Transcript of Videos in Day 111-120

Henry Reyenga  

With me today is Marty Ozinga, chairman of Ozma brothers, a company that has over 2000 employees. And he has built that company over the last four decades. And we're going to talk today about vision. Because if you're going to take a company that the that the Lord gave you when when he was 23, 100 and some employees and now 2000 employees, there's no question. There's an issue with vision that operates. So how would you define vision?

Marty Ozinga  

Well, it's seems to me that the, the vision that that God puts in one's mind is a combination of the work of the Holy Spirit in someone's heart, as well as the engagement of the life's experiences and the education that that one has benefited from. And it starts with a sense of, I would say optimism, in the sense of, you know, the whole story about the glass of water is half full or empty. And vision that's optimistic is is the guy that sees the glass is half full. It's not half empty, it's half full. We're halfway. We're halfway there and we can fill it the rest of the way. Okay, okay. So an optimistic spirit and an optimistic view. Then, that combines with opportunity and skills that God has created and blessed you With and the whole sense that with God's help, you can expect to to pursue goals to be somewhat of an entrepreneur, whether you're talking in the context of business or education or church or even family. I can't say for sure I had a vision of having six sons. But I did have a vision I always have, the more the merrier. I mean, as long as my wife can keep up with it and handle it, she has the harder job and but I've always had this sense of optimism, we have these opportunities, we have these skills, and we have this time and this place, and let's see how far we can go and what God has got in mind for us, and let's just go for it. And and I think that's something that gets instilled in us through a combination of all these experiences and education we've had, but it's mainly a condition also of the heart, the spirit, and the understanding that God is with us. And most people who are entrepreneurs, who understand these things, would say that they approach life with with an expectant attitude. They actually think what they pursue is going to happen. They think they think that they have the knowledge or the skills or the energy, or the whatever it takes you to go for it, and it's going to happen. And then God shows up, and it does happen because even when it Hey, happens, this idea that well it happened because I'm so smart, or because I'm so talented, or I work so hard. 

Marty Ozinga  

You realize, as you grow and mature and become wiser that this happened because God wanted it to happen. And God's in control in the end and ultimately and, and it goes the way he wants it to go. And when it goes well, it's because he wanted it to go well, and I refer to most of these successes in my life. And most of the opportunities that have been realized as this is this is a demonstration of God's love and literally miracles taking place. Which we maybe don't see at the at the moment in time and sometimes we like to give ourselves the credit, but we know better and the reality is It only happened because God showed up.

Henry Reyenga  

So we're talking about this kind of division one is that optimistic God has a plan. I'm just gonna be part of it. And also is the expectancy, that somewhere somehow in Providence, God turn up at a miracle that that seed planted in your heart is going to have a result he wants it might be a yes no or maybe how do you deal when it's a no

Marty Ozinga  

Well, what's interesting is you know, there's there's certain characteristics and I think they're they're, they're a blessing and a gift from God. You know, you remember the story of Joshua and then going into the promised land and looking around and it was a whole group of Have intelligent leaders that were selected to go do that?

Henry Reyenga  

Yes.

Marty Ozinga  

And the vast majority of them came back and said, Forget it. Forget it. We saw what we saw there is overwhelming. We can't handle it. It's not going to happen. Forget it. And then Joshua, who's in a small minority, 

Henry Reyenga  

yep, young Josh Smith, Caleb says, friend,

Marty Ozinga  

we can do this. We don't have we can do this. You know why? Because God's on our side. And this is going to be ours. And it's been promised to us and we have to trust that. Yeah. Now. Not everything in life, in business or in other aspects of life always goes the way we thought it would go. Okay. And sometimes it's disappointing and sometimes it's very hard. Sometimes it hurts. In my case, I've lost almost as much money as I've made. Thankfully, I'm a little scorecard and still able to come and go and do what I like. But it's not all been a bed of roses and success after success after success. But the optimistic person gets knocked down. And there's a Bible verse for this. I think it's in Second Corinthians, but it says, You're knocked down but you're not defeated, right? That's right. And, and an optimistic person says, okay, you knock me down. I've learned some lessons from all of this. But then you brush yourself off, you get back up, and you say, and now we're going to do it again. We're going to be smarter this time, but we're going to go forward again. Yeah. And you go through your whole life doing that kind of stuff. I've known Henry since I know Henry since he was a kid. Yeah. And he's the same way. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of Bible verses. There's all kinds of old sayings like if at first you don't succeed, try, try try again. And you don't have to be a scholar to, to learn those or memorize those, but those are truisms, and they come from people who've experienced life and to be an entrepreneur to be successful. It takes vision, but it takes a it but it takes an optimistic person who understands that God is behind the whole thing. And then the first point of any effort or energy expended, is about honoring and glorifying God. Yeah. And if that's your motive, then go for it.

Henry Reyenga  

So, so then resiliency, so it really almost like a vision, resilience. See, so it's like, you know, your your, your you see the opportunities because this is God's beautiful creation whether it's a ministry, whether it's practice services, whatever you trust that the Lord has a plan in this province you do for His glory of suit few side, you know when things happen, you know, some detours, but you're always moving forward, resilient, you know, if you need to forgive someone, do it no sense in carrying a bitter grape, you know, things happen, right? Or relationship falls apart, you know, when things don't go but you don't like dwell on that. How do you get out of when that happens? And many people and I know many of you have written about this, that a failure came in your life and you hold a bitterness. And now that bitterness is holding you back. How do you get over this bitterness?

Marty Ozinga  

Well, I think I think Again, it's a it's a spiritual matter and it's a condition of the heart. I mean, I think God's pretty clear about the fact that first of all, he loves us. Secondly, he loves us in spite of our failures and screw ups and any forgiveness for that. He's also very clear about how do you expect me God to forgive you if you won't forgive those who have sinned against you or, or hurt you? And he says that, not because he's mad or wants to hold a grudge against you. He says that because that's his plan that says designed for successful living. He's saying, don't hold grudges.

Marty Ozinga  

Don't dwell on the past and don't wallow in your in your difficulties, but rather rather forgive people who who harmed you or hurt you, and allow me to fix the problem and correct the problem. Because if you don't, you will be consumed by bitterness and anger. And that will tend to distract your thinking and your ability, maybe even harm your health, physically and emotionally, and get you sidetracked from from pursuing valuable and worthy things. And, you know, as human beings we should be smart enough to learn these lessons. We should also be smart enough when God says this is how it works to listen to him. Yeah, but we think we're smarter than he is. Right? And so we keep making mistakes, but this is God's plan for success.

Henry Reyenga  

Right?

Marty Ozinga  

Forgive those People and look to God for the next opportunity and for his blessing on 

Henry Reyenga  

Well Is he back back to vision the topics and visions day and we're talking about how like a negative can take away the vision and often the negative is grounded in people. So bitterness is like a clear vision killer he said something distracts you takes the bandwidth away from like, the positive and in I have seen and we both have seen many people who once had a beautiful vision and it died in bitterness. So really forgiven and move on. Yep. So now we're moving on we have this vision and so forth. And what is the biggest temptation that comes with success then? So we actually are moving we're seeing it. You know, we're not holding grudges or being resilient. We're actually successful. So what could happen to us?

Marty Ozinga  

Well, it's it's a very it's extremely common because it happens a lot. Okay. Again in our humaneness. We have this inclination to sort of stray away from God's plan and follow our own. And it's called pride can it's called a time when we start to think we're so smart. In fact, we're so smart that we're just as smart as God is, or maybe even smarter than God is. And the pride of success starts to make us say and do things that are really pretty stupid sometimes. I mean, we think we can say whatever we We want and get away with it. Or we think we can do whatever we want. And get away with it. You know, no one would be so stupid to put a gun to their head and fully loaded and pull the trigger and think they could survive, right? But in a proverbial sense. There are very successful people that do exactly that. They go and they, they, they start engaging in very destructive behavior, only because they think they're so successful and so special that they unlike everybody else in the room, they can get away with it, right? I can drink and I can take drugs and I can, I can do all sorts of things. And then they almost act surprised when when they get sick or they lose their their their relationships and their respective gets lost and everything else and and you'd say that the guy for a smart guy, he sure did some stupid things right.

Henry Reyenga  

And we know what happened. We know long lists of successful people who had a vision before that got lost in, you know, sinful stupidity over things, that if you look at the one thing, they lost it all on in comparison to everything they've done is so small.

Marty Ozinga  

And it's rooted in pride typically, yes, typically, it's because they you know what it really is. They don't think they need God anymore, right? I, I am in charge of my life, right and I don't need God,

Henry Reyenga  

I'm in charge of my life. I'm in charge my business. I'm in charge of my future. I don't need God, right. So as you think about this, a great vision You think positive, you're resilient, you don't have a bitterness. And right there, the devil comes and says, you don't need God. Who is that? Like? Is that like the Garden of Eden? 

Marty Ozinga  

That's exactly. It's like, 

Henry Reyenga  

Did God really say, you know that if you eat this, you know, don't you want to be like God, your has that whole, like place. So really this to there's a spiritual aspect of vision that comes very personal and very close to home. Do you find Marty that if you looked over the years, that that sense of vision can become a corporate reality? Do you feel that I'm changing topics or subjects, it's on vision, but is there a way to get vision to even be in an organization where it's not just the vision of the founder, the business Man, the leaders, but I can actually, in some meaningful way, start coming into the culture of a company. Yeah, like what do you guys do? When new employees come or whatever? How does that work?

Marty Ozinga  

It is ingrained in the culture of the business and the and the culture of the business. In a lot of ways starts to take on a life of its own. It's not dependent on the leader or the founder interest, whatever. And now, this is over time. And in our case, we actually have culture, culture training or culture education in our

Henry Reyenga  

you mean opposing culture education.

Marty Ozinga  

Yes, we have we ever we have a education crew that meets with all the new employees and on a regular basis and talks about our core beliefs, our history where we come from? Where 

Henry Reyenga  

do you even bring up the spiritual in there 

Marty Ozinga  

and we very much bring up the spiritual part of it because it's so rooted in our in our concept of serving God and serving others. And part of serving others is serving each other and providing products and services for our customers and for the community. And as we do that, and we we achieve a measure of success, and people discover that the workplace is much more pleasant place to work when people care about each other. When people serve each other people's motives are interested in helping the person next to them, as well as helping the company overall. They develop a sense of loyalty they without even being able to articulate it. They take on the beliefs and the culture that not so much that they hear but that they see demonstrated in the day to day workplace. Right. And, and that pleases them, and it benefits them and they want it to continue great. And so, we find at this point in time that the momentum that was sort of started by me, the leader right, gets communicated in a number of different ways and supported by success. But it starts to become a way of thinking for many people in the organization. And the result is there are good ideas and solutions. problems and new methods and new ways of doing things that are better than ever before being brought forth by many, many people, not just one person or two people. And it has a compounding effect because anybody that contributes to the success of the business takes healthy pride, right? in their accomplishment, right? And they want to experience it again. Right? So they go back to the drawing boards of their mind and think of other ways that they can be contributing to the success of the business and it compounds and compounds and compounds and before you know it now we have a couple thousand people, and many, many of them are they go home at night, not just thinking about football or fishing or whatever else they like to do, but how they can contribute to the health and well being of the company.

Henry Reyenga  

Wow. So comes like this individual vision, then that individual is grounded in the Lord, the call his calling in the business. It's grounded in forgiveness. It's grounded in, like, realizing the company belongs to God. And then it begins to spread. So that in a sense, the corporate group of people now say have an optimistic view of the world. Yeah, absolutely. And they start thinking about problems to be solved Kingdom or you know, like mountains to be climbed, you know, new products and services.

Marty Ozinga  

Well, if you look at the opposite, if my philosophy and vision was, as I expressed it to my co workers, I said, I own this company. And everything that happens here is for my benefit, right? I get all the money, right? I get all the glory. I get all The praise, so do a good job. So I get all this stuff. Right, right. You know, most people are going to go, alright, you pay me to work till four o'clock and then I'm going fishing, you know, and it's like, have fun with your life but I got a I got my own life to live. That's exactly the opposite of what we do. Right? And it's like, you know, this isn't about me or what I get out of it. Right? And it's not even about you or what you get out of it, right? It's how we honor and glorify God and then we're all blessed by doing our best. Wow. So it's a big huge difference and it's all spiritual.

Henry Reyenga  

Yeah. Gee, hear that everybody. That what you're doing here at CLA is not about learning some skills that you can go out there in the business world or in the ministry world. At the very core is ministry. It is spiritual. It is about your relationship with God. It It is about your credit and the image bearer. It is about why are you on this earth? It's all grounded. And then all that grounding means that you get to have others be grounded that way too. So vision is not a concept on a whiteboard. What's the vision around here? It is a connection to the creator of heavens in the earth. Wow, 

Marty Ozinga  

absolutely. It's pretty. It's pretty amazing. And then when and when you when you hear it, and you realize it, and you expect it to happen. And then when it does, you're blown away. Yeah, we are. 

Henry Reyenga  

Thank you, Marty. Another amazing segment on in enterprise and ministry in this one on vision

Video Transcript - Developing a Ministry of Prayer

Welcome back. Next to the last session in this class on leadership, you'll notice the title on this one, developing a ministry of prayer. Now, I want to take just a moment to remind us where we have been in all of this thing as we've been defining leadership and looking at that in great detail that a leader, somebody like you, somebody with a certain personality that God has given you, somebody with some baggage that you're carrying from your past and various ways, somebody with your spiritual gifts, that are empowered by the Holy Spirit, people like you are a leader. you interact with a culture and that is the people who are engaged in a certain place at a certain time. And they have certain ways of doing things, how things are done here, that culture can be good and it can be not so good. And so the leader interacts with the culture and the people in that Culture in order to define a preferable future, in other words, where are we going, and, and what kind of changes are going to be needed there, and then provides the impetus for the prayer and the planning that is necessary for that to become reality here. 

It isn't words a leader with all its pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses interacts with a group of people to define the culture, the way things are done here, in order to develop a vision for a preferable future and then provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that future with plans and prayers. So that's kind of where we are in that section of planning and praying. And we've talked a lot about strategic planning in here. We've talked about, you know, change theory, we've talked about that the price that you gotta pay to live out a vision and all of those sorts of things. Today, I want to talk about the importance of prayer mentioned that so many times in these in these presentations. Your ability to have a ministry of prayer is going to do Deeply affect your ability to attain the preferable future I just want to share with you a couple of pictures. This is Presque Isle Wesley in church in Presque Isle, Maine. On the bottom, of course, is the picture of their front of their building with sanctuary. The inside this is their new Worship Center as it was dedicated a few years ago. And it became a reality that new worship center because of prayer, the pastor of that church in 1986 was Rick Kavanaugh. Rick Kavanaugh came there in 1986. The church that have been around a long time facscan quite a history. You can read about it online. 

It began with in a schoolhouse that was abandoned, and they moved it to a different site and they began a church there and some of the beginnings of this, this ministry in Presque Isle Maine, but Rick Kavanaugh here just some of the dates and important events that led him to be a person of prayer. In 1986, he came to the church. So a little church, about 130 people attending regularly. And so he had about six years there. And during that time, it was pretty uneventful as far as the life of a pastor. Things just kind of flowed from day to day from place to place, doing this doing that doing all the stuff that comes with pastoring. In 1992, he took stats. And he found that they were down to about 100 people worshiping regularly. And so he thought about that and thought about that and decided that the best thing he could do is to resign his position and just move on to something else in his life. Maybe another church, maybe not, but found that, you know, his experience there was not leaving him to believe that, that God was blessing that that union of him in that church at that time. And so he resigned he submitted his resignation to the elders. They accepted it a few days later, he was in a time of prayer about his future. What am I going to do now? And he felt a maybe in a new way and urging them God and I've kind of prompted him to ask to undo his resignation, to stay at that church not knowing what God was going to do. But he ended up being and he felt like it was an indeed a a prompting of the Holy Spirit. 

So he went back to the elders and said, You know what, I've been praying. I think God is leading me to undo my resignation, may I? And they said, Yeah, they received them back as Pastor. And that's when things began to happen. It was that hearing God speak, in that situation, allowed him to hear God speak in one situation now he began to anticipate it. So he began to pray, pray more in directly for answers. Shortly thereafter, there was a youth event, something they did every year. They had an attendance at that time of about 200. Every year, invite youth from the community, the church, schools and bombard the schools with information and they would come in and they they'd have speakers engaged with youth and and young people engaging with other young people and they average Like I said about 200 kids coming to this thing every year while they were planning the youth event. And so Rick began to pray about that youth event.

And he felt God's saying to him, that 30 kids were going to commit their lives to Jesus Christ at that youth event. Well, the day of the youth event came, and they had 470 kids show up. Now remember, they usually got 200. At that time, their worship area wouldn't hold 470 it held them up 300. And so they were wondering what what do we do? Do we cancel do we push, we just say anybody who's inside gets in, they decided to cram kids in. And so they probably broke every fire code in presque, Isle, Maine, and they just came kids in, they're sitting on the floor. They're standing in the back, they're around on the stage, they're everywhere. At the end of that event, there was an invitation given and exactly 30 kids came forward, to pray to receive Jesus Christ and commit themselves to his service and his life in their life. short time after that he began to gather people within the church who are committed to prayer. And they went off on a prayer retreat for a day. And they prayed that God would bring them people from the north, south, east and west. Now, remember, this is a church that was averaging 50 people in prayer, that next Sunday, there were 50 new visitors. As a result of the prayer, these people went away just to pray for a day for people to be gathered. So that was 1992 11 years later, they were averaging 725 people in worship, and that's why they ended up having to build that new Worship Center. 

Now, Rick, of course, kept on developing permanency after that. And in his leadership, here's what it looked like. He said, prayer is the foundation of this church. In fact, they made that a statement they repeated it often. Back Jacqueline is the one who tells the story of this, this church in his book clear vision. He says that he asked Rick Kavanaugh this question he said if I were to go to 50 People in your church and ask them what's the most important thing in your church? What would they say? And he said, without a doubt, all 50 of them would say prayer is the most important thing in the life of this church. And here's a listing of the things that happened in their church. There's highest priority, which is a Tuesday night prayer meeting goes on for two hours from seven to nine. And it's modeled after the prayer meeting that happens in Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Brooklyn tabernacle, where there's that night of prayer, which is a phenomenon in itself that you can read about and learn about, but 125 adults and 75 high schoolers and middle schoolers attend that on average, every Tuesday night so so they gather together prayer, prayer is important. It's the most important thing. It's the foundation. 

He has a group of men does Rick have men in his case, who are praying for him regularly, regularly, they gather with him. They gather with him on Sunday morning before he goes up to preach. They take seriously any requests. he gives them about prayer. They've changed their prayer at business meetings. Before that they would have a kind of perfunctory prayer at the beginning saying, you know, God, we're here to do business, please bless us and guide us, etc. Amen. Instead, they would start sending people off into various parts of the church to pray and say, We want you to determine God's will set it really works kind of nice at a congregational meeting which they still had in his church, that they would be sent off for people with a proposals for the budget for that year descriptions of the ministry and the first thing they would have to do is spend time in prayer, various places in the building, just together in groups, but also individually to pray is how is God leading us? Do we sense that this is God's will for us at this time? They have within their church sanctuary, a cross and anyone can go up to that cross at any time, a nail and a nail. 

The nails represent people that these people know and love their co workers, their family members, their neighbors, their friends, but there are people who are away from Christ and they want prayer for this person. And so that they might come to faith. And so they'll go up and they will simply nail across a nail into that cross. And there will be prayer surrounding that by the prayer teams that pray. They have a prayer summit once a year for days 9am to 9pm in the church, and people come, and they learn about prayer, and they're trained in prayer. And they have men's and women's prayer teams that pray for men's and women's ministries and adult ministries. The staff meets every morning for 30 minutes for prayer. Wow. Just imagine if your ministry your organization, had that kind of prayer, backing it up what God would do and opening the windows of heaven to bless your ministry. And so I want to talk in the remainder of my time here just on how do you do that? How do you develop a ministry of prayer in your church? Well, the first thing is to begin with yourself. Are you a person of prayer

Can't remember all I've said in these 35 sessions. But I was challenged with prayer in 1984. That time I was working on a doctoral program at fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. And I was in a class there on church growth. In other words, how do we structure our churches for growth and renewal for getting in touch with the community, etc, etc. in the classroom, there's a group of Koreans, Korean pastors. At that time in Southern California, the Korean church was exploding. In fact, if you had 12 Koreans and put them on a corner, you'd have a thriving church, and no time, it was that kind of experience. And so during one of the breaks all of them were English proficient. So I was one of the breaks I went to them. And so what's the secret anyway? What's the secret of your growth in the Korean church? And I was hoping I gotta admit, I was hoping and give me some program that I could, you know, buy at an institute in my church and and there, there we go. But what he did was ask a question. He turned to me and said, What's your prayer life? Like? I said to him that well, I began to describe it. 

My prayer life was fairly typical for a pastor at that time in the United States, the average pastor in the United States spends nine minutes per day in prayer. And the the lay person spends about five or six minutes per day in prayer. So I described my day in prayer. And I began the day with a period of devotions took about five minutes. You know, I prayed after meals and before meals, we had devotions after our evening meal. And, you know, I prayed my wife sometimes at night before we went to bed. And so he says, Well, let me tell you about mine. So then the Korean church, you are expected to be in your office at 5am. And in our offices, built a prayer closet or in their office, and they would go into the prayer closet and they'd spend the first hour of their day praying, praying for God to empower them praying for the church ministry that people in the church etc. So then at 6am, I am joined by some other people in the church who who gather with me to pray about the needs in the church, etc. We pray from six till seven than they are often they go to work and I go to work in my office. So that's Monday through Thursday, set on Friday. We don't pray in the morning, we come together in the evening, we have dinner and then we have an evening of prayer. We pray all night. And we pray in shifts, and we pray all night set and then I'm expected at least once or twice per year to go to prayer mountain. 

Now in Korea, there is actually a mountain that's called prayer mountain, and it has all these little booths on it, where people can spend days in there just to reconnect with God in a meaningful way, listening to God and so, once or twice a year, he said, I'm going for a week in order to spend time with God in prayer. And I left that conversation really convicted. He said, this is nothing new. So read about read the book of Acts. And so that night I went home I read the whole book of Acts and notice how many times They prayed effective became part of my doctoral dissertation that study in the book of Acts about the prayer life of the fingerprints of God in that early church. Now, that challenged me then to not just think about prayer in general, but my own personal prayer life. I realized, as I said, before, that I didn't know how to pray. I grown up, I learned how to preach. I learned how to study the Bible, I learned how to be a good church person, but I hadn't learned how to pray. And so I went, and of course, I read the Lord's Prayer. And, you know, I pray the Lord's Prayer for a while, but then I came across someone in my church who really had the spiritual gift of intercession. 

We'll talk about that in a moment. And this was a person who had actually empty one of her closets in her house, and she would go into that, that place and spend two to three hours per day in prayer. And that's, I met with her and I said, Listen, you know, I How to learn how to pray. you're somebody who knows this, teach me And better yet, let's teach others. And so we talked about material. And we decided on a book by Dick Eastman, it's called the hour that changes the world. It's it's still available. But it's it's an old book at this point. But what I appreciated about the book was that it was a practical guide to expanding your prayer life. In other words, it didn't just talk about the theory of prayer, or the challenge to pray more, but said, here's a way you can pray more. And he base the idea of an hour in prayer, on Jesus words to His disciples when he came to them when they were sleeping in the garden, and he said, Could you not watch with me one hour? And so he decided to Deke Eastman that he had to learn how to pray for an hour. And so he looked at various facets of prayer, that if we did each of them, five minutes, 12 of them, we'd have an hour of prayer. And so each week, we got together with a group of people who are interested in prayer.

And we went through three of them every week, and so over a month We went through these 12 facets of prayer. And then we did it again. And pretty soon it was kind of like a wildfire. I quit teaching the class the woman taught, the woman who had the gift of intercession taught it. And we have just kind of a prayer revival during that period in the life of our church. And not only that, but the church was growing by leaps and bounds during that period of time. And I have to attribute it to the fact that all of this prayer was happening, and people were praying, not just for themselves, but praying for the church and the ministry. And so the hour that changes the world is a simple concept that I just want to run through it. You may find other resources that are helpful for you, you may be way down the road of prayer much farther than I am. But for some of you, I want to just run through these 12 facets of prayer so that you can get an idea of how you can enrich your prayer life. Now, here's the wheel. You'll notice it starts at the 12 o'clock position with prayer, waiting, a confession of sin, a praying scripture, or watching intercession petition. Thanksgiving, singing, contemplation or meditation, or listening to God and then closing with praise again, practiced by praise. 

Now, just a few words about each of those divisions. You begin with praise. That's how Jesus began the Lord's Prayer, right? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, the word Halloweens wholly separate that, that your name will be lifted up in the world. It's a form of praise. I want your name to be praised. I want you to be lifted up and so you can begin with praise. Now you can choose a variety of subjects to praise God about and part of learning to pray is to be creative about finding those things that you can pray about, praise God about. I found times very meaningfully of choosing a color and just praising God for all the ways I see this color in creation. I found praising God for just people I know people I have known people or leaders and in the past who have had impact on me just not just thanking God for them, but praising God for what he's done in people's lives. I'm praising God to talk to my accountability partner the other day, and he told me the story about a woman who came to faith who was experiencing oppression of the evil one. She wasn't a Christian. And he got to lead her to faith, even though he didn't speak Spanish. And she didn't speak English. And there was a translator there who led between them, and praise God for new eyes being open. Lots of things to praise God for but that's the way we start our prayer is recognizing that God is in heaven. He's our father. He's in heaven. 

We praise him for who he is. And secondly, waiting. Sometimes referred to as soul surrender. The verse I've listed there is one of my favorites. Isaiah 40, verse 31. Isaiah is talking to God is speaking to the people of Israel through Isaiah. And after talking about you know, have you not known Have you not heard about how great God is? It says gives that wonderful word about those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint. Now that we're hope there isn't a difficult one to interpret from the Hebrew that it was originally written in. And so some translations say those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. Now the idea of the word there is kind of a twisting together, you can picture taking a pliers and two pieces of wire and twisting them together, or two pieces of string and twisting them together. The idea of waiting is that I bind myself to I twist myself together with God. That's the idea of waiting. I remind myself that everything I have and everything I am belong to God, and I am spending this time connecting with him surrendering Myself to him totally and fully. 

And then on the wheel comes confession. confession is nothing more than agreeing with that's what the word confession means those who confess their sins He will forgive their sins and cleanse them from all unrighteousness at first john one nine. And so I spent time looking at the sins that I've committed that I know are outside the boundaries of God, not just my actions, but my attitudes and my words. And then you know, there are times I'll ask God, according to the Psalms, word, you know, search me, O God and know my heart, test me try me see if there any anxious thoughts in me lead me in the way of everlasting. Some translations, the evil thoughts, anything evil and we search me and a moment of quiet to say, okay, God, what in me, is not what you want. And so there's time in confession, scripture reading. You know, I usually read from the Old and the New Testament, but you can do this however you want, but just spend a few moments reflecting on what Scripture says until you hear God speaking to you through Scripture. And then watching that idea of a mental awareness. 

Last time I talked about that idea of being a watchman on the tower, you know, where you're looking out to see who's coming. That our friend or an enemy, but to watch to think about the the newspaper articles that you read the news on TV or in your computer, however you get it and say, Where is God at work where Satan at work? I'm watching now for the enemy, and I'm going to come against him watching in some of the events in your church I'm watching what is the enemy? What's up God and how can I be part of that, then intercession is sometimes called stepping into the battle on behalf of another person. You're you're taking another person's needs and desires, and you're bringing them to the Lord. Now, I keep a list of these so that I can track when they're answered and how they're answered and then I can celebrate with God and thanksgiving as well but intercessions important to the people you love in particular to be lifting them up. This This can take more than five minutes very quickly, especially if you're interceding for your pastor or another church leader. 

If you're interested in interceding for certain programs, certain missionaries, this is a time when you can pour your life out on behalf of another person asking God to work and and there are miraculous kind of answers to these kinds of prayers, you know, you read them in the books, where, you know, a missionary is facing a particular challenge, and senses these headhunters all around and, and yet they don't attack and later he finds out when he's back in the United States that that night when he was in that place, and these headhunters did not, or these cannibals did not attack him realize that there were these men praying for him. And later, when the natives came to faith, they said, We didn't attack you because you had the shining man all around you. That kind of thing is happening because of our prayers. petition is is to pray for personal needs. What are my needs? You know, this morning I prayed about the fact that I was going to be here taping this session. And I want to do that not in my strength but in God's strength petition, as well as for the illness stuff that has happens in my life as well as the challenges that I face. I asked God to help me face these challenges in a meaningful way, and to make my life productive for him. Thanksgiving is just all of those things. And one person has listed 1000 of them, I used to keep a list of all the new things that I found a thank God for, you know, like a chuckle of my youngest grandson. He just has this chuckle that I just it just draws me into laughter. And it's a delightful thing. And I thank God for that Thanksgiving, singing, that I can lift up my voice in song because that's a very real thing as you read through the book of Psalms, but to sing a song that is meaningful to me that particular day. 

Three more meditation, that is thinking about spiritual themes. Sometimes it's meditation on a passage in Scripture. Sometimes it's just meditating on what God is doing in the world, but that I think about some spiritual themes in my life. Yeah, meditation has been gotten a bad name because of the Far Eastern kind of meditation that allows you to empty yourself. The goal of our meditation is not to empty ourselves to fill ourselves with God. And so we spend time just thinking, reflecting, letting God lead our thoughts and praying that God will lead our thoughts during that time. And then listening, hearing God speak. Sometimes, you know, you will get an impression that you'll write down sometimes you'll get guidance that you'll write down. Sometimes God, you know, has to wake us up because we haven't been listening enough. I've had that experience recently where God gave me a direction and I wasn't listening during the day so so he woke me up at night and gave me a clear direction through my dreams. So hearing God speak, and then praise which is magnifying God. So you're going to build a permanent story. You got to begin with yourself. 

Then you ask people to pray with you. When I read through the Apostle Paul's letters, I'm surprised at how often I Find that he asked people to pray for him to intercede for him because he was engaged in ministry. And I found that important if Paul needed that. I mean, he's somebody who experienced the presence of God before him, liking him to the ground and calling him the ministry revealing things to him supernaturally. Paul needed people praying for him. I certainly do. And so you can ask for a variety of people to pray for you. Here are some of the things that Paul asked for prayer about. He said, first of all, that prayer would be necessary. He says, In Philippians one, verse 19. I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out fine for my deliverance. He's in prison at that time. I know through your prayers, this will turn out for my deliverance. Imagine that. Now God could do that anyway. But it was through their prayers that it was going to happen.

people praying for you that when you're facing a difficult situation, that you will be delivered joining them in ministry I love the way this is put. He says, I appeal to you brothers by the Lord Jesus Christ, by the love of the Spirit. strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. Join the ministry strive together. That's one of the things I would say to my prayer partners that I have today. strive together with me. In other words, I can't do this on my own. I need other people surrounding me in prayer and protecting me with prayer but but the ministry is yours. In fact, when I have a farewell service to the church, I was serving for many years. You know, one of the things I did was have prayer partner, Stan says, you know, nobody's going to write your name in the history book of this church, but more is owed to you than it is probably to my work. And so prayer that you might have fellowship with the church. Romans 15 says, pray that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there so that by God's will, I mean come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed and Yeah. 

Let me have fellowship with the church that my experience with church members be rich and full, that I may boldly proclaim the word Ephesians 6:19. He's praised for the right words, to share the gospel of Ephesians 6:20 says he might present the gospel without fear that he might communicate clearly. Colossians 4:4 and 4:2 doors might be open for the gospel, etc, that we people would be praying for Paul for that and for deliverance. In those passages listed there, he prays for be to be rescued from unbelievers to be delivered from wicked and evil men. And he later tells the Corinthians that their prayers for him will help deliver him from deadly peril. So all of these things, Paul is requesting prayer. So organized prayer partners for yourself, just ask people who's willing to pray for you on a regular basis. And they said before in a session that you don't helps to have these three levels that level one people are really intimate with you level to get some information about you. And level three, the general church, you asked to pray for you and your ministry because that will serve the church. 

Well, you have a couple of people in level one, a few more in level two, and level three, and then you communicate prayer requests. I've got a few people in level one that I communicate with quite regularly. level two, I sent out a letter, an email every week, woman in our church coordinated that to 30, some prayer partners. And every week they got this listing of my requests and my calendar for the week so that they might be in prayer for me. And level three, I just say, you know, it's important that you pray for your leaders here and I encourage everybody on staff to have a leadership team. And then once you've got you know, people praying for you and you're praying for yourself, then you start going further and you gather people to learn to pray for the church, you gather people who have the spirit of spiritual gift of intercession, there's the definition there. And you can pray for extended periods of time you get greater answers to prayer, you gather them together. You pray together, you brainstorm about what God could do in your church with a greater prayer ministry, you preach about prayer. You practice prayer together in a variety of settings. You try some things out and you see how God leads you to develop a ministry of prayer. This is essential to you achieving your vision as a leader, if you're going to get to that preferable future that God has called you and the people you are leading to. Prayer has to be a part of it. So enter into covenant to be people of prayer. And God will bless that incredibly. Next time I'm going to give some final thoughts and then you will have completed this class on leadership. See you next time.

Video Transcript - Final Thoughts

Congratulations. You've made it to the end of this class. You'll notice this is less leadership session 36. I've entitled it final thoughts. I've been giving a lot of thought to what do I want to say in this last session here with you? I thought I would just look at some Maxim's that have been helpful for me Maxim's about leadership, you know, Maxim's are those pithy statements that take an idea, and they just put it down in a memorable way. And one of my favorites is, is Dwight Eisenhower, one time during the World War Two, got his generals around a table and put a string on it. And he says, try to push that string to the other side of the table. And of course, it was difficult because once you try pushing the string, it folds around and sometimes come, folds around sometimes comes loose. 

And so he said, No, the best way to get that string to the other side of the table is to pull it and he says, so the maximum is you always pull people you don't push In other words, you got to get engaged people, I guess in terms of what we've talked about engage people's feelings and engage people in a commitment to what they are doing and talking about. So I thought I would do that sort of thing. But I've decided to go a little different direction for tonight for this session, and But first, let's remind ourselves where we are. We've been talking about this model of leadership for a long time, that is a leader enters a group of people who have a culture and the culture is defined as the way we do things here. And that leader engages the people in that culture to help them define a preferable future and they get a vision for that preferable future. And then the leader rolls out that vision and he also provides the impetus for the prayer and the planning that are needed in order for that preferable future to become a reality. Or here it is, in the words we've been using. A leader with all of his pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses interacts with a group of people to define the culture. way things are done here in order to develop a vision for a preferable future, and then provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that future with plans and prayer. 

So we've been talking about each section of that for a long time, we talked about the leader, who you are. And if you started with the intro class, you know that we talked about all of the kinds of things that affect you, as a leader, there's your personality. And so you got to be thinking about the personality. We talked about personality tests you could take to help you do that. There are certain styles of leadership that you have that are ingrained in you. There's baggage you have from your background, your family of origin, and that impacts how you are a leader your birth order even affects how you act as a leader. And so we've looked at all of those things that would impact you as a leader as you come into a cultural situation things you have to be aware of, if you are going to lead well and not just push people but pull them forward into the future. Then we talked about culture a great deal, the way things are done here, we talk About how culture you can look at in a macro setting, as well as in a micro setting that you, you look at the big culture. And so we looked at the culture of the United States, we looked at how it's changed over a period of decades. And, and, and we looked at the place of the church and the culture of the United States. And I asked you to apply that to your own particular setting. 

We've looked at the subcultures and it's a wonderful interviews generational culture with John Burton, and with Mia Clark, looking at, you know, the ethnic cultures and, and here in our area that the African American culture and what she's doing in order to change that culture, and how she's providing education. And so we talked about culture, the fact that you got to define the culture where you are, and a good new tools to do that how you look at the values of the place of the written documents that the physical manifestations of where you are ministering and how all of those contribute to the way we do things here and weights. Things are done, become important to people and they become kind Setting concrete. And then we talked about how do you develop a vision, a vision for the future, then? How do you engage people and looking beyond what is to what could be? How do you identify that? That that statement of urgency that will allow people to see there's a need for change? And then how do you put that into words in such a way that's compelling? And so you roll out the vision, we looked at all those kinds of things, then we looked at change theory and how this is going to involve change. And and then now we've been talking about strategy and strategic planning, and how strategic planning has to consider various things like spiritual warfare like prayer, those kind of things. But all of that's in the past today. In this session, I simply want to talk to you about the why.

Great movie in the United States has become an iconic movies, The Blues Brothers to 1980 movies, so it's an old movie, but it's about the two Blues Brothers. Played by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Jake. Jake blues gets out of prison at the beginning of the movie. They are two blues singers By the way, they're brothers and, and his brother Eldridge is there to pick them up from prison and they decide to go visit the person they call the penguin. It's a nun at a Catholic orphanage. They were raised in an orphanage. And this Catholic nun was somebody that was very important to them and precious to them and care about them love them, so they go to visit her. And they find out from her that the orphanages in great peril the school they are the orphanage, every part of it's in great peril. That unless they can come up with money in 11 days, the place is going to be repossessed, and shut down. And so Blues Brothers sense that they are on a mission from God. fact that's a phrase that they repeat over, excuse me, over and over and over again. We're on a mission from God. They say it to the police, they say it to the bad guys who are chasing them and say it over and over again. Well our mission for God we're on a mission from God rather mission from God. They decided to get there. blues band together and hold up benefit concert and raise the money necessary. 

And so the movie just talks about them getting their old band together and how they do that and the people who are against it, etc, etc, etc. But it's that phrase, we're on a mission from God, we're on a mission from God and they could define that mission very well. We're on a mission from God to save that school. Now related to that, put that on the shelf for just a moment we're going to come back to that. Related to that as a teacher, consultant researcher that has helped me a great deal. It's somebody in the business world, not in the Christian world necessarily, but he relates to the business world His name is Simon Sinek si ne K. And he did a talk years ago that's called start with "why" he developed what he calls the Golden Circle. Now the Golden Circle is made up of these various elements. First of all on the outer circle is the "what" what Do you know what the results of our work? And then the next inner circle is? "How" how do we do it? How do you do what you do? And the "Why" is why do you do what you do? What is the purpose behind it? What are the beliefs? What are the values behind it? And what he said in his talk about businesses is that businesses usually start with the what? And he's found over and over again that the most successful businesses don't start with the what. 

They start with the Why. And he gives several examples Apple computer company for instance, he said when they started, they were like many other computer companies in the sense that their job was the "what" was to produce computers. But most of the computers back companies back then gateway Dell, etc. Always began with the what when they were trying to sell their computers. What does this computer do? This is our computer. This is how much memory it has. This is what its capacity is this is the variety of things. It can Do they start with the what now buy our computer said Apple turned it entirely round and they began with the "why". They said we are our company of innovation. We are always looking to think differently. And so we are always trying to come up with the best, the most ingenious plan that we can to produce a computer. Now how do we do that? Well, we provide unique designs, we provide a unique operating platform and the what is here it is this is what it will do. And it says Apple blows everybody out of the water when it comes to selling computer but not only that, they were able to expand their business because they're what wasn't we're producing these computers. That's what we do.

Because they started with why they could say well, we can expand it to telephone in telephones, cell phones, and they produce the iPhone which became an instant hit. They produce all of these other things the iPad, the iPod the the the Macintosh, the etc, all of these separate things they could do, because we're a company that thinks differently. You want to join us in thinking differently, are you somebody who's who wants the best and, and is looking for the best and the most innovative that you can have. I mean, cite other companies that did just the opposite. They started with a what. And they said, you know, we're going to sell flat screen TVs gateway computers tried to do that failed entirely because they were a computer company. That's how people interpreted them. Dell come computer company went through a difficult time, they tried to expand their business. And every time they tried to expand, it didn't work beyond computers, because people still thought of them as a computer company. And so it constantly says, You got to think of why. If you don't, you're destined to failure in business. They've used TiVo. Maybe you're not old enough to remember TiVo, but TiVo was an incredible, innovative design. 

When it came out. It was a It was a machine that will allow you to take programs. So you didn't have to be home all the time. So your TV would take the program, you could cut through skip commercials, you could do all that sort of thing. It was an incredible thing. But people try to sell it on the basis of what, look at all these things this TiVo machine will do for you. And it was a disaster. It didn't sell the company went belly up. He said, what a difference that have made if they had started with the why, and started asking things like, are you a person who likes to control your time? You know, are you somebody who likes to control your time, I'll tell you how we've arranged for you to do that. We've built this machine. And here's the one here's what it will do. But starting with the why. Now, that talk was something that was powerful for me. I went back to my staff after I'd watched it on YouTube, and you can find it there. And we simply talked about what's the why behind what we're doing. No one church, we can often talk about the what, right? We can talk about the what, till the cows come home, what what do we do? Well, we've got this children's ministry and we invite you to bring your children to our children's ministry, because you know, we're going to take care of them. We're going to educate them, we're going to love them. And we're going to love them the way you love them. So come bring your children to our children's ministry, or we do youth ministry, you concern about your teenager, we've got a great place for them. 

Or, you know, we do this thing as we provide a social relationship place for you. And we can quickly do that. In fact, I find myself even talking about that when I was strategizing with a group of people about ministry to the senior citizens and saying, what do we do? Well, people need friendships when they retire, and they move to our community. So here's what we do. We provide this group and you can come there and there there aren't any expectations and you can become part of something that will lead to friendship in your life, what you're doing. And we still seldom talk about the Why do we do this? So the big question is what is our Why? What? What is the ground level of why we do what we do now? We've talked about leadership, why do we lead? Why do you put yourself in situations? You know, in that session that I did about the price to pay and the dark side of leadership? Why? Why do we put ourselves out there where we've talked about the fact that you know, leaders are the ones that are shot first what, why do we do this? Now we can talk about what we do, and that's been most of this class, what do we do? 

But why do we do it now some of the phone, the why and the answer of the Great Commission and the great commandment, the Great Commission is, you know, going to all the world and, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe why commanded and lo I'm with you always to the end of the age and the great commandment, to love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbors yourself. Those are wonderful. Why is why do I do this? I do it. Because I have met Jesus Christ. He's made a difference in my life. I've given him my life. And I am willing to take any. Any steps He leads me to take another teacher in CLI Steve Elzinga, has written a book and I'm sure it's in one of his classes about Titanic. The Titanic, was built in 1912, launched in 1912, it was going to be the unsinkable ship, right.

And lo behold, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic, from England to New York City, and in the United States, it hits an iceberg and the iceberg gashes it so that it's doomed, it's going to sink. And so they start launching the lifeboats and that's when they start finding out that there aren't enough lifeboats on the boat to save the 2200 plus people who are on the ship. There's only enough lifeboats space for 1200 to be saved. And so they begin launching the lifeboats and the rule is That young men and women first. Now women and children excuse me first and so women and children start loading into lifeboats but because everybody's in a hurry that ship is starting to list. The lifeboats are launched before they're full. And so the lifeboats are directed to start rolling away from the ship because when it goes down, it's going to cause this sucking sensation. So you don't want to be near when this place goes under when the ship goes under, and so the the lifeboats roll away. What was fascinating about the story about the lifeboats is that most of them were not filled to capacity at all. In fact, here's a picture. 

The Carpathia was a ship that came the first ship on site after the Titanic sunk in and they were rescuing the lifeboats. But here's a picture one of the lifeboats. And you'll notice that if you count all the faces in there, you'll come up with about 20 people in a lifeboat that was designed for 40. And so the lifeboat was not full. There was a phenomenon that they noted the survivors That is that as the lifeboats rolled away, they didn't go back to pick up survivors. Now there were reasons for that some people were scared that they would be overwhelmed. They'd be small to people trying again. But there were 700 people that could have been saved lifeboats went back, but none of the lifeboats except I think it was one went back. And that struck me. that struck me because I'm, I'm part of a church and sometimes it's compared to a boat. In fact, I went to a pastor's gathering years ago for promise keepers in Atlanta, Georgia. And I remember the speaker, Max Lucado was the speaker that night and, and he, just before he began speaking, I was talking to the man next to me, and he was from a denomination where we have some theological differences. 

Let's put it that way. And so I began the conversation by saying, you know, hey, you know, I've got a young man who was in my office just last week, and he was telling me about the fact that he's dating and as a Nazarene girl is from the Church of the Nazarene. So I wonder what the differences are. And so we talked about all the difference between you and me and not to that to that, and we began to just highlight some of them. And then the talk began. And like to made this picture of a ship going through the waters troubled waters, and there's all kinds of people in the ship, but instead of throwing out life rings and hauling people aboard the people on the shipper arguing about what the seating capacity should be, and what the seating system should be, and who gets what chair and who gets what sense of honor and place of honor, etc, etc, etc. And it was just very convicting for me because I realized that sometime along the way, I had begun to lose my Why. Why do I do this happens in the church? It happens to leaders. back my brother once told me a story. I think it's a fable but maybe not. along the east coast of the United States. 

There are various exclusive clubs only very rich can get into them and turns out that for many of those There is a similar story of their beginning, they began as life saving stations, people very early in the history of the United States noted that at certain places along the coast, there were objects that were made it likely that there could be a ship that would found her there, there were reefs that were that sort of thing that a ship would hit. And so they established life saving places. And here's a picture of one of them back very early in this in the 1900s. And the idea was when the word would go out, these volunteers would come rushing and get their boats out of the lifesaving station and get their boats in the water and they go and rescue as many people as they possibly could. But over a period of time, people began to think, you know, this is cool, we should get together more often than just when we're out there in the lifeboats. And so, they put Additions on they built nice buildings and and they created places where they can meet and there they would have lectures about you know, life saving techniques and how to handle your book better. And all those kinds of lectures and, and after a while, people would come for the lectures and the food and and fuel them would show up in the call would come out to to actually rescue people. And after a while, they said, You know what, I'm really kind of tired of this running out. They're getting too old for that, and you know, to engage with other things. And so they would hire people to do that for a while. And then after a while, they could ping them. And what you've got is a nice, nice club that used to be a life saving station.

And I thought about my church, I thought about myself. In my first church, my goal was to see people meet Jesus Christ. Why? Because I met him. I met him, he, he had, he had come to me and he had shared his love with me. And I had gotten to experience His love in a powerful life changing way. And I wanted others to experience that. Now, unfortunately, I grew up in a church that didn't teach me about that a great deal. In fact, you know, lifesaving was not part of it. We even in seminary, my training was to take care of the people in the lifeboat go and find more people to bring in and that that training stuck with me except that I had experienced people coming to faith. I'd experienced in a music group that I sang with saying, honor camp and we saw people come to faith in those situations, I went on a summer's missions program, got to see people impacted by the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ came to save them from their sins, that God loved them, he wasn't angry with them, he loved them, he wanted them to come to salvation, got to see it happen. 

So it became a big part of my why and in my first church, how we got to see people to that little tiny church, people coming because their lives are a mess. And they were looking for some solution and they were afraid of God they were written with guilt and to share with them the good news and I got to disciple those people. Some parts of it I didn't do well I didn't know how to do leadership well, but some of that activity on my part lesson as I gotten to my next church where I had to learn to lead and now I thought, Well, okay, the, the life saving part is lesser than I've got to leave this group and and lead them through that really location for seven years. And it was about trying to hold the group together. It wasn't about bringing new people to relationship with Jesus Christ. And so I had to rethink my why. And even now in retirement, I'm starting to think, why why do I do this? Why do I do what I do? I figure it out, and figured out why I do this. It's because I have experienced forgiveness of my sins through Jesus Christ. I realize that my theology is right. Now my theology was probably always right, that I'm saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And God came to me not because I was such a good kid or a good person, but he came to me because simply because he loved me, and he offered me salvation in Jesus Christ. And now I've experienced that. I want to share it. And I want God to create a passion in me for sharing it. So a passion that will drive me to be engaged and things like this. 

You know, I hope it's not that your organization will just reached some new level, but that will be more impactful for the kingdom of God. That's what we leaders are supposed to be doing. As we do that we are serving the people around us, because we are people who have been impacted by the love of Jesus Christ. And we're compelled now to be people who are witnesses of is love, in our area and out to the world. And so on to close this session on leadership by simply asking the question, what is your why you can become a great leader. We've looked at some of those early sessions, great leaders like Stalin, like Adolf Hitler, you could probably probably name some great business leaders who created havoc in their wake. Because their why was just about money or just about getting ahead or just about getting people's approval. Spend some time with God and figure out what is your why and when you do that, live it out with a passion, the why of Jesus Christ as the head of his church and you get to be part of the wonderful process of him building his kingdom until He comes again and says to you, Well done, good and faithful servant. So thank you for spending time with me a lot of time with me as it turns out, and now Bless you, my my words to our blessings to you in the name of Jesus Christ. As you lead in his church. May you experience His power working in you and his love flowing through you so that the world is changed because everything rises and falls on leadership.