. You are to help
your disciples envision what the CORE Group members are able to become under
the direction of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes when people are new to ministry it
is difficult for them to see past where people are, to where they will
eventually be. Begin with the end in mind! Your own attitude in dealing with
members in your group will have a great deal to do with how they see others.
Teach them that prayer changes even the darkest of circumstances.
3. Encourage them as they develop in leadership: Each
disciple needs to know that as they develop into leadership God will be able
to use them in a mighty way in CORE Group ministry. They need to be assured
that the anointing and authority are from God and that as they learn to listen
and follow Him more closely, both will increase. Point out the areas in which
they are led of the Spirit and follow Him well. Give them opportunity to grow
in the Spirit. Your CORE members should lead the meeting on occasion.
Prayerfully select those sessions and then offer them honest critiques mixed
with love and encouragement. It is better to share an area with them that
needs some work and allow them to grow in that area than to tell them all is
well and it really is not. This is their only opportunity to train for
leadership. Speak the truth in love and help them to become all that God is
challenging them to be.
4. Help them to become transparent: To be effective in
CORE Group leadership, everyone, especially leaders, must be willing to share
their failures as well as their successes. When people are shown how Jesus
helped someone else to overcome a failure, they can believe Him to help them
do the same. Help your disciples become transparent in this way so that they
are not threatened to share the areas where they need the most help. Very
often, leaders feel that if they share weaknesses, the others in their group
will not respect them as leaders. Encourage them that the very things that
they are overcoming with the help of the Lord are the things that speak to
others in the group who are struggling for victory. It is not a sign of
weakness, but of strength in Jesus that they are free to admit their
insufficiency. It is through the sharing of how the Word changed their
relationship that others receive hope and direction for the same life changes
to occur in their lives.
5. Determine if your CORE members are ready to lead a
group: As a CORE Group discipler, you are given the responsibility to
offer input to your church leadership regarding your disciples’s ability to
lead a group of their own. The standard expectation is that they will be ready
to lead at the end of the training period, but if you assess that they are not
fully equipped, it is up to you to share your concern with leadership. A
person does not automatically begin leading a CORE Group after they have been
a CORE member. Each person is given ample time to transition into leadership
comfortably. Remember, all leaders begin their leadership role a bit shaky and
unsure of themselves. Many problems that would keep them from leadership would
be an inability or unwillingness to pray, a man not taking the headship of his
household or a wife
refusing to defer to her husband as head, disagreement with
the basic beliefs of the CORE Group ministries or your church, or refusal to
submit to authority. If you have any questions regarding your CORE members,
contact your church leadership. The promotion of a disciples to leadership is
not automatic. Each CORE instructor must determine if their CORE members are
ready.
6. Release them as your CORE members and receive them as
peers: This is one of the most difficult areas for those in authority, but
once your CORE members assume leadership of their own group, you are no longer
their direct "supervisor", you are now their peers. Jesus called His disciples
"friends" at this point. Though you will continue as their coach, you are no
longer in authority over them and are no longer responsible for their
development as leaders. This now becomes the role of church leadership. You
have a new disciples to nurture.
The relationship you will develop in CORE is one of the
closest you will ever experience in the body of Christ. When this special
relationship comes to an end, you will remain lifelong friends. However, the
previous relationship must change. You must separate from them in a way you
related as the lead authority and they need to separate from you as your CORE
members. It is necessary to break the ties that were established as you
functioned together in leadership. Your leadership will help you make the
transition and help your disciples to become established as leaders of their
own group.
