Video Transcript: Finding God's Leaders

This is session 27 in the practical ministry skills course, and today we're talking  about finding God's leaders from the 16th chapter of the book pastoring the nuts and bolts. Our key verse that the leaders led in Israel, that the people  volunteered Bless the Lord Judges 5:2, when leaders lead, and then when  people volunteer. Praise the Lord, My goodness. As a pastor, I can tell you,  finding volunteers is such a blessing. So praise the Lord for those kinds of  things. There are two views about finding people matching up the people in the  church with the jobs that need to be done in the church. One view says, look for  someone with the gifts to match the job. And that makes obvious sense. But  then there are those who would look at it the other way and say, those whom  God calls, God equips. If God calls somebody into a position, he will, God will  make sure that they become gifted and are able to have that I would say it's a  combination of both. I would say, in general, I would go with the first one, try to  match up gifts to the job, and then if God brings somebody else, or if there's  nobody that seems to have the gifts, but it's something that needs to be done,  and you can get somebody willing to agree to do it, then count on God to equip  them. God works both ways in different situations, and so I just bring those two  thoughts to you. And again, I don't think you have to choose one or the other  and be hard and fast and argue about it. God will work them all out. Now I want  to take some time here to say something that I didn't put in the book because I  think it really didn't fit exactly there, but I think it's very valuable for you all to  hear and to understand, and it's something that I have not seen taught in many  other places About. The only other place I've seen this taught is in the in the  back matter an article in the back of the spirit filled life Study Bible edited by  Jack Hayford. And I am not sure who wrote the article in the back. I came up  with it. I don't think I came up with it on my own, but I cannot remember where I  heard it, but I was in the same part of California as Jack Hayford around the  time he was coming up with it. I didn't have a lot of contact with him. I heard him  speak one time. But it may be that all of that came together, but anyway, that  this is a way of looking at giftedness, spiritual gifts, that seems to me extremely  biblical, and also matches my experience, but doesn't match any of the so called spiritual gift tests that you might find out there and so on. So let me go through  that with you, and it starts with I Corinthians 12:4-6. Paul writes, there are  different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all.  There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in  different ways. That is the same God who does the work in all of us. So if you  look at that again, you have the Spirit gives the spiritual gifts. You have the Lord  with the service, and you have God, the Father, with the work, the different kinds of work that happened. So let's use that as a framework for going on and looking at those. The first one that was listed was different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. Then you look actually, continuing right on,  Paul expands on the spiritual gifts part the spiritual the. The ones coming from 

the Spirit, and He says, To each, is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the  common good. To one is given through the Spirit, the utterance of wisdom to  another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit to another, faith by the same spirit to another, gifts of healing by the one spirit to another, the  working of miracles to another, prophecy to another, the discernment of the  spirits to another, various kinds of tongues to another, the interpretation of  tongues. All of these are activated by one and the same spirit who allots to each  one individually, just as the Spirit chooses you. So these are typically known as  the charismatic gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the supernatural kinds of things.  These are not ones that, if you look at them again, where are we? These are not things that anybody possesses. The it says yes, it says they're given. Different  ones are given, but they're activated by the Spirit who allots them as the Spirit  chooses. They are gifts to us, but not in the sense that we own them and  possess them and can choose when and how to use them. In other words,  nobody has the gift of healing to the point that they can walk into a hospital and  clean it out. These are things manifestations of the Spirit. That means they are  the ways that the Holy Spirit makes Himself known. These are supernatural  things that God has the Holy Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit looks for somebody who is available to meet a need. And then if there is a Christian who is open to  receiving and being used in, for instance, a gift of healing, and there's a sick  person that needs the gift of healing, needs to be healed, the Holy Spirit may  give that individual a special anointing or gift for healing for that time while they  pray for that person. But that doesn't mean, as I said, that they can then go and  necessarily pray for anybody else that's sick. So these are supernatural gifts  under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. And if I don't watch myself, I'll  spend all my time talking about this. So I better move on, because you can find  these things in other places. You can find out about these things. These are the  gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, the  pastors and the teachers. We've looked at that at the beginning of what we've  really been doing through in our ministries here. And the point here is the  second part of that, of this is there are different kinds of service, but we serve  the same Lord. Lord is commonly used in the Bible to refer to Jesus. And these  are kinds of service that we can give to serve the Lord. And they are here tied  with Jesus in Ephesians 4:11 that they are the gifts Christ gave to the church,  the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, the pastors and the teachers are offices  in the church to serve the Lord, to serve the body of Christ. So that's a whole  different kind of gift from these first gifts that we were looking at. And then the  third one, if we go back, it says God works in different ways, but it's the same  God who does the work in all of us. In Romans 12:6-8, we have gifts that differ  according to the grace given to us, prophecy and proportion of faith, ministry  and ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in  generosity, the leader in diligence, the Compassionate in cheerfulness. These 

are things that are just kind of baked in there. God the Father, is primarily we  relate to very often, as a creator. He created us. He made us. We're His  children, and he put these gifts in us as part of us. So in other words, teaching is a is my primary spiritual gift. In this category, in this type of gift, I can teach, I  have a gift to where I can take something, almost anything that I know, and I can teach it to almost anybody, because that's my gift. You probably know a lot of  teachers who who do that as well. There are other people that have tremendous leadership gifts, other people who are very much in the background, but they  their gift is service, or the way it's translated here ministry. So these are the,  what you might call personality traits. These are probably the ones that are most valuable, the most most necessary in looking for finding who God has picked out to be leaders in your church to take on certain roles in your church. But the the  thing I just wanted to give give to you, not because it directly relates, but  because I think it is an important teaching that is not taught enough, is that the  idea that these are three different categories of gifts and the rules that apply to  one don't apply to the others. You can see this in the fact that prophecy, or  prophet is listed in all three but they're very different kinds of meanings in the  gifts of the Holy Spirit, prophecy is a word from the Lord that comes through the  Holy Spirit into your spirit that you can't demand it. You can't say, now I'm going  to prophesy. You can only do it when the Lord gives you a word to give.  Prophets in the Ephesians 4 gifts are people who are recognized in the church  as having often being used in this way, in a way that they have gotten good at it  and are reliable because all of these there's a learning curve. You you learn you  can develop in your skills in it. So a prophet, anybody who, anybody can  prophecy, I Corinthians 14, I believe it is. Paul says, All of you can prophesy.  Anybody can prophesy. But in Ephesians 4, not everyone is a prophet. Prophets are recognized people in office in the church. And then in the Romans 12  prophet is more of a as I understand it. In this case, it's more of a mindset, an  attitude, like the Old Testament prophets. Prophecy is speaking truth to power,  not being afraid to tell somebody they're doing something wrong in the name of  Jesus. And so you probably know some people like that. They're not always  easy to get along with, but it's an it's a personality trait that God has put into us.  So I just wanted to bring those out, the prophets. And I wanted to say, again, I  think I've said this before. Now that we're talking about prophets, the Prophet's  job is to deliver the message to the pastor, the leader, the minister, the board,  the council, whoever makes the decisions, not to enforce his or her idea of what  should be done about it, not to go off and tell everybody else how unspiritual  they are because they didn't do What the Prophet thought that they should do  with the message. So in recognizing and choosing people for leadership, there's there's the gifts, there's also the side of skills. Exodus 36 the Lord has gifted  Bezalel. Oholiab, and the other skilled craftsmen with wisdom and ability to  perform any task involved in building the sanctuary. Let them construct and 

furnish the tabernacle, just as the Lord has commanded so. These are skilled  craftsmen, carpentry skills, artistic skills, musical skills, could go in there,  computer skills, any kind of skills. They're all gifts from God. And so take skills  into account when you're looking for your leaders in the church, for people to  ask to take on jobs and and do things. And notice that it says, Let them  construct and furnish the tabernacle. Give them some space. Give them some  freedom. God said, make the tabernacle this size and this shape and out of  these materials. He didn't say, here's how you cut it, and here's how you sew it,  and here's exactly where I want the nails to go. He let them figure that out. So  let them, let the skilled people exercise their skills. Don't micromanage your  people. Recognize the people God has prepared to lead your church and  ministries. That's one of your big jobs. So that means you need to get to know  your people and their skills, but also you need to protect the church from self  appointed leaders who would take you in the wrong direction. Leaders can be  appointed by the pastor, appointed by a board. They can be elected, they can be volunteer. In different polities and different jobs that you need them to do.  Volunteers. We started off saying what a blessing that is. Sometimes volunteers  are hard to find. The pastor is saying to the firemen, people were slow in leaving the building until I stopped yelling fire and started yelling, who wants to teach  Sunday school? And then they all jumped up and ran out the door. There are a  few positions where hard experience has taught me to be wary of volunteers if  someone seems eager for a job that gives them access to the church's money,  you be very careful about that if someone seeks a position that gives them any  kind of control over you as the minister, either by controlling how much you get  paid or you're living or Working conditions, or even whether you keep your job,  you be real careful about that. I made it personally a policy that if there was a  certain committee in our denomination, that each church has a committee that  specifically deals with those issues in the pastor, and if anybody ever  volunteered to sit on that committee that automatically disqualified them. In my  mind, it's just too dangerous somebody seeking a position because they think it  will give them control, because they think that it will make them a big shot in the  church, you want people who are there to serve God, not to make themselves  look like a big shot in any of these cases, you graciously suggest another area  in the church that they can volunteer. And if they genuinely want to serve God,  they'll be happy. And if they get angry and upset about it and threaten to leave,  let them because it means they were, they were looking to do trouble. All right,  biblical qualifications, ability. Look for people who love God and love your church and who habitually put time and energy into learning and growing in the Lord.  The ones that show up at the Bible studies, the ones that show up to help out  with things, people who support your vision as the leader. Look for people,  perhaps, who have a passion for a given area. If you have somebody who is just really always excited about working with the youth, then let them work with the 

youth. If you have somebody who has a passion for evangelism, then put them  in your evangelism committee. You want people that are teachable, though you  don't want somebody that says, I know everything, and I'm going to tell you  exactly how it ought to be done. And of course, you need somebody that has  time to do the job. I talk in the book about the term limits, about the Personnel  Committee not going to go through all of that again, mainly because we don't  have time. I just have time to show you this last one from I Timothy 5:22, never  be in a hurry about appointing a church leader. The more traditional translations  say, Don't lay hands on someone in haste. Never be in a hurry about appointing  a church leader, because it's so hard to get them back out of a position without  causing all kinds of trouble, hurting people's feelings. So pray, go through your  processes. Have good processes, and that God will provide the people for the  work that he wants your ministry to do.