Christian leadership is all about facilitating and having vision for the work that God is doing. For the church to move forward in God's work, their knowledge of what is going on in culture needs to be understood. Leaders must be able to maintain and spur the church on with the biblical mission, the biblical message, and the biblical means of communication.

To understand the art of leadership, it is imperative to understand yourself and God. You can only lead people as far as you have gone yourself with the Lord. Opening up the book of Philippians we see Paul write down the art of the Christian life. Like Paul, we too can bring people along with us as we understand and relate to God in deeper ways.

Through Paul's letter to the Philippians, we see Paul not let his circumstances dictate his mood. He allows God to put courage into him and accept the unacceptable. Paul demonstrates servant leadership, modeling Christ. He presses on and is obedient, leading to liberty. He shows us that if you want to be big, learn to be small. And that when we minister we must remember that we are dead to sin and to let God give us our throne.

Raising up leaders in the church started with the first church and is something we can do today. The members of the church are fully capable of becoming leaders. This is accomplished through discipleship and leadership promotion. There are seven conditions that help promote leadership: 1) setting vision; 2) insisting on Spirit-chosen people; 3) holding leaders in honor, accountability, and discipline; 4) replicating discipleship; 5) making the goal service; 6) having a clear pathway to leadership; 7) forming leaders into teams.

Through beautiful stories and examples comes encouragement to not waste the pain and suffering in our lives, but allow God to use it. It is through adversity that we have a choice to deepen our faith. Mary of Bethany is a woman who through her life gave her heart, home, and hurt to Jesus. \r\n

In raising up leaders, the goal is to not undernourish or overwhelm. This presentation walks through Xenos' adult education program both inside and outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, there is a Biblical emphasis on in-depth training for significant ministry roles and cultivating a love for the Word. Based on 2 Timothy 2:2, Xenos trains people who will be faithful to train and teach others, and these classes are agile in order to balance the demands of ministry while providing an equipping program that successfully prepares leaders. Outside the classroom, discipleship is the catalyst and format through which leaders teach and train believers on biblical literacy, personal ministry, and character growth.

Carl Westerlund from Calvary Chapel discusses the structure and focus of this church's leadership building. Carl describes the difference between servants and stewards, and emphasizes the responsibility that stewards or leaders of the church have. This requires strong character and integrity. In this church, there is a large focus on teaching throughout the week and sending people to build up their own churches, exercising authority there.

While the Bible gives some examples of gifted leaders, Christians do not have to have the gift of leadership in order to hold the office of leadership. In 1st and 2nd Timothy, Paul describes important character qualities and actions that must be present in those who lead, while omitting the necessity for gifting. Paul presents six key things for the office of leadership. These include: being an example of godly character, explaining and applying God's Word, exercising one's own gifting in the context of one's own group, shepherding one's flock with high support and high challenge, staying focused on the mission, and developing future leaders.

In order to look at the balance between ministry and day-to-day life, Patrice McCormac presents four principles about our view and use of time, starting with the fact that we are simply stewards of God's time. She also offers practical advice on balancing our time as well as reasons scheduling our time is important. It is inevitable that our schedules will get crazy sometimes, however we can prepare ourselves so that our spiritual health doesn't suffer when our lives get busy.

As a leader in the college ministry at Xenos, Jessica Lowery has a lot of experience training and raising up young leaders. Looking at Luke 10, Jessica points out several principles Jesus used in his own discipleship ministry. She discusses the importance of things like giving direction, casting vision, and setting goals. The session ends in a group discussion regarding issues specific to young people and ideas on how to help them wade through these issues.

God calls us to be generous with our resources, and leaders must often help develop the burden for financial generosity in the people they lead. This is done in love through prayer, helping people develop their own convictions based on what the Bible says, and allowing the Holy Spirit to work. By looking at several past campaigns at Xenos, Jeff Gordon offers practical insight into what has made some successful and some unsuccessful.

As the Director of Central Ohio Youth for Christ, Scott Arnold ministers to people in the inner city every day. He addresses many issues that are specific to the urban population that make this work different from suburban ministry. He also shares YFC's approach in many of these areas and gives practical advice for how to overcome some of these deficits and help people grow into effective leaders for the Lord.

Sherri Fojas provides a practical look into tried and tested evangelism initiatives. While Xenos hosts some outreach events, most of the evangelistic efforts here happen on a home church level. Sherri gives and explains numerous ideas for both "come and see" and "go and be" events. She also discusses misconceptions about evangelism and addresses some common questions people ask about these initiatives.

In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he presents six mandates for Christian leaders, mandates that we too are called to follow today. First, we are called to draw strength from Christ's grace. We must develop leaders who will go on to develop leaders and embrace the hardships of leadership. We must focus on both keeping biblical instruction central and continuing to experience personal character growth. Finally, in order to be effective leaders, we must deal with sinful opponents in a godly way.