This is the second part of a four part series on The Learning Community.  This series is based on a podcast I heard from Reggie McNeal

The question that now needs to be asked: What are the key Issues for the Learning Community? What do we need to be learning?

There are four Categories of leadership development:

1. Paradigm Issues. How do people see the world? What people look at is what they work on. How people see the issues they are working are will affect how people act.
2. Micro Skills. There are leadership competencies that will help raise emotional and social intelligence. These include:
   1. Team building
   2. Vision cultivation
   3. Guiding people through decision making
   4. Listening skills
3. Resources. Resources help leaders move from dreams to doers. A good leader knows how to resource work and missional living.
4. Personal Development. Leaders are people first and foremost. Leadership development is just a subset of people development. Congregational leadership should build people up, not exhausting them. Pay attention to emotional, personal, physical aspects of your leaders.

Items to shape your leadership training in a missional context.

1. Missionarying. It’s about turning church members into missionaries. This means we need to help people learn how to be missionaries and this requires an understanding of missiology. We have to help them understand culture. Do your people know how to start a conversation with postmoderns without talking about frying in hell?
2. Deployment. Most people view the church as the place for their spiritual growth and development. But missionaries deploy into the marketplace. Missionaries see their primary domain of spiritual activity as the world and look for God there. Most people are being trained for church jobs. Some topics may include: How do you bless people (Gen 12)?, How to listen for people’s heart stories, to empathize with others, how to ask questions that open people up spiritually.
3. Missional living. Help people live life as if they are on a mission trip. We have primarily viewed their job done when they complete their church responsibilities.