Video Transcript: Transition

Welcome to a course on leadership. Now you'll notice the visual that I've chosen for this and that's a person saying this way, this is where we're going as others carry the arrow that's going there. That's in many ways a wonderful picture of leadership it's what you are called to as a Christian leader. And certainly what we're called to here in Christian Leaders Institute to help to be more effective, and being a leader that makes a change in the world. 

Now, if you’ve been part of Christian Leaders Institute training for quite a while, you may not have taken the first 10 sessions of this class. What happened was, we were working on this class of 36 sessions, when a decision was made to change that, instead of 36, sessions, we moved the first 10 sections about "You as a Leader", we moved those sessions into the introductory course. So if you've been around a while, you may have missed those 10 sections, and I want to encourage you to go back. But today, I'm just going to take you on a look back just so that you can see where we have been. And then we'll talk a little bit more about where we're going in this class on leadership. 

We looked at the leader in this previous class, here's the model I've been using. And this is the model we're going to focus on for the future, we're going to look at a leader with all of his strengths and weaknesses, all of the pluses and minuses that you as a leader have some real, unique individual things that make you effective or ineffective as a leader. And so we've been looking at that, and that's part of that first 10 sessions. In this class, we're going to focus on that second part. 

Initially, what does it mean to be a person who's looking to change the culture? Now the culture is defined as the way we do things here, and focusing here on the star that's there. And the star is a mixture of a mission statement or written things like rules and procedures, but it's also how stories are told, and who are the heroes; it's the physical layout will tell you a great deal about the culture. And the rituals that people use will tell you a great deal about the culture. And so we're going to examine culture. And as a leader, you're going to have to know the culture where you are before you can move on to the future. And so we're going to look at that, and then we're going to look at vision or preferred future. 

And you'll notice to the image that I've chosen for that is the star with that statement by Glenn Hiemstra, the preferred future vision becomes the star that you steer by not a simple map to be followed. So I'm going to use that idea of a star, you know, when they started navigating off the coasts early on back in the 18th century, off the coast of Europe and the coast of Africa, and etc. It was scary, because when they had no landmarks to steer by, people would get lost very quickly. And so somebody discovered that if you had a fixed position you could work with, you could use the sextant as the instrument they created. And you could focus on that star. And by that star, you could tell where you were out in the ocean where there are no landmarks to steer by. And so you could correct your course, based on the North Star and your relationship to it. Or you could move further north or south or east or west based on how are you situated in relation to that fixed point. Well, vision becomes that fixed point and we're going to look at how you describe a vision, how you discover a vision, how you craft a vision, and how do you communicate a vision in this course. 

And then there's that yellow box. That is the prayer and the planning that are necessary. You provide the impetus as a leader for that prayer and that planning to happen so that the preferred future becomes a reality. So here it is, in writing, a leader with all of his pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses interacts with a group of people to define the culture, which is defined as the way things are done here in order to develop a vision for a preferable future. And then that leader provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that future with plans and prayer. 

So that's what we're doing. We've been focusing on that leader in the first 10 sessions. In this brief time with you, I want to bring you back a little bit and just summarize what we did in that first 10 classes so that you can get an idea of the value of going back and listening to them. So we looked at the question, what goes into making you a leader and we listed a variety of things. Here they are, the baggage you carry goes into making you as a leader now the baggage comes from your family of origin Sometimes our baggage is something that is good for us as a leader, it helps us figure out good things about how to lead people in an effective way. And that baggage might be a father or a mother who was a leader, and they became a model for us. But many, many times that baggage is negative as well. And so maybe you've got a lot of encouragement on the plus side from your parents to become who God called you to be. Or maybe you were abused as a child. And that affects you deeply. Or your parents were divorced. 

Years and years ago, I used to be involved in a process called healing of the memories. Now, the theology behind it was a little shaky. But the philosophy or the thought behind it was that God is not limited by time the way we are, he's outside of time. And so if we could bring somebody back to moments in their life, where they were damaged, where they were hurt, where they were carrying scars, if we could pray them back there in a meaningful way, and then pray for healing of that, there that hopefully, very positive things could happen for the future. And so in times of prayer, you know, we would just slowly go back to some defining moments in their life. And this often the leaders in the church, I was pastoring at the time. And one of the things that was surprising to me, was the fact that people can identify them pretty readily. They can identify them, and they can tell of. And it was often with pain and tears that they would identify them. And they were talking about the feelings of what it was like. And I remember working with one leader, there was a deacon in the church I was serving. So he had somebody, somebody was an influential person in our congregation. And yet, we went back with him to the moment when he was told that his parents were divorcing and the aftermath of that. And just the chaos and the brokenness that that created in him. And that was affecting his life, still, negatively. And then certainly his leadership negatively. And so we prayed for healing of that event, in his life, in the emotions of a young child who was told his father is moving out. 

That kind of baggage that we carry, every one of us, is unique in the baggage that we carry. And so one of the things we did was look at that, and identify it, and talk about how we can integrate that into our understanding of who we are. But that's something of what makes us as a leader. Birth order. Your birth order has an impact on how you act as a leader. firstborns tend to be the ones who are out there in front, they just tend to be those kinds of people. Third borns tend to be the people who are the actors and actresses and, and salespeople. They're very good at salespeople, are very good at people relationships. These are generalizations, of course. Second children tend to be counselors and that sort of thing, because they end up being mediators in the process. So we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about how to figure out how that affects you in your life. We talked about life experience, again, life experience can be negative, or it can be positive. And we're going to talk about how you take a positive view of your life experience. For instance, I had an uncle who went to World War II, as a soldier. And prior to going as a young man, his stated goal was to become a lawyer. That's what he wanted to do. And he had plans for education that would help them achieve that goal. But he ended up in World War II, and was so impacted by the amount of death and destruction that he had to see and be part of, and because of that when he came back, he took a spiritual turn in his life. And that spiritual turn led him to go into ministry instead. So instead of going to law school, he ended up in a seminary, and they ended up serving churches for his adult life. Those kinds of life experiences 

Now what kind of life experiences you have, one of the things we looked at in that first part was how to integrate those life experiences into becoming who you are in a more effective leader. And we looked at personality, as part of what goes into making you as a leader, your personality. All leaders, personalities are not the same. But we looked at things like the Myers Briggs test. Are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert? Are you a sensing person? Are you a practical, concrete detail person? Are you an intuitive or the concrete versus those kinds of things? How does that impact you? And you are called to lead in the organization you're part of. And we looked at the DISC survey and gave you tools, questions online that are free to help you discover where you are on these kind of personality testing things. And I mentioned the Kolbe test, which is not free but is worthwhile taking another way of looking at your personality to talk about how you most effectively work within any given setting. And so all of those things became part of our investigation of what goes into making you, the leader. And then we have a session on writing a personal mission statement that you look at who you are, and what God has called you to be. And so in those first 10 sessions, there's a Bible study there, which starts with things like Jeremiah 1 where God says to Jeremiah, you know, before you were born, I chose you to be a prophet. Before you were born, I loved you. When you were in your mother's womb, I knew you. The word knew there actually means I love you. And what does that mean for you? Or what does it mean when Paul says in Philippians, you know, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it as God was at work within you both to will and to work for His good pleasure." What does that mean for you to think about that? 

And then to think about: What has God called you to do within his kingdom? And so I gave you resources to do that, resources to define your personal values, what's your value system, and that will impact where you end up as a leader, as far as the organization you're part of. A people you admire, a listing of those, and then personal strengths and gifts that you have; spiritual gifting, a spiritual gift is something that you are able to do well in the kingdom. And it's not because you got the right education, it's because this is given to you by the Holy Spirit. So know what that spiritual gift is, know what your personal strengths are. 

In those first 10 sessions, we also looked at leadership styles. 

Laissez Faire, is the fact that you really don't give a whole lot of form to what's happening. And organizations that have many, many strong leaders adopt this as a style. Because just let them go, let them find their way and help them organize together and stay on the same page. The last church I served as a pastor was loaded with leaders. And so when people have asked me what my job was, I said, it's keeping everybody on the same page. That's how I define what I was called to do as a leader in that situation. And that was almost laissez faire, not quite. 

Democratic, where you get people together and you talk and process and you engage them in the visioning process, and certainly in the process of living out that vision. And that's probably the most popular one.

Then there's the autocratic benevolent style. This is the benevolent dictator. You know, Plato, many, many years ago, the Greek philosopher was once asked, What's the what's the most effective system of leading a group of people, particularly a country, and he said the benevolent dictator. And so this is the one where somebody comes along, and he has people's good in mind, and he does that for their good. In the church, I served in California, I served there 23 years in a church in Southern California. We went through our relocation. And as part of that, we sold the original building that the church put up and sacrificed for, we sold it to a group that was considerably different than we were as far as culture, that Pastor Duke, there was a benevolent kind of dictator. And now he did it with the benefit of the people in mind, but in the culture in which he exists, that's how he could best serve, he could best serve by telling people what to do. And so when my daughter was going to get married, she wanted to get married in that building, which we had sold. And so I went there to ask if we could rent their building. And I was told by the people in the office that Molly had asked Pastor Duke, he made every major decision in the place. 

And so that's one style, that autocratic bureaucratic leader, style, that's the person who is very directive and saying, This is what you're going to do. And this is how you're going to do it. Now. Sometimes that person can be benevolent or not. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to serve in Haiti for a period of time. And I remember going there and interacting with the people from Haiti and, and I was working with some very highly educated men in a music camp over a period of time. And in talking with them over lunch and dinner, just talking about the state of situation in Haiti, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Billions and billions of dollars of aid have just come into Haiti over the last decades. And yet, it doesn't seem to improve the life of the people there. So we're just talking about what is it going to take to turn Haiti around? And I was surprised that these men said is going to take a dictator. We need a dictator in this country. Now, you know, as dictators were fought and spoken against and aid was withheld when a dictator would change situations, as far as you know, saying there's not going to be any election next time. aid would be withheld. because we're trying to push people to the democratic style of things. And yet the people there acknowledge that we need a dictator, we want him to be good because they had a lot of bad ones who simply took aid money and funneled into their own accounts. 

These are the styles, we talked about the fact that in those first sessions that you can choose a style to fit a situation to fit a culture in the Haiti culture. That's what they need is a strong person. 

We looked at leadership levels. The fact that when you come into an organization, you have a position, a job description, and that that's what you are able to do, you can't go far beyond it, you have this job description, that's what you are to do, then the idea of permission that once you have proven that you can do your job description, well, other people will begin to be influenced by you and are willing to listen to you, they'll give you permission to lead. And then if you do that well, and things are improving, and there's a production that's happening, there's a success that's happening, the organization is growing, or your department is effective, or whatever, you get into that third level of I can produce something that will be helpful for this organization, people will give you a broader influence within that organization. And then the fourth level is people development, that you take your influence. And instead of just gaining all the accolades, you begin to develop people, and you begin to invest in them, you want them to grow in their capacity, you want them to grow in their abilities, you want them to grow in their own leadership, even to the point where some maybe will go elsewhere. But, you are investing in people and they know that you care about them, they know you, they know you want the best for them. That's another level of leadership that expands your influence even further, and usually even beyond the organization or church that you're a part of. 

And then finally is personhood, where people will follow you, just because you have spent a lot of years being an effective leader. And in the course of give the example of Billy Graham, as somebody who recently died recently, from these tapings of these videos, somebody has been around a long time, and therefore people are willing to listen, and they will listen to him. So we looked at all of that. 

And then we concluded with a couple of sessions looking at the dark side of leadership. In other words, you have a dark side too because of your life experience because of your family of origin because of a variety of choices you have made. In addition to those things that you didn't choose, you have potential for failure in you. And it's a dark side, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer said that he realizes he was in a prison, the Gulag in Russia, that the line between good and evil doesn't pass between classes of people nor groups of people, or even nations, it passes through the human heart. And you have the capacity for great evil. And so we discuss that and where it comes from. And then in the next session, the last session, before a wrap up, we talked about how in the world, you overcome that dark side, how do you not let it control you, and I share my own experience of my own failure and what it costs me as an individual, as a leader, to fail spectacularly. But the point is, if you are a leader, you have a target on you. It's a well known battle tactic throughout the many, many years of warfare. It came, especially, to awareness during the Civil War here in the United States. And that is that when people are shooting, they are just shooting indiscriminately trying to kill the other soldiers. But they're shooting at the leaders, the officers because they know if they can kill an officer, it's going to have a huge impact on the outcome of the battle. If you are a leader, our enemy has a target on you. And you've got to be aware of that and know where your potential weaknesses are so that you can address them positively, and with the strength of the Holy Spirit. 

And so all of these things are part of what we talked about in those first 10 sessions. Again, I want to encourage you to go back and work through those they're 20 to 30 minute sessions. There are 10 of them that simply introduce myself and introduce these topics we've been talking about here in a way that will prepare you to be a leader who meets the culture. 

Now I plan in the these next sessions. The next 35 is that we're going to address some things about the leader again, that first image that we looked at where that leader interacts with the culture, we're going to do some things about leadership, then we're going to move to culture, then we're going to move to vision. Then we're going to move to plans and strategies and prayer that are necessary for a successful leadership experience, so I invite you along for the ride. It's going to be fun. I'm passionate about the subject of leadership, and hope by the end of these sessions together, you will be able to find yourself more effective in the place where God has called you for His glory and for the building of his kingdom. So come along.

Who does God use?

Lesson 2 - Who does God use?

Welcome back. Good for us to be together to consider leadership. Last week, I did kind of a bridge between this class on leadership and the intro class, to CLI. And again, I want to encourage you, if you haven't had the chance to go back and view those 11 sessions that are there we are in that section on leadership.

Now, just a reminder, if you've forgotten that, here's how we've been looking at leadership. A leader interacts with a culture, which has seen in a variety of things, though, the words that are written down the stories that people tell the physical layout, we're going to get into that later, and how to define culture and all that good stuff, but interacts with that culture, the people there and the culture they created, in order to develop a vision or a preferred future ideas about that. So the people and the leader together develop that vision of a preferred future. And then they do the prayer, the planning, the strategic planning, and the impetus for actions that leader that provides  the impetus to make that preferred future a reality. And then this first section of the class, we're focusing on leadership, picking up from those sections in the intro class. And in that class, we looked at personality, and we look at baggage and we look at all the things that make you the person that you are today and how that impacts your capacity, as well as your ability to lead. 

Well today I want to talk a little bit more about how God decided to choose you as a leader. Or maybe it might be a surprise for you as a leader  that God is indeed wanting you to be engaged in this process of leadership impacting other people and impacting organizations in his name. So who does God choose as a leader? Now, one of the people I've learned a great deal from is Leif Anderson. He is a was a pastor in Minnesota. And one time when he told about the opportunities that he had when he came to this church, right near Minneapolis. And he decided that the church had to take another step into the future that was going to be different from the past. And so that was going to require leadership. And so he got together, the leaders, the official leaders in the church, the staff that was there, the elders that rule that church, and had been working on this issue of leadership and vision and statement of purpose, mission and vision and all that good stuff. And one of the things he asked him is to come up with a definition or, or a listing of, the characteristics of somebody that would be a good leader. This is the list they came up with. A good leader is articulate, in other words, able to take ideas and to communicate those in a clear and understandable way. The good leader is passionate. The one that God uses is passionate that he feels like God has called them to this and so he's willing to give himself or she is willing to give herself to this idea passionately. They are moral. In other words, if you're going to follow a leader, God's going to choose somebody obviously, who lives a moral life. And they are wise. In other words, they're able to make decisions and they make good choices. And they're able to help other people make good choices. They are relational. In other words, they they have a good IQ, not intellectual IQ, but an IQ of people, they're able to relate to people. In fact, some of the studies that have been done recently say that managers in business are looking for people with people skills to hire more than they are with IQ, intelligence quotient. And so looking for people who are relational people who are visionaries, who have an idea of what God wants to do and are able to take the people to buy into that vision to be able to give that vision effectively. They're tolerant, in other words, tolerant of other opinions, in other words, patient etc. They inspire loyalty. In other words, they're people that others can look to and say, Yes, I want to follow that person. They're kind. And they are hard working. That's the definition they came up with. While then they started putting those people as names on board. And noting that God often chose exceptions to those folks. For instance, the articulate person, what about Moses? Remember when God called him in the burning bush? And just try to imagine being in that situation that you are a leader, you're a follower of God, you're, you're somebody who wants to serve Him, and God speaks to you in a burning bush. And he says, it's holy ground and remember he said to to Moses, take off your shoes. So the place you're standing is holy ground. And then he says, I want you to go and be the great deliverer and the great law giver that Moses was going to become. And remember Moses excuse? I don't speak well. And God's seeming compromise in the situation was I'll send your brother Aaron with you. He's an articulate person. So Moses couldn't speak well, he was not articulate. And yet, we honor him. We revere him as a leader in that early gathering of people coming out of Egypt, passionate, what about Moses, who said, No, don't send me Don't send me. In fact, there's an old book cover that says, Here am I Lord, send Aaron. He didn't want to go he wasn't passionate about this job that God had given him.

Or Jonah, that when God gave him a commission to impact the lives of so many people in Nineveh, he ended up trying to run the other way. 

Moral. What about David? He was a murderer. He was an adulterer. He was a lousy father. And yet God held him up as someone who was after his own heart. 

Wise, Solomon, now we know about Solomon, that the Bible says that he's the wisest man who ever was or who would ever be. And yet when you start reading about his life, and you find that he was pretty stupid. He was wise at the beginning. But gradually, he began to amass more and more wives and concubines and more who brought other religions into the experience of the people of Israel. And he was one of the major factors to lead Israel astray, and sow the seeds that will lead to their destruction later. And so the wise man became stupid.

Relational, what about Paul, he caused fights where ever he was, in fact, you know, Barnabus, this is one of the one of the great heroes in the book of Acts, or he's the son of encouragement is what the name means. And he's somebody who brought Saul, after he had experienced that conversion on the road to Damascus, brought him to the disciples because they didn't want to acknowledge this guy who had been imprisoning Christians. And so as Barnabas, who was that encourager of Saul, it was Barnabas who went and got Saul, when he saw what was happening in Antioch that he said, We've got to have more help here. And remember, Saul and went and found him. It was Barnabas, who accompanied him on the first missionary journey. And then when the time came, that they were ready to go back to the churches they've established. Paul and Barnabus had this great disagreement. It's a powerful statement, we'll look at that later in another session on conflict down the road. But it was an idea of a great strenuous kind of emphatic argument. And Paul ended up taking Silas and abandoning Barnabas and Mark, relational, not a lot of words, I think I would Paul but boy, you know the Corinthians had problems with him. He would cause fights where ever he went and yet he was a great leader, a visionary, a Peter. Peter was not the person that you'd say, Wow, what a great vision he has for reaching out to the Gentiles in fact God had to give him the vision three times, and then speak to him through the Holy Spirit saying go with these guys. And this is this is why I want you to do it wasn't it wasn't his great vision. In fact, he did this with some reluctance. 

We're down the list. Now the tolerant. Does God choose tolerant leaders? Martin Luther, of course, was a great tolerant and leader was one of the persons who sparked the Reformation back in the 1500s. And, and yet, we know that he was an anti-Semite, and rabidly so. And yet, God used him to refresh and renew the church, a loyalty 

Abraham Lincoln is one of the great leaders in the history of the United States. And yet, when he formed his cabinet, he was elected of course the country split into North and South, Confederate and Union. And he chose his cabinet, those chief advisors, and there's a great book that's written that says that a Team of Rivals, he chose all the people who were his political rivals to be in his cabinet advising him. So they didn't have any loyalty that he didn't inspire loyalty on their part. 

Kind.Hitler was a great leader, an effective leader, changed the course of history for the world. And yet wasn't kind. 

Hardworking John F. Kennedy, one of the presidents in the United States has gone down as just being remembered wonderfully. And yet, he was pretty lazy. In fact, there were record times where he would just go take a nap. And yeah, so. 

So there's the list. And there are exceptions to the list, that people that you'd say, That's not who I'd choose for this. And if I were God, I certainly wouldn't choose that person. And yet, boy here we are, down the road in history and we say yeah God used and chose surprising people. Now years ago, I had the opportunity to study revival periods in the United States. The church history of the United States is different than other countries, we've had this kind of up and down swing of religion that when the country was founded, of course, the pilgrims who came here had the goal of setting up what they call the city set on the hills, other people can look and see the light that shines from a group of people who had God as their head. And so that's how the country started and there was a religious upswing, but then already in the 1700s is a huge downswing in religion. And God changed that by bringing revival with the first Great Awakening. And that was a swing up and down swing, and then up with the Second Great Awakening and like that, well, I'm privileged to write a book which is available through Amazon, called Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things. And the content of that book is largely part of a group of lectures that I did for Christian Leaders Institute, that's in part of the history part of a Christian leaders Institute, Church History. But when you look at some of those people, You'd say that's surprising that God would choose somebody like that, for instance, this is Jonathan Edwards, is considered one of the greatest minds in colonial America. And somehow, God set off through him, the first Great Awakening. Now spirituality was at a huge ebb in the United States. And, and then all of a sudden, through Jonathan Edwards preaching, he was in a church in Connecticut, people began to come to conversion. And they would fall crying out asking God to forgive them of their sins during the worship service, they would shake. He was well educated was Jonathan Edwards. But what we know of him from history is that he was a pretty boring speaker. In other words, he would sit with no gestures, he read all of his sermons. And so he would be looking down, reading very carefully, well worded sermons. And that's how he preached. And yet, because of a powerful working of the Holy Spirit, people responded in an entirely different way. And as a leader, in this movement, of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards was not effective for very long, in fact, he got booted out of his own church. And so he wasn't somebody who was a leader for very long, but he was in a spot for a while, and you'd say, well, okay, he is brilliant man, we'd probably choose him as a leader. If we were going to say, Well, God's gonna use somebody. But then we see that his track record wasn't very long standing, nor was it very effective in the long term. 

And when you get to the Second Great Awakening that's even more confusing is a picture of Charles Finney. Charles Finney was a backwoods lawyer. He had no theological training whatsoever. And yet as God began to bring about a revival of interest in religion and a revival of love for him, a guy who became the center of it was Charles Finney. You wouldn't have chosen him. I'm not trained in theology, as law training was self trained in the backwoods of what was then the frontier, in America before there were States there. And this is in the early 1800s. Now one of my favorites from then is Dwight Moody. Now Dwight Moody preached to millions, millions of people, hundreds of 1000s, at least came to faith because of Moody's preaching in the United States, and in Great Britain in England. But Moody had a sixth grade education, that's all he had was a sixth grade education. He could not speak well. In fact, some articles and papers that were written kind of reviews of his revivals criticize him that he didn't know how to say Jerusalem, came out of just a massive mash of words. Somebody who came to faith as an adult, his Sunday school teacher, a man named Kimball, led him to faith. And when he applied for membership to the church, they rejected his application saying he didn't know enough yet. Now this is a guy God chose to do this incredible work through and we can go on down the list. 

Jeremiah Lamphere is one of my heroes. Not again, again, not a man trained theologically, but somebody that God used. It's a magnificent period of revival in the United States. Lamphere was a businessman. He was hired by a Dutch Reformed Church in New York City, to try to fill the pews that were empty. So his responsibility was to devise ways to open up the doors of the church so that people from the community can come to faith and come to church and be discipled there. And after trying working at this for a while, he realized he had no idea what to do. And so all he did was put up some billboards, hand out some flyers saying, you know on such and such an afternoon, I'm going to be in the Consistory room at the Dutch church and Dutch Reformed Church. And I'm just going to pray. And a few people joined him there, joined him late. And that sparked something. Within a matter of weeks, that fire spread across the United States. So one reporter said, as he went from place to place in New York City couldn't find anywhere that didn't have a noon prayer meeting, hundreds, 1000s of people in another reporter traveled across the country, what was then the country, the later states weren't added yet. But he said everywhere I went, there were these prayer revivals going on. Now, Lamphere is not the guy you would have chosen. He had no experience, he had no plan. It wasn't that he had this great vision of prayer revivals all over. He was just surprising person and yet, God chose him and even Billy Graham went to college, but not a seminary. He began preaching kind of by default, he's a farm boy. And yet, wow, look how God can use a farm boy from North Carolina. 

Now, I just quickly recite those people, because I'm thinking of you. Thinking of me after my study revival that a good friend say to me, you know, what did you learn? And you try to sum it up in one session, one sentence? And they said, Well, you know, what I learned is that I'm too educated and too old, for God to use to bring about revival, but on reflecting on that I realized, that's simply not true. God can use anyone. But he seems to specialize, doesn't he, in picking people so that he'll get the glory. And we won't. And so even if we are highly educated, or even if we are incredibly gifted, regardless of our age, we've got to be people who are humble enough to realize that when God starts using us, we give Him the glory. It's not about us. It's about him. Look at the people Jesus chose to be His disciples, my goodness, of all the highly educated theologians, in that day, he chose Peter, James and John, fisherman, chose the tax collector, reviled in his area, he chose some people who were political activists, in fact, they were assassins to be part of his group. You would think them. God's going to use them. And yet, that's how the church got started. And so in this session, I simply want to destroy what has become a great myth about leaders and leadership. And the great myth is, you have to be someone special to be used by God and leadership, leadership, you know, I'm talking about this process I defined this process of the leader interacting with culture, in order to define a preferable future and then giving impetus to plans and prayer that will make that future a reality. That's all true. But in reality, leadership boils down to this: there's a leader, there are followers, and there's a situation. And God can call anyone to be someone who's part of that process, wherever you are. God has called you to be there. In fact, in the book of Acts when Paul is preaching, and he's trying to convince people in Acts 17, that the Greeks think God is the great unknown god, but he's the God that's over all the gods that they have represented in that marketplace. He says, you know, God's appointed the times and places for people to live, so that we might come to seek him and be found by him that God's put you in a situation. God has placed you in a situation. God has called you to be a leader, most likely, that's why you are looking at something on a website for Christian Leaders Institute, God has called you. And some of you may be reluctant. I remember the time when I felt the call into ministry. And I remember saying to God, I can't do that. I mean, I was in high school at the time, and I looked ahead, and I thought, okay, in my tradition that required seven more years of school, I thought, I don't like school all that much. And I thought, oh, man, I can't afford this. I came from a blue collar, lower middle class family, and I just, there's no way I'm going to afford that. And so I tried to make deals with God, right? Try to make deals saying, oh, you know, if I if you provide this, if you provide this, then I'll go ahead. And when I began to know in my heart that this was a calling from God, so God has called you, you may enter it reluctantly. You're in good company, Moses certainly entered leadership reluctantly, Gideon is one of my favorite people in the book of Judges. You remember when he is threshing out wheat, he's called by God. Threshing out while he's threshing out wheat in a wine press, the Midianites are pressing the people of Israel, every harvest time they come and they steal the harvest. And so Gideon is trying to keep the Midianites from seeing the dust rising up. So he's going to the wine press. And the angel of the Lord appears and says hail, mighty warrior. Well, he was anything but a mighty, mighty warrior. But God knew he was going to make him into a mighty warrior. And so he entered this path of leadership, reluctantly. And yet God used him to create a great deliverance. 

One of my people in history that I admire is King George, VI, here's a picture of him, King George VI, the king, just as World War II was breaking out. Now, nobody believed that he was the person that should lead. In fact, his brother who was king, King Edward, he was the one who was known to be the natural leader, the one that everybody would follow the one that everybody liked. And yet, Edward abdicated the throne so that he could marry a commoner, something that was not allowed back then. And as a result, King George became king. And he had a stuttering problem. And yet, there's a marvelous movie that came out a few years back now about the King's speech, and the speech in he gave to encourage the people of England at a time of great difficult situation. And so he became a leader, with followers in a situation. 

So other interesting people who are reluctant leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. very reluctant to join the crusade for equal rights against racism in the United States. So my only point to you today is that you're in good company. Even Martin Luther himself didn't see himself as a great reformer. He just wanted to challenge the Church of England. So wherever you are, what is your situation? We're going to talk about culture and in future sessions of this, but what's your situation that kind of caused you to be a leader where you are? And so whatever your situation or your willingness, your responsibility is to say, Okay, God, I give you myself, here I am, here's who I am. Here's what I have. I offer it to you, I offer to historically in my tradition, John Calvin, is a great, great thinker, theologian, and the seal of the college that I went to, in Latin says, I offer you my heart Lord, promptly and sincerely. That's God's call to you as a leader. Next time we'll be looking at how you can grow as a leader.

Growing as a Leader

Lesson 3 - Growing as a Leader

Welcome back to considering leadership's that process of leadership. Now just a reminder, we're in this process talking about a leader who interacts with the culture or the way things are done in a particular place a situation that exists in a particular place at a particular time, and works with that people in that culture to develop a vision of a preferred future. And then provide the impetus for planning and prayer that will make that future a reality. That's what we're looking at. And we're looking particularly at the leader in these sessions here, as we transition from the previous class into this one. 

Today, what I want to talk about is the fact that if you are a leader, you are likely going to have to grow as a leader, you're going to have to grow in your capacity, even people who are strong natural leaders and we talked about that in that first session in the intro class. previous session here in CLI, the fact that there are some people who are strong natural leaders, they just naturally have people looking to them for leadership, they just naturally seem to be able to make decisions eell, etc, etc, etc. But for most of us, we're going to have to grow in our capacity to lead. As we encounter new situations, it's one thing to be called into a situation where you are, but if you're a leader, that situation will change, and your leadership capacity is going to have to grow. And so I'm going to in this session, in the next one, just talk about some ways that you can grow. 

So things you can focus on that will make your impact as a leader greater, make your capacity as a leader grow. And one of those is simply learning to prioritize. Now if you're like any pastor, I know, you've got a to do list that is incredibly long, and complex. I had the privilege of working with a great partner of ministry, the last 11 years of my time in active pastoral ministry, and he was a good leader, but he was a managing leader, I don't want to say but there he was a managing leader. Sometimes people are stronger on the visionary and some are stronger on the management side of the leadership spectrum. While he was really good on the management side, which meant he likes to keep things in order, and I depended on him a great deal for that purpose. One day he came in, he said, I'm so frustrated that I start my day. And he did this is recommended by some leadership gurus started a day by looking at his list of to do's and says, but by the end of the day, You know after I check off a few of them, I've got added so many that I've got more things to do at the end of the day than I did at the beginning of the day, that's probably your experience, if you're a leader in some way, shape, or form. And so one thing that's going to help you is learning how to prioritize those things on your to do list. Now, for many leaders, this doesn't come naturally. There are some people who are given spiritual gifts in leadership and administration. My experience has been that very few leaders that one estimate is like 17% of leaders have the mixture of those two gifts. Most leaders then are strongly gifted in leadership. In other words, they're able people who are able to help define a vision and help people more move toward the vision, but they tend not to be the best organized people in the world. But I'll tell you today that it is going to help you immensely if you learn not just to get your life organized, but learn how to prioritize among the many things that show up on your to do list. There are just a couple of questions that will help you do this, asking what's most important today? And what will give me the greatest return on the time I spend on this particular issue. Those are great questions. 

What's most important? Now other people might have an idea about what's most important for you to be doing. But what's most important for you to fulfill the calling that God has given you. In those first 10 sessions in the introductory course, we talked about, you know, creating a mission statement for your mission in life, what's the most important investment of your time, as reflected in your to do list and what's going to give you the greatest return for the time that you spend on it. One of the people who has put this very well is a man named Stephen Covey wrote a book years ago now, which continues to be reprinted because it's been so influential. And it's simply this: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He did a research project on people that were deemed to be very effective in leadership, or they were people that were looked to for wisdom. They were people who were looking for guidance. They were people who had led organizations of a variety of kinds in effective ways in fulfilling visions and expanding dreams and creating companies etc. And he was able to boil it down to here's the seven habits that these people have. And one of the habits had to do with how they dealt with their time, how they prioritize the stuff on their to do list. 

In fact, here's the quadrants that he created and gave to us and I want to give them to you today, you'll note these are quadrants, these are things you can spend your time on, you'll notice quadrant one are things that are both urgent, that's the top line. And they're important. And so if you've got something that is urgent and important, it's a quadrant one thing and as you're making your to do list, and there's something that you say, Well, I gotta get to this now, that goes there. Quadrant Two are those things that are important, you'll notice there on that level, but they are not urgent. And we're going to talk a moment about how you interpret what those are. Quadrant three, how those things that are not important, but they're urgent. In other words, they're things that you feel like, I've got to do these, but they're not really important in helping you fulfill your mission, they're not helpful in helping you move your organization forward or into a vision. They're urgent, or they feel urgent, but they're not important in quadrant four are those things that are not urgent, and not important. 

Here's a little deeper explanation. You'll notice that the urgent things, these are time sensitive things, they must be done and done now. They are necessary if you're going to do them. If you're in a church, and you get a telephone call, and somebody on your staff has been in an accident, or that somebody died, all of a sudden, that becomes urgent and important. It may not have been on your list, but it's on there now. And it's something you can't put off. There are certain meetings that become urgent and important. Unfortunately, we can sometimes be driven by the tyranny of the urgent; there isn't. But you've got a major meeting, Vision meeting for your elders, or for people who are in leadership in your company, and you've got to be ready for it. It's in two hours, you can't put that off, it's urgent, it's important, it's necessary that you do that right now, quadrant two is where Covey says we should be spending more time than we do. In fact, it's the quadrant of time that we usually ignore, much to our sadness, and failure. Those things are planning, doing planning for the future. Now, oftentimes, we are so struck by the tyranny of the urgent that we don't spend time sitting down and planning, we don't spend time in reflection, I was part of reading last week, I'm part of a group that's beginning, a new program in our area, where we connect a retired pastor who's got a lot of experience in ministry, and reconnect that Pastor with a solo pastor in a church that is stuck. In other words, they've been doing the same thing, and the solo pastor is there as too just scrambled to just keep things going. And so we're trying to partner those, but I was with the people who have done it. And they were kind of the alpha test. And we're moving on to the beta testing of this now. But the pastor in the church, the retired pastor, where both of us start the small meeting of people. And the pastor said, you know, when Bill came on, the retired guy said, that's the first time I've had time to go away and pray, I've had time to go away and plan I've had time to go away and think about where I want this church to go. That's a quadrant two activity. Training is a quadrant two activity that you identify some people who are going to help you fulfill your vision of the company, the vision of the church, the vision of the organization, and they need training. And that's a quadrant two activity, or relationships, fascinating. Those are quadrant two, they are extremely important. But they're not urgent. In the United States, it's a sad thing. And I know from working in Haiti and Honduras, that it's pretty common in those cultures as well. Pastors can get so busy with the things of the kingdom, that they begin to ignore their families. And so Quadrant Two is an important quadrant. 

Quadrant three are I've labeled it distraction, these these are things that feel urgent. They are things like updating the social media for the company, feels like you should do this. But you know, it's not going to make a great big difference in whether you fulfill your vision or not. A lot of people things come into this quadrant. We're going to talk about more of that in the next session. But that can feel so important that it becomes urgent but the reality is, it may be urgent to somebody else. But it is a distraction from what you should be doing. Some people can get really caught up in quadrant three, in that, you know, they love to study and they sit in their study, and they study all sorts of things, and that keeps them from moving on with the vision. 

And then in quadrant four, I've labeled waste. These are most mail that you get. You know, I really believe that the kingdom of God, at least in the United States, should quit mailing. If we stopped all mailings in the kingdom, every Christian organization in the United States stopped the mail for a week, about two weeks, we'd be able to fund missions to the entire world. And you can spend a whole bunch of time opening envelopes and reading mail that really has nothing to do with what God has called you to do. It can be a waste, most television is a waste. Facebook can be a waste. All I have friends on Facebook that one woman said, you know you sit down, I'm just going to look through what people have said in their film. Next thing I know it's an hour later. All kinds of other things. Now, the interesting thing about this is that people who have experienced this, in their lives, will say that when they get really busy, they start getting burned out. And as a result, it feels so good to just spend some quadrant four time to just do the little stuff to do stuff that doesn't require something of you. So they're the quadrants when you are looking at your time expenditure. Where do you put it? Now it's very easy to develop a tool that will help you, all you got to do is make four boxes, and say, Okay, here's my to do list. Which of them are quadrant one issues, which of them are quadrant two issues, which of them are quadrant three issues? Which of them are quadrant four issues, and write them appropriately. And then put down number one, what's your priority? 

There's an old story about a consultant, company. In fact, that was a well known company here in the United States, a guy called in a consultant to help him and he says, You know, I just seem to be scrambling, what can you do for me? He says, Well, he says, Here it is. He said, What's your priority today? What do you need to get done in order to move this company forward? And the man said well this. This is what I am. He said, What's the next one? Gave him three priorities. This is now here's my advice to you write down that first priority. He said and work to that. Work on that until you're done with it, don't let anything else distract you. And then when you're done with that, you move on to priority two, and then you work on that, until you're done with it, you've completed it, and don't let anything else distract you. And then go to number three, and work on that. And don't let anything distract you until you're done the that. He said, and then he says you just proceed accordingly. Said, all the guys said Okay, I'll try that didn't sound all that revolutionary to him. But the guy said, I'll try it. And what do I owe you? What, what are you going to charge me for this advice? And the consultant said, well give it a week. And you can write me a check for whatever you think is appropriate. Well the next week the consultant got a check for $25,000. Because it was revolutionary, and how effective that leader could be. And so how do you use your time? 

In that intro class, I shared this Pareto Principle, Pareto being a mathematician from a previous time, but he noticed that split between 80 and 20, and how 80% of your time expended will only give you 20% of your results, because you can spend 80% of your time or many trivial tasks. But if you spent 20%, on a few vital tasks, that's going to be 80% of your results. And so defining what are the vital tasks, and spending as much time needed as possible on those so that's, that's the first bit of advice related to it and how you spend your time is how you relate to people. What kind of people do you relate to? The person that has been very helpful to me in this is a man named Gordon McDonald who wrote a book called Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. And I read that when a time when my spiritual passion was at a low, and in one part of the book he defines and gives labels to the various kind of people you will interact with, if you are in leadership. And some of them are very good and helpful, and some are not. First of all, he said there's the VRP. The very resourceful people. These are people that when we interact to them, we find our passion growing. These people are mentors in our lives, they shape our lives. They are desperately needed in our lives. These are people that are very important to me, and I've been intentional since I began to realize this in making sure that I have interaction with very resourceful people. My long term mentor, we've been friends, but he's been my mentor. He's been my VRP. For decades now, we still connect with each other though we live in different parts of the country. Every month, we spend an hour and a half, we schedule it in for a telephone conversation, because he's my VRP. I need his input. I need his resourcing. When I have a problem. He's got ideas, he knows what's been done. I needed more of that. 

And so when I lived in Southern California, I created a group of 10 people, leaders that I respected. And we would get together just to talk about things that we had in common. How are you? How are you dealing with staff? In your church? How are you selling? Or how are you promoting the vision of your church? How are you dealing with problems that come up what problems are coming and we did that when I moved to Michigan that was so rich for me that I sought out various people that I heard about in West Michigan where I live, and I got them together and said, Okay, how about if we get together regularly and so every six weeks, we gather just to talk about those things we have in common that will resource us that will provide us ideas that will provide us passion, because we will see other people and the Proverbs say iron sharpens iron. That's the VRP. 

One of the people in history that had VRPs was William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce is credited with ending slavery. He was a politician in England who ended slavery being practiced by the country of England. And it took years and years and years, it took all kinds of interaction in Parliament. And when it was finally done, in fact he died at the well it was finally completed and the legislation was passed. But as people look back at that, they realized that he was resourced by a group called the the Clapham sect, a group of people who are behind him, and resourced him with ideas and studies and experiences. And if you're a leader, who are those VRPs in your life? Where are they? Hopefully, some of them are here at Christian Leaders Institute. That's our hope here, of course, and you'll find here people who are resourcing you, but what about others, you connect with on a regular basis, you need VRPs in your life. 

There's also the VIPs. These are the very important people. They are the people who share our passion, and they are the people who encourage and enrich us, often within the organization that we are part of. I still interact with one of the VIPs from the church I served in Southern California; we went through a time of some changes in vision and resources. And you know, I didn't understand a great deal about leadership back then. But I kind of rode hard and I have the changes made with some reluctance on the part of the elders of that church. But boy, we wanted to, I wanted them to get into a planting church planting ministry. And so I kind of rammed it through that we were going to call this a person who graduated from seminary, he was a native of California. So we understand the culture. And we were ready to launch him from our church into a new daughter church, and was able to handle that through and I remember one man, after that experience just calling me and saying I think I want to leave some time. And he was just open with me. Honest with me. He says, you know, he said, You did it. You did it. You got this piece done. He said, but you'd be far more effective. If you leaned on some of us who are leaders here too. And he began to name some of the people in the church, he said, they will help you. You don't have to carry the ball the whole way. They'll help you. That was just so instructive. As a young leader, growing a church it was it was so instructive and helpful to me to find who are those people who are important, who are going to share in my living out a dream, defining vision and living out that vision. So then there are the VIPs 

The next category says other VTPs the very trainable people, these are the people who catch our passion, who are people who want to learn how to lead better people that are going to take significant parts of ministry in the future. And people like Elijah and Elisha, as Elijah trains Elisha to be the prophet to take over for him, and then passes on the responsibility. Mordecai and Esther. I just read through Esther in my devotions in the mornings, and I was astounded again about God's movement in that time, but the reality is, Esther wouldn't have done what she did if Mordecai her uncle hadn't been there encouraging her along the way, hadn't been giving her resources to work with hadn't been telling her what the situation was, and how she was called by God, he felt to make a difference there. Joash and Jehoiada one of my favorite stories from the Book of II Kings, you can read it for yourself, where Joash becomes king at a very, very young age. And yet he does incredibly well as King back to you or renews the spiritual vitality of the country. But he's got a VTP. Are you are he is the VTP the trainable person for Jehoiada, the high priest, Jehoiada takes Joash under his wing, and he becomes a greater King than he ever would have if he hadn't had this person, training him so. And yet, he Joash king would be trainable hearts. So who are the VTPs in your life, in your organization, those people who can take on the ministry and take responsibility for part of it?

Then there are the VNPs, the very nice people, you'll notice the notes I put under that they are nice to us. They take time, but they don't further the vision. These are people who maybe are on the fringe of the organization. In the church, you'll find all kinds of very nice people. And they'll be nice to you, if you're working within a church setting. They'll be really nice to you. They'll maybe take you out to dinner or have you over to their home. They'll talk with you, they'll they're just nice people, but they're people who aren't engaging in fulfilling the vision. And so they will take a lot of time if you let them take a lot of time. Now, you've got to watch this because they can become very trainable people. That's true of the disciples of Jesus, right? They maybe were nice people, maybe they were following Jesus around for a while. They heard him speak in a variety of settings. And they said we want to follow this guy. They became very trainable people, as they were called into ministry. Now there's probably some of those, like you are just in your organization, who could have handled part of the vision if they were invited to do so. With staff in the churches I served, one of the practices we did is we talked about, okay, who's involved in ministry? In other words, we try to elicit every person in the church, and that ran up to many, many pages. But where are they involved? Are they involved in children's ministry, youth ministry, adult ministry? Are they involved in outreach are involved in the community in a significant way in ministry? Where is everybody involved in this church? And, and then we'd say, Okay, how do people get in these positions of involvement, and we found over and over and over again that most of them get into positions where they become the very trainable people. They move from very nice to very trainable by invitation of the leader. And so, you know, I would send staff people out with that challenge, go invite somebody to become trained. And in fact, in one church staff meeting, I actually assigned people to a course that they would work through with people, and all of them had two people, at least, that they had trained. As people who'd become important in fulfilling the vision of that particular church and organization, these people are around you, they're very nice. And they can become so much more if they would just be trained. And so invite them to be trained. So that's a very VNPs. The very nice people. 

And then finally, there's the VDPs, the very draining people. These people are demanding, they take energy from us, they are needy. Now, a mistake that pastors often make, and I'll speak as one who has made this mistake, is that we believe we've got to respond equally to everyone in the church, and particularly to those who are needy. It took me a long time to realize that God had not called me to take care of everyone. And I remember the day I got a call from a person, and it was somebody I got a call from at least once a week and they have family crisis every single week. And this was the latest family crisis. And I remember on the phone talking to them, I said, Okay, how's everybody, safe? Yeah, everybody's safe. You know, what's going to change if I get to you today or tomorrow? Well, we want you here today. Well, okay, but is there anything going to change and realize that she was trying to make her crisis, my crisis. Later, we're going to talk about that move from shepherd to rancher. But it's very important to realize that very demanding people will demand a lot from you. They will not ease up. Your job as a leader is to make sure they are taken care of, but they don't have to be taken care of by you. And so you've got to look at these kinds of people that you're going to interact with. And that is going to impact your leadership powerfully. If you learn how to interact with these people in ways that make you more effective as a person, and that will make you more passionate about the ministry God has called you to. So as you think about being a leader, who are those people and how do you spend your time? Who are those people who are going to help you in achieving the vision? And how do you spend your time with your to do list? Get those two things straight, and you will become a more effective leader with greater capacity for being used by God powerfully.