Aubry Malphurs made a strong statement when he said, “If we ask our people to lead any ministry of the church, we’re responsible to provide them ongoing leadership training. If we can’t do this, we have no business asking them to serve, doing both them and the ministry an injustice. Without ongoing training, our recruits will struggle and often fail, and the rest of the ministry will experience the effects in the resulting leadership vacuum.” (Building Leaders, 27).

Research by the Georgia Baptist Convention demonstrated that some training is better than no training. In a survey of 2544 churches in that state, it was determined that churches with monthly or quarterly training grew between 13-14% in a specific four-year timeframe; churches with no training declined 2% during that same window of time. Training matters!