Every growing church must ask themselves as they expand: Should we hire from the outside or the inside?

I believe that in many cases, building is better than buying. In other words, hire and develop within your church rather than hiring outside of your church.

Now, some positions are entirely fine for hiring, but I believe that there are some leadership positions that are better for building.

A principle to live by is to buy doers and build the developers.

Build those who will be developing and leading people. Those with the most influence over your church should be built rather than bought.

Here is why:

1. Built Leaders Know Your Culture

Your church’s culture is the most important thing to guard.

Hiring someone of influence from outside your church can disrupt the culture that you have built.

Hiring someone of influence from inside your church should duplicate your culture and grow your culture.

Built leaders know your identity and culture and should be able to duplicate it for you.

When you hire a leader, you take a risk of them trying to create their own culture when you are hiring them to expand your culture.

2. Built Leaders Have Experience at Your Church

One thing about hiring from the outside, their experience is outside of your church.

When you build leaders, you get to see their experience first hand.

You can get a look first hand at their work ethic, skill set and effectiveness when you hire from the inside. When you hire from the outside, much of this is hearsay and what you have observed from a distance.

In other words, hiring from within can be a safer bet than hiring someone from the outside.

3. Built Leaders Accomplishe Your Ultimate Purpose

Ephesians 4 says that it is up to the pastor to develop saints to do the work of the ministry.

When you develop leaders within your church, it fulfills your church’s ultimate purpose, and that is to make disciples and develop them to do the work of the ministry.

Simply put, when you develop leaders within your organization, you accomplish God’s intention for the early church.

I like what J.D. Greear says: “When I became a pastor, I in a way left the ministry.” His point is that he became the equipper. He now equips saints to do the work of the ministry.

Your purpose is to develop people.

So when you build your leaders, you are accomplishing your ultimate purpose.