Video Transcript: Vision - Henry Reyenga Interviews Marty Ozinga

Unit 12a

Vision - Henry Reyenga Interviews Marty Ozinga

Henry - With me today is Marty Ozinga, chairman of Ozinga 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 Lord gave you, when he was 23. A hundred and some employees and now 2000 employees, there's no question. There's an issue of vision that operates. So how would you define vision? 

Marty - Well, it seems to mean that 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 old story about the glass of water is half full or half empty. 

Henry - Right, right. 

Marty - 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. 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 pursue goals, to be somewhat of an entrepreneur, whether you were 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 always of, 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 the experiences in 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, they, they think that they have the knowledge or the skills or the energy, or the whatever it takes to go for it, and then it's going to happen. And then God shows up. And it does happen. Because even when it happens, this idea that well it happened because I'm so smart, or because I'm so talented, or I worked so hard. 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 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 it 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 - So we're talking about the concept of vision and one is that optimistic, God has a plan, and I'm just going to be part of it. That also is the expectancy, that somewhere somehow in providence, God showed up in 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 with it when it's a no? 

Marty - 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 remember the story of Joshua, and going into the promised land and looking around, and it was a whole group of intelligent leaders that were selected to go do that. 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. And then Joshua, who's in this small minority, young Josh with Caleb says, friend, 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. Now. Not everything in life, in business or in other aspects of life always goes the way we thought it would go. 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 ahead of the 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 II Corinthians, but it says, You're knocked down, but you're not defeated. 

Henry - Right, that's right. 

Marty - And an optimistic person says, Okay, you knocked 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 for it again. And you go through your whole life doing that kind of stuff. I've known Henry. I know Henry, since he was a kid. 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 but it takes an optimistic person who understands that God is behind the whole thing. And that was the first point of any effort or energy expended, is about honoring and glorifying God. And if that's your motive, then go for it. 

Henry - So, so then resiliency, so it was almost like a vision resiliency. So it's like, you know, you're, you're, 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, and do for his glory, a few few side, you know, 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, carrying a bitter grave, you know, things happen, right? A relationship falls apart, you know, when things are but you don't like dwell on that. How do you get out of the woods, when that happened to many people, and I know many of you have written about this that a failure in your life, and you hold a bitterness. And now that bitterness is holding you back. How do you get over to bitterness? 

Marty - Well, I think, I think, again, it's a spiritual matter and it's a condition of the heart, 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 he forgives us 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's his design for successful living. He's saying, don't hold grudges. 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'll 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. But we think we're smarter than he is. So we keep making mistakes, but this is God's plan for success. Right? Forgive those people and look to God for the next opportunity and for his blessing. 

Henry - Well, if he doesn't back and back the vision, the topics on vision today and 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 and I have seen and we both have seen many people who once had a beautiful vision, and it died in bitterness. So really forgive and move on. 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 we're not holding grudges, we're being resilient. We're actually successful. So what could happen to us? 

Marty - Well, it's extremely common because it happens a lot. Again, in our humanness. We have this inclination to sort of stray away from God's plan and follow our own. And it's called pride and 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 we're 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 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, fully loaded and pull the trigger and think they can 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, they can get away with it. I can drink and I can take drugs and 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 respect gets lost and everything else and and you say, the guy. For a smart guy, he sure did some stupid things, right? 

Henry - And we know, we know, a long list of successful people who had a vision for that it got lost in simple 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 - And it's rooted in pride typically, 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, and I don't need God. 

Henry - I'm in charge of my life. I'm in charge of my business. I'm in charge of my future. I don't need God. So think about this, a great vision you think positive you're resilient, you don't have bitterness. And right there, the devil comes and says, You don't need God. Ew, is that like, is that like the Garden of Eden? Like, Did God really say, if you eat this? You know don't you want to be like God?, you know I have that whole, like place so really, too, 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 changing topics, or subjects, it's on vision? But is there a way to get vision to even be in for an organization where it's not just the vision of the founder of the businessman, leaders, but I can actually, in some meaningful way, start coming into the culture of a company? Like what do you guys do? When new employees come or whatever. How did that work? 

Marty - It is ingrained in the culture of the business 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 into whatever. And now this is over time. And in our case, we actually have culture, culture training, or Culture, Education in our 

Henry - you mean posing a Culture, Education. 

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

Henry - Do you even bring up the spiritual in there? 

Marty - 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 achieve a measure of success, and people discover that the workplace is a 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, 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 right. And so, we find that at this point in time that the momentum that was sort of started by me who 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 to 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 in their accomplishments. 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 with 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 as a company. 

Henry - Wow. So it comes like the individual vision, then that usually is grounded in the Lord, the call is calling in the business is 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 they have an optimistic view of the world. And they start thinking about problems to be solved Kingdom or you know like mountains to be climbed new products and services. 

Marty - If you look at the opposite, 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. Most people are gonna go, alright, you pay me to work till four o'clock, and then I'm going fishing, you know, it's like, have fun with your life. But I got, I got my own life to live. That's exactly the opposite of what we do. And it's like, you know, this isn't about me or what I get out of it. And it's not even about you or what you get out of it. Right? It's how we are glorify God, and then we're all blessed, by doing our best. So it's a big, huge difference. And it's all spiritual.

Henry- Yeah. Do you hear that everybody, that what are you doing here at CLI is not about learning some skills and go out there in the business world or in the ministry world. At the very core it is ministry. It is spiritual. It is about your relationship with God. It is about your credit as an image bearer. It is about why are you on this earth. It's all grounded in 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 and the earth. Wow, absolutely. 

Marty - It's pretty. It's pretty amazing. And then when the 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. You really are. 

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

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 will have certain personality that God has given you, as somebody with some baggage that you 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 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 is in words, a leader with all his 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 the price that you got to pay to live out a vision and all of those sorts of things. Today, I want to talk about the importance of prayer. I've mentioned that so many times in these in these presentations. Your ability to have a ministry of prayer is going to deeply affect your ability to attain the preferable future.

I just want to share with you a couple of pictures. This is Presque Isle Wesleyan Church in Presque. Isle, Maine. On the bottom, of course, is the picture of the front of their building with the 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.

Now the pastor of that church in 1986 was Rick Kavanaugh. Rick Kavanaugh came there in 1986, the church that have been around long time for 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 now, Rick Kavanaugh now here's just some of the dates and important events that led him to be a person of prayer. In 1986, he came to the church, it was 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 stock. 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 leading him to believe that, that God was blessing 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 maybe in a new way, an urging of God, and God 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 obeying it. He felt like it was indeed a prompting of the Holy Spirit. So we 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 him 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's speaking 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 they bombarded the schools with information and they would come in and they they'd have speakers engaged with youth and young people engaging with other young people and they averaged 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 a youth event. And he felt God 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 about 300. And so they were wondering, what do we do? Do we cancel? Do we push to 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 crammed 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. Eleven 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 prayer ministry 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. That Jack Lynn 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 to learn about, but 125 adults and 75 high schoolers and middle schoolers attend that on average, every Tuesday nights. So they gathered together prayer, prayer is important. It's the most important thing. It's the foundation. He has a group of men does Rick of 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 business meetings. Before that they would have a kind of perfunctory prayer at the beginning saying, you know, God, we're here to do your 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 said, it really works kind of nice at a congregational meeting, which they still have in his church, that they would be sent off the people with the 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, and nail in a nail. The nails represent people that these people know and love their co workers and their family members, their neighbors, their friends, but they are people who are away from Christ, and they want prayer for this person, so that they might come to faith. And so they'll go up and they will simply nail a cross 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 four 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 in 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 was 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, in 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 he'd give me some program that I could, you know, buy, and Institute in my church and, and there would there it would grow. 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 lay person spends about five or six minutes per day in prayer. So I just started my day in prayer. 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 with my wife sometimes at night before we went to bed.

And so he says, Well, let me tell you about mine said in the Korean church, you are expected to be in your office at 5am. And in our offices, built a prayer closet, right 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, to ministry, the people in the church, etc. So then at 6am, I am joined by some other people in the church who have gathered with me to pray about the needs of the church, etc, we pray from six till seven, then they're off and they go to work, and I go to work in my office. So that's Monday through Thursday, said 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. He said, 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'll go 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 it, read the book of Acts. And so that night I went home, I read through the whole book of Acts, and notice how many times they prayed in fact it 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'd grown up, I'd learned how to preach. I'd learned how to study the Bible, I had 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 would 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 emptied one of her closets in her house. And she would go into that, that place and spend two to three hours a day in prayer. And so I met with her and I said, Listen, I've got 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 still available. But it's an old book at this point. But what I appreciated about it, 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 based 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. He said, Could you not watch with me one hour? And so he decided to Dick 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 were 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 it, the woman who had the gift of intercession taught it. And we had 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, and 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, watching intercession, petitions, Thanksgiving, singing, our contemplation or meditation, or listening to God and then closing with praise, again, bracketed 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 hallowed means 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 who are leaders in in the past who have had an 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 I can praise God for a new eyes being open to 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.

 Then secondly, waiting. Sometimes referred to as soul surrender. The verse I've listed there is one of my favorites, Isaiah 40:31. Isaiah is talking to God is speaking to the people of Israel through Isaiah. And after talking about, you know, Have you not known having 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 word hope there is 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, you know, he will forgive their sins and cleanse them from all unrighteousness that's I John 1:9. 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 psalmist 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 state evil thoughts or anything evil in me 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. 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, where you're looking out to see who's coming Is it a friend or an enemy but to watch to think about the newspaper articles that you've read the news on TV or in your computer, however you get it and say, Where is God at work where is 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 of the enemy? What's of 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 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 in Thanksgiving as well. But intercession is 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 interceding for certain programs, certain missionaries, this is a time where you can pour your life out on behalf of another person asking God to work 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 a sense of these headhunters all around 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 they're 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 men all around you. That kind of thing is happening, because of our prayers.

Petition 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 happens in my life, as well as the challenges that I face. I ask 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. One person is listed 1000 of them, I used to keep a list of all the new things that I found to thank God for, you know, like the 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.

Meditation has been gotten a bad name, because of the Far Eastern kind of meditation that allows you to empty yourself, a goal of our meditation is not to empty yourself, it's 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 prayer ministry, you got to begin with yourself. Then you ask people to pray with you. Now 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. If 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 1:19. "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 me in ministry strive to get it. 

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 in prayer. But the ministry is yours. In fact, when I had farewell service, the church I was serving for many years, you know, one of the things I did was have prayer partner stand and 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. Let my experience with church members be rich and full, that I may boldly proclaim the Word. Ephesians. 6:19 he prays for the right words, to share the gospel of Ephesians 6:20 says he might present the gospel without fear that you might communicate clearly Colossians 4:4 and 4:2 that doors might be open for the gospel, etc, that 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 organize prayer partners for yourself, just ask people who's willing to pray for you on a regular basis. And I said before in a session that you know it helps to have these three levels that level one that people are really intimate with you level two, who gets some information about you. And level three, the general church who has 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, a level two, I sent out a letter, an email every week, a 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 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 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 a spirit of spiritual gift of intercession, there's the definition there, that 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, or 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.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations. You have made it to the end of this class. You'll notice this is less leadership session 36. I've been titled at 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 maxims that have been helpful for me, maxims about leadership, you know, maxims are those pithy statements that take an idea. And they just put it down in a memorable way. You know, one of my favorites is, is Dwight Eisenhower, who, a one time during the World War II, 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 says, so the maxim is you always pull people, you don't push them. 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, 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 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. Are there 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 talked about how culture you can look at in a macro setting, as well as in a micro setting that 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 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 sub cultures that had some wonderful interviews generational culture, with John Burton, and with Maya 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've got to define the culture where you are, and I've given you tools to do that, how you looked at the values of the place of the written documents, the physical manifestations of where you are ministering, and how all of those contribute to the way we do things here. And the way things are done, become important to people and they become kind of set in concrete.

And then we talked about how do you develop a division 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 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 of those kinds of things, then we looked at change theory and how this is going to involve change. And then now we've been talking about strategy and strategic planning, and how a strategic planning has to consider various things like spiritual warfare like prayer, those kinds of things.

But all that's in the past tonight. 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. It's a 1980 movie, so it's an old movie, but it's about the two blues brothers, played by Dan Ackroyd. John Belushi, Jake, Jake Blues gets out of prison at the beginning of the movie. They are two blues singers by the way their brothers and, and his brother Eldridge was there to pick them up from prison. And they decided 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 cared about them loved them, so they go to visit her. And they find out from her that the orphanage is 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. In 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, we're on a mission from God, we're on a mission from God, we're on a mission from God, they decide to get their blues band together and hold a 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's 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 s-i-n-e-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 we do you know, what the results of our work? And then the next inner circle is how do we do it? How do you do what you do? And the why is why 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 a what, they start with a why. And he gives us 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 other 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 A what now buy our computer,

He said, Apple turned it entirely around. And they began with the why they said we are a 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 when we provide unique designs, we provide a unique operating platform and the what is a here it is This is what it will do. And he says Apple, you know 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 produced all of these other things, the iPad, the iPod, 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 and he'd cite other companies that did just the opposite. They started with a what. And they said, 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 Com 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 of people so 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. Now 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 would allow you to tape programs. So you didn't have to be home all the time. So your TV would take the program, you could cut through the skip commercials, you could do all that sort of thing. It was an incredible thing. But people tried 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? Well, it's tell you how we've arranged for you to do that. We've built this machine. And here's the what, here's what it will do. But starting with the why.

Now, that talk was something that was powerful for me. In fact, I went back to my staff after I'd watch them on YouTube, and you can find it there. And we simply talked about what's the why behind what we're doing. Now, in a church, we can often talk about the what, right, we can talk about the what till the cows come home, 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're concerned 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 do. And we so seldom talk about, why do we do this? And 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 that session that identified 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 leaders are the ones that are shot first? Why, 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 have found the why and the answer of the Great Commission and the great commandment, the Great Commission is, you know, Go into 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 what I commanded and low 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 neighbor as yourself. Those are wonderful whys. 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 and 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 dashes it so that it's doomed, it's going to sink and suddenly start launching the lifeboats. And that's when they start finding out that there aren't enough lifeboats on the boat to save the 2,200 plus people who are on the ship. There's only enough lifeboats space for 1,200 to be saved.

And so they begin launching the lifeboats and the rule is that men and women first, now women and children, excuse me first, and so women and children start loading into the lifeboats but because everybody's in a hurry, the ship is starting to list. The lifeboats are launched before they're full. And so the lifeboats are directed to start rowing 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 lifeboats row 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 the ship that came the first ship on site after the Titanic sunk and they were rescuing the lifeboats. But here's a picture of 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 and that is that is the lifeboats rowed way, 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 swamped with people trying to get in. But there were 700 people that could have been saved, if the 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 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 what, 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, from the Church of the Nazarene. And so you wonder what the differences are. And so we talked about all the difference between you and me. And dot ta dot ta dah, that we began to just highlight some of them. And then the talk began, and I like to, paint 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 ship are 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.

In fact, 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 the very rich can get into them. And turns out that for many of those clubs, 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 up likely that there could be a ship that would founder 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 to 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 boat better. And all those kind of lectures and, and after a while, people would come for the lectures and the food and, and a few of them would show up in the call would come out 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, you know, to engaged with other things. And so they would hire people to do that for a while. And then after a while, they quit paying 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 had met him, 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, life saving was not part of it. We even in seminary, my training was to take care of the people in the lifeboat not 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 an 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 that became a big part of my why and then my first church how we got to see people do that a little tiny church, people coming because their lives were a mess. And they were looking for some solution and they were afraid of God they were riddled with guilt and to share with them the good news 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 lessened as I got into 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 lead them through that relocation for seven years. 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 of why do I do this? Why do I do what I do? I figured it out, 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 that 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 and Jesus Christ. And now I've experienced that, and 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, my hope is not that your organization will just reach 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 His love, in our area, and out to the world. And so I want 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 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, then live it out with a passion, the why of Jesus Christ as a 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 you are blessing. See 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.