The Discipleship Model of Leadership Development
Major (Dr.) Anthony Juliana has served as the president and principal of the Evangeline Booth College (EBC) in Atlanta for the past two years. Having also recently completed his doctorate in Strategic Church Leadership from Regent University he is in a unique position to provide profound insight into leadership development and how it connects with discipleship, not just for Salvation Army officers but with soldiers, employees, and Christians in general. He joins Majors Matt and Jamie Satterlee for the May episode of the LOVE – SERVE – DISCIPLE podcast to share his thoughts with us.
“Salvation Army officership is about leadership,” Major Anthony says. “It really is this opportunity to lead people to Christ. It’s to lead people into discipleship and understanding what their roles are in the body of Christ.” With this in mind, the EBC, which is made up of two schools — the School for Officer Training and the School for Leadership and Educational Development — has been tasked with not only training future Salvation Army officers, but also coming alongside current officers, soldiers, adherents, employees, and volunteers to develop them in their leadership journeys. “Let’s inspire them to be the best leaders that they can be in their organization, in their community,” Major Anthony continues.
The EBC takes a discipleship approach to leadership development, Major Anthony explains. “No longer can you just stand up in front of a group of people and lecture and think that you’re developing leaders. That’s not how Jesus did it; that’s not how it works today. You come alongside people.” Staff officers at the EBC model this by walking with the cadets in training, helping them connect the dots between classroom learning and field experience, discipling them and developing them as leaders. “That does happen in the classroom, it happens in the field, it happens in the dining room, it happens around the table, it happens as you’re walking across campus, it happens in every aspect of life there.”
When asked about his choice of strategic church leadership as his area of doctoral study Major Anthony speaks about his passion for the topic and how important it is for The Salvation Army. “What we really are trying to do at the college, particularly for our future, is develop people who are good strategic thinkers,” he shares. “That has helped us a lot when it comes to how we focus our leadership development training for our cadets, for our future officers.”
Major Anthony says it can be an easy and dangerous pitfall to start thinking of discipleship or leadership development as programs. “Disciple- centric leadership development is a form of discipleship and leadership development that Jesus used. Leadership development is not a subset of discipleship; it is part of discipleship.” Jesus modeled this for us through his interactions with his disciples: they ate together, they walked together. “He lives life with them in such a way that every opportunity He has, He says, ‘Let me tell you what the Kingdom of God is like.’” He uses every moment to develop the men and women around Him as future leaders of the early Church. “It was all interconnected. That’s the form that Jesus used, this idea of, ‘Let’s walk alongside together.’”
This discipleship model of leadership development utilized at the EBC is a model that can be replicated in every corps in the Southern Territory. “It’s a model that says if we have the conviction that leadership development happens in the corps, if everybody has that as a conviction, then it becomes part of who we are. It becomes a part of our culture as a corps,” Major Anthony explains. Then from that foundational culture we build constructs, procedures, and processes. It’s no longer simply having a book on discipleship to do a program, “It becomes the very integral nature of what takes place at a corps. It’s all about discipleship. It’s all about leading people.”
“When you understand that everybody you come in contact with is made in the image of God, how you lead them changes,” Major Anthony encourages. He has provided the following resources for you to learn more about leadership development and discipleship:
- “The Making of a Leader” by Dr. J. Robert Clinton
- “Confident Leader!” by Dan Reiland
- “Christian Reflections on The Leadership Challenge” by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
- “The Ascent of a Leader” by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and Ken McElrath
- “Designed to Lead” by Eric Geiger and Kevin Peck
“I would just encourage people to consider the fact that even though they may not think of themselves as leaders, they may think of themselves as followers. But you know what? That’s where leaders come from,” Major Anthony says. “Great leaders are also great followers themselves. So, friends, just start there. Start being a great follower and just see where that followership will take you in terms of your leadership… I would just encourage people to begin where you are.”