Kingdom Men Rising: An 8-Day Reading Plan Sample

Identifying Key Influencers

You can measure the destiny of a team—whether that be a family, work group, business, church, community, or even a nation—by its leadership. Unfortunately, today we face a crisis of leadership. People don’t know who to follow anymore because this crisis has produced a plethora of poor models and mentors and an utter lack of great leaders.

Yet, God’s kingdom program is designed around the process of transferring spiritual wisdom, known as discipleship, in order to produce future leaders. One of the primary roles of kingdom men is to lead others in the way they should go. The issue at hand is never whether or not a man is a leader. As a kingdom man, you are a leader by nature of your creation and calling. The issue is whether or not you will be a great leader or a poor one.

Steadfastness, kindness, love, faith, self-control, dignity, teachability, hospitality, and a love for God’s Word are some qualities that contribute to making a man a great leader. These are the same qualities men can use to identify future key influencers as well as to help them cultivate these traits at a greater level.

One of the biggest mistakes we make in raising up future leaders is the assumption that great leadership is taught, not caught. Raising up a generation of key influencers is never to be done in a top-down way. It happens organically and authentically when men share their lives, experiences, and conversations.

Developing key influencers who can solidly speak on biblical truths and navigate the storms of society requires guidance, practice, learning, listening, and so forth. Just like any marriage is dependent on two people contributing for it be great, identifying and raising up a kingdom influencer requires both men to put forth the effort to learn, grow, listen, teach, discern, practice, model, and more.

Great leadership knows how to spot great leadership, and then turn it loose within the boundaries of their own guidance. Coaching trees in the NFL are a great example of this principle at work. The best coaches have multiple assistant coaches who go on to coach teams themselves. You can judge a coach, at least in part, by their coaching tree. In the spiritual realm, kingdom men carry the same capacity to influence others and raise up men who will make a difference in the culture for Christ.

Let’s be clear. You are not here just for you. You are here for others. You have been crafted and created by God as an instrument of influence for the furthering of His kingdom agenda on earth. Satan has done a great job of getting men to focus on the areas of life which do not lead to generational transfer of kingdom values. But it is time that we rise up as men to take our stand against the enemy’s schemes (see 2 Corinthians 10:3-5).