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As a leader, you are actually in the people development business. Your role as leader is to motivate your group members to discover and start using their gifts and abilities to develop their own unique ministry design. There are three key ways you can help develop your group members:

1. Start by doing a gift-discovery exercise as a group. If you've never done this and would like to, click here for more details.

2. Model service yourself. A lot of your group members may not want to serve—yet. But if you show up with your own journey of discovering and use your gifts for service, they'll be inspired to follow your example. They need to see that you too are developing. Your model is more important in this group than anything else that will be said or done in your meeting. So why not tell them the story of how you ended up leading this group? Tell them what it means to you to have an opportunity to serve God in this way. If you were reluctant to try it or you needed to develop your abilities over time, let them know that. And if you're committed to serving God in some particular way right now, other than leading your group, let them in on that too. Don't tell your story so it sounds like you're a superhero. Let them see your human flesh, and God's divine power.

3. Affirm the strengths you see in your group members. If your group has been together for six weeks or more, they are already starting to notice each other's strengths. Now let them hear from you—and each other—what those strengths are. So many people see all their weaknesses and none of their strengths. They need to hear what others see in them. So whatever you do, affirm. One good way to do this is by writing down their strengths on index cards or greeting cards and giving them to your members. Then ask other group members to do the same for each other.

Thanks for your faithfulness to enter the people development business. May God bless you in it.

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