Leadership's Limitations

In this unpredictable and changing world, the one thing we can always control is the way we think. While we have little control over circumstances or the actions of others, we can control our reactions to them. And anyone can learn how to think more positively and operate with a better attitude, regardless of circumstances, temperament, or intellect. To begin thinking more positively and leading your people to do the same, follow these guidelines:

Act like the person you wish to become.
To start thinking positively, begin by acting positively. Most of us wait until we feel like taking action, but that’s going about it backwards. Instead, by putting our desires into action, we can establish a habit of thinking positively – and this results in a positive attitude.

Cultivate a Consistent Positive Attitude.
To reap a successful harvest, a farmer doesn’t plant seeds and then just expect them to grow on their own. He must continually water, weed, fertilize and nurture the growing plants if he wants them to reach maturity. Likewise, if we want a successful life, we need to spend time everyday nurturing our attitude. Focus on the positive and successful. Don’t feed the weeds.

Two Prophets, Two Messages

Every so often while reading the Bible, I get flashbacks to my years in Sunday School. Most of those flashbacks come from the 'memory verses' I had to memorize each week for Sunday School. It never ceases to amaze me that thirty years later those verses are still stored somewhere in my memory.

Recently, while reading the book of Jeremiah, I had one of those flashbacks and it led to a deeper study of this story.

You will probably recognize these words just as I did;

Jeremiah 29:11-13

11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

12 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.

13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

What a powerful verse this has been to me and to many others over the years.

Imagine comforting and powerful this must have been for Judah to hear. Judah had been taken captive by Babylon. They had no future. Their land, their possessions and their children had been stripped from them. They thought God had abandoned them. They thought God was done with them. Then, the prophet Jeremiah brings this promise of hope and deliverance.

As comforting as this was to Judah, most of us overlook an important detail of this prophecy found in the previous verse;

Jeremiah 29:10

10 For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

The promise of deliverance was given, but it would take seventy years for deliverance to come. An entire lifetime for most. That meant almost every person who was taken captive would die in captivity. Imagine receiving a promise that your answer has come but then discovering you would have to wait seventy years to receive it. That is like receiving no answer at all.

During Jeremiah's time there were many prophets sharing many messages. In this particular story, there was another prophet named Hananiah. Hananiah shared what sounded like a similar message to Jeremiah's, except for one slight variation;

Jer 28:2-4

2 Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon.

3 Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried them to Babylon:

4 And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the Lord: for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.

Borrowing Comfort From The Past

So many times we are told to step out of our past when it seems to hold us hostage with details of failure, mistakes, and setbacks. I have often had to challenge my past with various Truths and dismantle the Structure Of Defeat it had erected in my heart and mind. It is so easy to look back to whatever you see and feel, and build our future out of those things. Today, I want to do something much better with our past: Look deeply at it and Borrow Comfort And Help.

When David had to face the man Goliath, he had to reach into yesterday and vividly recall just how good God had been to him regarding a lion and bear. Knowing in himself it was not his ability alone that won the victory, but the Lord had been with him. The God who had worked in and for him would show Himself the very same now, showing us he had received comfort and strength from his past. Getting the good from our past, I think, requires a greater deal of effort than recalling bad things, for the negative just seems to show up, but good has to be reached for. Of course our enemy loves to flash our past errors on the screen of our soul, but the Holy Ghost delights to use our past to bring honor to God.

Samson also used the past to get some help from when he had killed a lion and, after awhile, Bees had used the animal to build a place for some fresh honey. By taking time to taste honey from a past victory, he, too, had been helped by his past. I just wonder how many dead lions and honey spots are all over our yesterdays just waiting for us to both visit and extract help from?

Momentum in Your Personal Life

Most of us know how valuable momentum is. When you have it, things happen almost without effort. Without it, things come to a grinding halt. Where does momentum come from? Momentum comes from God, and it begins in your personal devotion to Him. Many leaders struggle because their devotional life is not what it should be. If you do not have momentum in your personal life, those you lead will not experience it.

Bi-vocational pastors face many challenges in life. One of their biggest challenges is time. Time is critical.  Approximately sixty hours a week are spent working and getting to and from work. Another sixty hours are taken up sleeping. Church services and functions take up another twelve hours. That leaves only thirty-six hours a week to eat, exercise, spend time with family, train leaders, prepare sermons, teach Bible studies, counsel people and have personal devotion. Personal devotion is one of the areas that gets pushed off until the very last, and usually one does not have sufficient time or energy to have meaningful devotion with God.

That is a problem because devotion is a focused and faithful commitment of one's time and energy. Without personal time with God, spiritual momentum comes to a grinding halt. One begins to depend on their own power and abilities instead of God's power. It isn't long before the entire church and its ministries feel the effects.

To Be An Effective Leader

In his book The Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley offers 5 valid points to consider if you desire to be an effective leader. We highly recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position.

1. Face it, you are not as good as you could be. So what are you going to do about it? The only way to go farther, faster, is to engage outside help. You can maximize your leadership potential by getting a coach...or two.
   
2. Find someone to observe you in a variety of leadership settings. Outside input is critical. Even if you could watch yourself in a mirror twenty-four hours day, you would never see yourself as others see you.
   
3. Select a coach who has no axe to grind and not reason to be anything except brutally honest. He need not be an expert in your field. What your coach must be able to do , however, is put himself in the shoes of those who are influenced by your leadership.

Are You Trained To Fail?

“Have you been trained to fail?”  You have been trained in ministry to fail if you have been taught to do the ministry rather than to train others for ministry.  I am grateful to the teachers who taught me to perform the functions of ministry:  visiting, counseling, marrying, burying, teaching, witnessing, and a host of other duties.  All are needed.  By themselves, however, they help us only to maintain, not to maximize ministry.  We can never be effective ministers until we learn what it means to be a leader and how to function as a leader.  The following are five common ingredients in growing churches:

• (1)  The pastor and the congregation understand their God-given gifts and use them in ministry.
  
• (2) The pastor’s hands-on ministry decreases and the congregation’s increases.
  
• (3) Both the quality and the quantity of ministry increase.
• (4) The pastor’s ministry influence increases as he shares ministry responsibilities with the congregation.
  
• (5) A biblical philosophy of ministry is established.  That is, leadership plus lay ministry equals growth.

How can you build a leadership team and maximize ministry in your church?  The following six steps are proven and effective.

1. Identify the leaders in the church.  Who are the influencers?  These persons may hold formal or informal positions of leadership.  They are the ones to whom others look for decisions.  Write down their names and rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 as to their leadership and influence within the church.
2. Intentionally take time to build relationships with your current and future leaders.  Do not ignore or exclude the others, but focus on developing leaders.

Does Your Preaching Change Lives or Tickle Ears?

While musing on the things of God, my thoughts began to ponder modern day pulpit preaching in churches and gatherings around the world. I thought about the many presentation styles I have seen, the expectations of the audiences, the tantalizing titles, the packaging of sermons for media sales, books published consisting of the author’s sermons, the humanistic rankings and comparisons of our favorite preachers, and so forth. I smiled thinking that just as kids might argue with one another, “My dad can beat up your dad,” or, “My mommy is prettier than your mommy”, we might also argue that, “My pastor can preach better than your pastor”. We all tend to be pretty human at times.

This led me to meditate on the evolution of preaching just over the last century. I wondered what changes came about after Bible colleges and seminaries began teaching students about exegesis, hermeneutics, extrapolation, and the fine art of sermon preparation? How did the invention of the public address system change the delivery of preaching? How have Power Point, Bible software, and multimedia projection altered sermon preparation and presentation styles? What differences have radio, television, audio and video recorders, cameras, live streaming, and social media made? Should these and other innovations have had any impact at all on the delivery of God’s Word? 

Seral Succession

All it takes to start a fire is a little fuel, the right atmospheric conditions, and a source of ignition, perhaps as small as a tiny spark. If circumstances are right, a single blade of grass once ignited can build into an inferno that burns and ravages countless acres of prime forest. Humble beginnings can transmute into raging fire storms, exploding trees, molten sand, and death. The aftermath of such devastation causes one to wince in regret at the horrible and blackened scars left behind where beauty once stood. As unnatural as it may appear it is but another witness of the beauty of the healing and creative powers of God. Most pristine forests have at one time or another been destroyed by fire, but eventually they grow back stronger and more beautiful than ever.  It is a cycle that must be understood.

Seral Succession is an ecological principle in which, over time, the natural biological systems become so developed that they begin to atrophy and bog themselves down. A strong forest becomes weakened and diseased because of the vines, weeds and assorted parasitical vegetations that erode its strength. New growth is repressed and beauty lies dormant because the system prohibits it. Extreme cases may require a controlled burn - an act of destruction - before beauty, order and strength can return. The temporary and painful state of charred ugliness is quickly forgotten once the beauty of a healthy forest burst though.

The same principle applies to agriculture. It is not uncommon for farmers to burn certain fields in anticipation of planting a future crop. Soon afterward the tractor tills the soil and much of the ugliness disappears. As horrible as the blackened field may have first appeared, its memory will be completely erased as spring bursts forth in a display of brilliant colors and verdant growth where once only charcoal and ash had been.

In effect, the fire’s devastation produces healing by burning away the undergrowth that prevents fresh, new vegetation. The ash becomes a natural fertilizer.

The Healthy Pastoral Leader

In his research of leaders, both historical and contemporary, author Robert Clinton found that few leaders actually finish the race well. His two books, The Making of a Leader (NavPress) and The Mentor Handbook (Barnabas), explain that finishing well could be defined as a life that until its end is increasingly more in love with Christ, more committed to His service and more devoted to godly leadership.

What causes a leader to continue to grow, to stay on track and to finish well in life and ministry?

Five Habits of effectiveness. Effective leaders learn to become intentional about their character growth and formation. In this development of a leader we can make three general observations:

1. God develops a leader over a lifetime;
   
2. God uses people, circumstances and ministry assignments to shape the life of a leader; and
   
3. Leadership plateau is often indicative of a growth issue within a leader's life.
   

To help us become more intentional about our health as leaders, let's explore five insights from leaders who have finished well.

1. Healthy leaders are lifelong learners. Leaders pursue three types of training: personal training, (personal growth, projects, personal research); informal training (workshops, seminars, conferences); and formal training (continuing education, degree programs).
   
2. Healthy leaders are committed to serve and develop others. Be alert to potential leaders in your sphere of influence (II Cor. 1:3-4; II Tim. 2:2).