Leadership Development - Jesus Spent Time with His Apostles

 

This is Chuck Rapp with Multiply, a podcast that provides a word of encouragement for village church planters and leaders.

Our topic for 2026 is Leadership Development. In my last podcast, I began to explore Jesus’s approach to leadership development. We observed that when it was time to appoint his 12 apostles, he did so prayerfully. Related to this, his call was selective.

Today we want to look at the way Jesus spent time with His apostles, and how this impacted their leadership development.

Mark 6:32 tells us that “they [Jesus and the apostles] went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.”

Matthew 10:1 says, “Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” We will return to this scripture in a future podcast.

As the time approached for Jesus’ time on earth to conclude, he prepared the apostles for what was to occur. We read the following in Matthew 20:17-19. Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside [emphasis added] and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!””

Jesus spent time with his followers and much time with the 12 Apostles. I find it quite interesting in the Gospel of Luke that it is not until chapter 6 that Jesus selected the Twelve. By this time, he knew his followers well. As leaders, if we are going to invest in emerging leaders, we must spend quality time with them. While books, conferences, or other resources can assist a young leader’s development, these cannot substitute for spending substantial time with them. Where distance is a challenge, frequent calls are a good starting point. Personally, I have regular 1:1 calls (monthly or more frequently) with five leaders or emerging leaders.

Personally, these calls (and face-to-face meetings when possible) are a blend of mentoring and coaching. In some situations, as I mentor, emerging leaders may need my assistance in things like time management or in leading a team, and I share (or I tell) some ideas that have worked well for me. In coaching, by contrast, I ask. I ask questions that help the emerging leader think through situations to arrive at their own conclusions.

Let us follow Jesus’ example and intentionally invest time in the lives and development of new leaders.

This has been a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters and leaders.