A Very Simple Thing...

This is a little story from my book Leading Like Jesus. “Living in a small Holland village, I remember walking down a long hallway in the training center I led. It was very early in the morning so I had the building all to myself for prayer and meditation. As I paced up and down the hallway, I noticed a candy wrapper thrown carelessly on the floor. I thought to myself, “I must say something to the students about being so thoughtless.” Back and forth I walked, repeatedly passing the wrapper. Praying. Seeking God. Annoyed with the students. Then I heard a still small voice: “You pick up the candy wrapper.” I protested, “But if I start using my quiet times in the mornings to pick up candy wrappers, where will it end?”

Through the hallway window, I could see a few other randomly scattered bits and pieces of paper around the campus. I pictured myself marching from one end of the campus to the other, using my precious time to pick up scraps of paper all day. But the voice persisted, “You pick it up and don’t lecture the students about it. Just do it and carry on.”

And so I learned ‘The Lesson Of The Candy Wrapper’. Just do it. Don’t call attention to yourself. Don’t consider any task too lowly for you to do. Don’t fancy yourself too busy to pick up candy wrappers."

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The 10 C's of Team Selection

This is a portion from Leading Like Jesus that I believe is helpful to those who lead and pioneer new movements … “Don’t let desperation for help drive your team building! Jesus chose team members prudently.

Effective leaders have a clearly defined set of qualifications for team members.

Team Selection Guidelines:

1. Courtesy - Do they know how to respect other team members? Are they collaborative in their approach to decision making?

2. Chemistry - Do they have good chemistry with you as the team leader and with others on the team? Are they likeable? Can they have a good time with those they work with?

3. Competence - Do they have the skills necessary to add strength to the team?

4. Character - Do they display servant leadership qualities? Do they show integrity? Are they reliable and do they keep promises?

5. Core Values - Are their core values aligned with those of the rest of the team?

6. Courage - are they willing to take risks? Do they exercise faith and take on new challenges when called upon?

7. Capacity - Do they have the emotional capacity for leadership responsibility? Can they handle stress and pressure?

8. Culture   - do they work well with people of other cultures? Are they sensitive and adaptive to different cultural contexts?

9. Calling/Commitment - What are their spiritual gifts? Do their gifts complement the team? Do they have a clear call from God to serve with you?

10. Clear Expectations - Have you discussed your expectations and theirs?

Team building presents many opportunities to learn humility and grow in wisdom.  The principle of multiplication goes hand in hand with the principle of selection.  Jesus came to launch a movement. To do that, He needed trustworthy men and women to lead and reproduce the movement.”

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Jesus Started a Church

Perhaps the most radical thing Jesus did while on earth, besides taking the punishment for our sins on the cross, was starting a church. There is generally agreement amongst Bible scholars and theologians that what Jesus did with His disciples was not a church. But I disagree. Jesus said He would build His church – not just after His ascension into heaven. He started His church while He lived on earth, planning for it to multiply to the ends of the earth.

He and His band of followers did all the things we agree are essential to function as a church. They functioned as a spiritual family doing life together, pursuing relationship with the Father, and serving the world around them. They fulfilled the qualifications for doing church the way we see it modeled in the book of Acts.

The disciples learned the new way of being a covenant community from their Master. After His ascension, they realized He had given them a model to follow – and they followed it. It was more than a model, in fact, it was a way to live intentionally together.

Jesus didn’t add a lot of frills to His church. In fact, He subtracted from the Old Testament way of doing things: He took away the uniforms, He got rid of the barriers between men and women and Jews and Gentiles, and He empowered everyone to be a priest. He didn’t ask for their money, organize a choir, or choose one particular day over another to gather for worship.

No holy day, no holy priests, and no holy meeting place. When you stop to think about it, it was a radical model of simplicity and mission: worship and prayer, community and care, and reaching out as a way of life.

He taught them how to be leaders by serving. He walked beside His followers, not above them. Yet, He was clearly the leader.

He bridged the dualism of the Old Testament, calling for a radical new kind of spirituality. He taught spirituality of the heart, not outward behavior. Every person who followed Him was treated with equal value and given equal responsibility. Yet, with this new emphasis on being a spiritual family, He recognized and modeled the need for servant leadership.

I love how Jesus did church. He only mentions church twice in His teachings, and it is interesting to note it was Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospel writers, who records Jesus’ teaching on the “new church” way of being God’s people.

In Matthew 16 and 18 Jesus teaches about church...but that is for another blog post and another day....