Video Transcript: Lesson 19 Spiritual Vitality

Welcome to Christian leaders Institute, John Kenny, we are really getting now  into some good stuff on church and ministry revitalization. And I'm just so  grateful to have you here with me today. And in the next couple of lectures, the  focus of this isn't going to necessarily be, you know, the organization that we've  been talking kind of broadly, our focus in the next couple lectures and 19, 20, 21, is going to be on you. And so I pray that as we go through this time, the Lord is  really going to speak to you that he will bless you, that you will be affirmed in  ways that you need to be that the spirit would encourage you, but also that you  might be challenged and convicted. So please, whatever words I have to share,  I have no idea where you are or who you are, or how you'll hear them. But know  that I share just out of my heart for you, a fellow leader in ministry, and just pray  the best for you and to hear these as from one humble servant to another. So  our focus is going to be really working on you know, why, why the emphasis on  you so much in these next few lectures because of this. Churches, like every  other organization in the world rise and fall on the quality and character of its  leadership, that organizations with great leaders do better than organizations  with ineffective leaders. And as we talked about revitalization, we have to realize that probably the most significant person that needs to experience revitalization  is us. That we're the most critical piece in all of this. So here's what I've learned  over time. And I've been thinking about revitalization. I've been in it for quite  some time. I discovered that when I first was thinking about what I needed to do  to be a better, more effective Pastor, I thought I needed to build like better skills.  I wanted to be a better preacher, I wanted to be better at than leading meetings  and setting agendas. And I wanted to be more effective and in different kinds of  ways and just really hone my skills in some some areas. And certainly those  have their place. And I thought that's really what I needed to do to enhance my  leadership. But over time, what I've learned is that as helpful as those can be,  those don't necessarily equate with being an effective pastor, an effective  ministry leader. So what makes people effective in leading others in ministry?  That's really the question what makes people be effective leaders? Personal  revitalization, okay. It's not you add skills or more things to your bag of tricks.  But you change, like from the inside, out. And so that's really the subject of our  next three lectures. And so I'm going to share my experience with you, as well  as the experience and the writings of some of the best people I've learned from  through history. And so there's going to be a fair amount of quotes and insights  from other people who, again, throughout history have been trying to do the  same things you and I are trying to do today. So today, we're talking about the  revitalized leader. I want to begin by this statement, that a church or a ministry  never exceeds the spiritual vitality of its leader. Just say, would you agree with  me on that, but a church is never going to become more vibrant, effective in its  faith than its leader, that you may have one or two individuals who, by product of their life or circumstances may have more depth than the pastor, but as a 

movement as a movement of a congregation. It is not ever going to exceed the  vitality of its leader the ability of its leader, John Maxwell has a thing called the  law of the lid. So on a scale of 1 to 10 Let's say your ability to lead is seven.  Maxwell says you'll never your your your organization. Never get above a six,  because you're you're the limiting factor. Okay. And so we kind of have this idea  that a church is never going to exceed or, or be more vibrant than the one who  is leading it. Therefore, there is nothing as critical to the health of a  congregation, as the personal relationship between the pastor and Jesus Christ.  Think about that. There is nothing as critical to the health and the vitality of a  congregation, as the personal relationship between the pastor or the ministry  leader, and Jesus Christ. Again, if if my leadership is my walk with the Lord, if  the congregation will not exceed me, then my relationship with the Lord, in some ways becomes the limiting factor. Because if my relationship is here, the Church are with Christ, the church is only going to get to here. But if I'm at a place here,  walking with the Lord, that allows a lot more room for the church to grow. All  right, so only pastors or leaders, when I say pastors, I mean any anybody in  ministry leadership, only pastors that enjoy a deep, meaningful and vibrant  relationship to Christ and are able to model and lead others towards a similar  close relationship with their Savior, are really truly as effective as they can be  really. So you want a deep, meaningful, vibrant relationship with Christ, that we  are then able to model for others, and to lead others towards something like  that, right. There's an old leadership adage, you can't lead others where you  haven't been yourself, right? So we want to have an experience of Christ. And to be able to model it for others and demonstrate it for them and to have them and  then to be able to help people get ushered into that similar kind of a place. So  back in the 1600s, there was a pastor, it was in the Puritan age. And he wrote a  wonderful book, his name was Richard Baxter. He was a pastor. And he saw all  kinds of problems in the churches in England at the time. And he saw that the  problem was the pastors. They were the reason for the need for revitalization.  And so he spoke at a conference, they they had pastor conferences in the  1600s, and the the text of what he spoke, and then it being turned into a book  called The reformed pastor. Now, this has nothing to do with Reformed theology. So you can be Pentecostal, you can be Baptist, you can be whatever. So it's not  necessarily Reformed theology. What he's talking about, though, is a reformed  pastors kind of a pastor who's in the model of what a pastor is supposed to be  kind of a renewed pasture might be a better way to think about it. So Baxter  claims, he makes a very important claim that a pastor's relationship with Jesus  Christ is the starting point of all ministry, kind of we've kind of hit on that already.  Right? And so this is what he teaches. He's talking to other pastors, he says,  Take heed, which is like you know. Take, take note, take concern. You know, be  aware of this Take heed therefore to yourselves, first, that you may be that which you persuade your hearers to be, and believe that which you persuade them to 

believe, and heartily entertain that savor Savior whom you offer to them. Okay,  so I've got the quote here for you. Will you listen to it first. Now, let's read it  together, wherever you are, if you want to read this out loud, please do so with  me. This is his warning, or his his encouragement, or however you want to  phrase it to other pastors. Take heed therefore to yourself. First, that you may be that which you persuade your hearers to be so you should be the kind of person  you're teaching your followers to be. And believe that what you persuade them  to hear. So you need to believe deep down the very thing that you are preaching and teaching, and heartily entertain that savior, whom you offer to them, that  Christ is in your life that you welcome Christ deeply. So you can't get them to a  place again, that you have not been yourself. You can't get them to believe in  something you preach that you don't already believe yourself. You get the idea.  And later in his book, as in his address to these pastors, Baxter he just shares  like his disappointment that he sees pastors who are not what They're supposed to be. And he's just calling them like, you have to be in a deeper, more  meaningful relationship with Jesus if you're ever going to have an impact on  those you lead. And so he draws a direct line between pastor's personal  relationship with Jesus, and congregational health, like where you're at with the  Lord and where your church is at. He says they're directly related. Now here's a  longer quote, it's not on the screen, but I'll read it nice and slow for you. When  your minds are in a holy, heavenly frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers and your praises, and your doctrines will be sweet and  heavenly to them. They will likely feel when you have been much with God isn't  that beautiful? They will likely feel when you have been much with God. If we  forbear taking food ourselves, we shall famish them. If we let our love decline,  we will not raise up theirs whereas if we have found in faith and love and zeal,  how it would overflow to the refreshing of our congregations, and how it would  appear in the increase of the same grace as in them. You know, what Baxter  says is basically, as a pastor, people are only going to get as far as you do. And  we've mentioned this already. And but he says, you know, as you overflow is  yours, spending time in the presence of the Lord, like, they're going to like feed  on that, they're going to, you know, as you radiate the glory of Christ and your  life, he's saying, like, they're going to live in that radiance. And as you feed  yourself, you nourish yourself with a word of God, he says, They will also eat  from that, as well. And so, revitalization really has to begin with in terms of the  person in the congregation, it has to begin with the revitalization of the pastor,  the pastor's own heart. Now, I'll just share a little bit about my own story and  how I came to realize how important this was. So when I started revitalization,  really intentionally and going through a doctoral program, I was doing a ton of  reading, I was doing a ton of writing, I was getting personal coaching. I was just  in terms of the resources made available to me, it was like this avalanche, it was a complete flood of stuff. And in the midst of that, of all this abundance, 

internally, I was struggling, I was overwhelmed because I was trying to first of all, I was a solo pastor trying to lead my congregation, I now had this huge  academic load, I was trying to do this big turnaround in our church with  revitalization, which meant tons of extra meetings and lots of extra work. And I  was trying to be a good husband, and a father to three young children. And  something had to give I didn't have time and energy for everything. And the thing that ended up getting pushed kind of like off the table was my own relationship  with Jesus, my own vitality, my own personal connection with the Lord. So my  own my own, like devotion time was, was really kind of almost non existent  because I had so many other activities that demanded my attention. There was  no time for me to rest or to relax or to simply catch my breath, let alone have like any kind of meaningful time with the Lord. And I don't know if you use ever,  you've ever felt that there's a wonderful quote here from a book called The  leaders journey that says we grow busier and busier, to please more people and more people. We spend more time in meetings than we do in prayer. We  scarcely have time to read the newspaper, much less spiritual classics or  devotional readings. We study scripture, but we do it for other people to convey  God's word to them. Our own hearts are often thirsty for a word from God, but  who has time we faithfully minister to the spiritual needs of others and teach  ourselves to be content with the leftovers. Here was the great irony that was  going on, as our church was talking about revitalization and we were getting  coaching and we were reading and meeting and strategizing and planning and  doing assessments and history and all the things I'm talking to you about my  own heart had become progressively dry and weary. Now, in hindsight, I realized I had made a mistake. And it's one that I would hopefully be able to get you to  avoid making. I had made this mistake, that in order to bring about revitalization, and to effect change that I needed to do more, I needed to learn more, I needed  to try harder. I needed to, you know, whatever, rather than just to be more, it  never dawned on me that the key to revitalization was going to be renewing my  own relationship with Jesus, I never thought like, I could be part of the problem,  in a sense, because I thought, well, you know, yeah, me and Jesus, we're doing  good. I'm just kind of cruising along here, I need to help other people have a  deeper experience of Jesus, I didn't realize that the way you have helped other  people have a deeper experience of Jesus is by you having a deeper  experience of Jesus first, and modeling it for them, and then inviting them into  that kind of a relationship, that as well. So I didn't need to do more. I needed to  be more now. When we were getting going on this, we were planning all different kinds of strategies. And, again, what are we going to do to get revitalization  going. And so one of the things our coach had to go through was an exercise  where we had to determine what were going to be my key responsibilities going  through, you know, as pastor as the leader, what, what was my like, you know,  top three, four, or five things that I had to do, and then the rest of the stuff I could

let go, but what were the things that I needed to do with my time, in order to be a good pastor, an effective leader, and so we came up with a ton of things, you  know, all the things you can imagine all your ways of a million ways I could  spend my time. And one person who was on our team that was thinking about  this, had said that, kind of towards the end of the brainstorming, he said that  John needs to have time and space to build his personal relationship with Jesus, since so I was, Oh, that's nice. I appreciate him thinking about that. And we kind  of went on to other things, and we have this giant list of things that I could  potentially do. And then we had to vote, we all got a few votes, we had a vote on what were the things that we thought were most important. And so we voted,  and, you know, preaching and leading the revitalization, those were all like,  obviously, you know, one and two those kinds of things. And so the one that my  friend had mentioned that said, develop, develop personal relationship with  Jesus. I didn't even vote for that. I mean, like, I had like three votes, and I didn't  even vote for that. I voted for other things. Only my friend, Ken, voted for it. And  so once we'd done the all the voting, our coach tallied everything up. And he  said, Okay, this is, you know, we've identified the top areas that John's gonna  really need to focus on. Do we all agree, does this sound good? And my friend,  Ken, who's usually very quiet and very kind of just go with the flow, he got like,  free, animated and he was getting much more forceful than I've ever seen him.  And he, he just said, like, No, we have it wrong that my relationship with Jesus  needed to be my number one responsibility. And he was arguing some of the  things we're talking about today that everything I did was going to ultimately flow out of my relationship with Jesus. And all of a sudden, I realized that Ken was  more passionate about my relationship with Jesus. Than I was, I was really  humbled. And honestly, I was just downright embarrassed. And I began to see  that Ken, who was my good friend, he wasn't just concerned about me. He was  concerned about this whole church renewal, and Ken had enough wisdom to  say, if John isn't in the right place with Christ and making time for that. We're not gonna get anywhere like we need him to be dialed in with Jesus, like, really  close heart to heart with the Lord face to face time every day with the Lord. Now again, I was really humbled as he spoke, and I realized how arrogant I was and  how foolish I had been when I was establishing my own priorities. And by the  time this whole session was done, my friend had convinced not just me, but the  entire team of my first responsibility And what every pastors first responsibility is  to cultivate a daily meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ, because that will  always be the limiting factor. And if I start to drift to church might not necessarily  see it this weekend or, or next month, but over time, they will suffer from that. In  a similar mind, or similar thought when I was reading through a book on the  roles of pastors and, you know, kind of staying in the game and being effective,  and all this, there was a line in the book that really hit me like a bolt of lightning,  it was kind of shortly after this, and the author of the book had said this, that 

you're called to be a sheep before you're called to be a shepherd. And when I  thought of my, when I thought of myself, like, as a pastor, and as a Christian, I  really was identifying myself really, as a leader. More than a follower of Jesus.  And that was like a huge problem. Again, I was thinking of myself more of the  

shepherd, and less of a sheep, and kind of this, this call to go back to first and  foremost being this follower of Jesus, that I was his sheep that I was in his pen  that, you know, he was my shepherd, I really needed to reclaim that. And I'm  hoping that for somebody out there that this is hitting you kind of like a like a ton  of bricks that you're so you've been so focused on being a leader and trying to  motivate and change other people that you perhaps are not where you needed  to be. And that you're the first domino that's going to need to fall in all of this,  that you'll be the first one who needs to repent. And I did I needed to repent. I  mean, in front of my friends at this meeting, I said, I am so sorry, like I have, I  feel like I have lost my bearings, in that I need to really do this. And they were  gracious enough to you know, forgive me and to then to be able to create space  in my calendar, that I had to be very intentional about doing that. So that's where we're at. Okay, so let me just talk about it since then, what are some things that  I've done? In order to cultivate my relationship with Jesus over time? As a  leader, what was really really important, okay? Scripture reading, okay, now, do  you know what I'm saying here? Scripture reading for myself. When I was  studying scripture, I was reading it to hear not what God had to say to me, but  what God had to say to others, because I was teaching classes because I was  preaching and it was like, How can I share this? What? What great principle is  there? Who needs to hear this? How can I package it in a way that makes  sense? Rather than I just need to read this because God has a word for me that  God as like, as His child, as his Son, the Lord wants to speak something into my life. And I just would turn back to reading and just to read it for the simple  pleasure of reading God's word. And so I went through some, you know, read  through the Bible in a year kind of programs. Other times I'm just reading, you  know, shorter amounts of Scripture, but more in depth, but just really hearing  like, What does God have to say for me, and almost making it like a commitment in that of like, whatever God teaches me in this, like, I'm not going to share it. I'm not going to say, Hey, this is really good stuff. I'm going to package this up as a  sermon series in six months from now. We don't like like, Lord, whatever you  have, this is just for me. I'm not even thinking about how I can use this later on  down the road. Okay, so that was one thing. Prayer. And not just prayer at the  start of a meeting or prayer at the beginning of meals, but kind of our prayers I'm driving my car and thinking of things but just extended times of being in God's  God's presence. The Latin kind of phrase is koram deo, which is the presence of God the, you know, being in the in light of the radiance of God and, and thinking  deep into them, like kind of face to face time that we would have with the Lord.  Like unhurried, deep personal prayer time, and just finding space and like a 

good resource to do that with. I ended up doing a prayer guide called face to  face. That's by Dr. Kenneth Boa, B-O-A, a daily prayer guide that ended up  being really, really helpful for me. I also did some reading JC Ryle, R-Y-L-E,  practical religion, he has some really wonderful texts on, on praying. Just kind of finding that time to just connect with the Lord and enjoy the Lord and to praise  the Lord was just to thank the Lord to be assured by the Lord. In his word of  praying through scripture, it was so meaningful for me to kind of recapture that.  Okay, a third one was reading spiritual classics. I had read a lot when I was  getting my masters of divinity. I'd read a lot of spiritual classics in different  church history classes and spiritual formation classes. But kind of being a full  time solo Pastor, I hadn't read that kind of stuff in a long time, in when I was  getting back into the doctoral world, to kind of back into the academic world. A  couple classes I had, I had to do a lot of reading of spiritual classics. And it was  like rediscovering something, and reading people who just thought about Jesus  in so much deeper and more meaningful ways that I had, whether it's theology,  or devotional, meditative, or so, you know, digging out the early church, fathers,  Patristics just started to give me to like such a much deeper place. And so I've  just tried to incorporate kind of a reading schedule, reading so many spiritual  classics a year, you know, whether it's one or a year or doing something  quarterly. But really learning from some of the great saints who've had these  incredibly close walks with God and they've been in places with with the Lord  that I've never been. And there's a reason their writings have endured for 400,  800, 1800 years. Because it's just, it's got so much power and truth. So that was something else I did. And then another one that was really key was just  observing the Sabbath, I won't go into the whole history, I did not grow up in a  Christian, home or anything where Sabbath was practiced. When I was in  ministry, I really didn't, at first in ministry I'd ever saw it observed. And so I didn't  observe Sabbath at all. And after a while, I was just running on fumes, and I was not being obedient to God's call. And then I realized that one of my problems  was that I was living out of rhythm with what God had in store for me that God  said one day a week we are to rest we are to enjoy him, we are to delight in him  delight in what he has made delight in his gifts. And I realized, if I was going to  be able to be refreshed and renewed, I was going to need to intentionally live in  God's rhythm. Now, how that process worked in my life, and was kind of a very  winding road. And I won't go into the details of where I ended up with that. But  this idea of observing Sabbath is just was something that was very formative for  me. So isn't it crazy, that just me, observing Sabbath ended up having a huge  impact on the revitalization of my myself, but then later, to the whole church, I  can tell you, that's not the kind of thing you're ever going to read or hear about  at a church revitalization conference, or in a book. But it was just kind of, for me, living more in tune with the life that God wanted me to have. Spending more  time in the presence of the Lord really made a big difference. And so brothers 

and sisters, I challenge you right now. Where is your walk with the Lord? Where  are areas that you need to be refreshed? And what are your priorities as you  look at the activities you have during the week, and I know many of you are  bivocational and you're working another job, and this is something you already  are doing on the side and you have families and my goodness, how do you fit it  all in? I have been there and at times I have gone back there I understand. But  please do not skimp on your time with the Lord. Because you're never going to  be able to take people to a place that you are not there. yourself. Okay. So let  me pray for you, Lord, thanks for this wonderful calling we have to ministry, But  Lord, help us all to remember that first and foremost, we are followers of you,  and it's our relationship with you that matters more than anything. Oh Lord, for  my brothers and sisters watching. Might you draw them into a deeper place of  love and affection for you? And might they be encouraged Lord to just draw  more and more and deeper and deeper into that I pray this in Your name Jesus.  Amen.