"There are three facets of the discovery processes that free people to be imaginative leaders:
freedom to make mistakes
the importance of serendipity in freeing oneself from one's own thinking processes
the will to overcome emotional barriers".
Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve
"Making mistakes is relatively unimportant in an atmosphere of adventure..."
Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve
I'm pleased to publish a guest blog by J. Lee Grady. Lee is the former editor of Charisma and the director of The Mordecai Project. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His latest book is 10 Lies Men Believe (Charisma House). I value Lee's courageous stands on issues the church needs to deal with.
I get funny looks from some charismatic Christians when I tell them I believe God is calling us back to radical discipleship. Those in the over-50 crowd - people who lived through the charismatic movement of the 1970s - are likely to have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to the dreaded “D word.”
That’s because the so-called Discipleship Movement (also known as the Shepherding Movement) turned a vital biblical principle into a weapon and abused people with it. Churches that embraced the warped doctrines of shepherding required believers to get permission from their pastors before they bought cars, got pregnant or moved to a new city. Immature leaders became dictators, church members became their loyal minions, and the Holy Spirit’s fire was snuffed out because of a pervasive spirit of control.
"Reclaiming this process of discipleship is going to require a total overhaul of how we do church. Do we really want to produce mature disciples who have the character of Jesus and are able to do His works? Or are we content with shallow believers and shallow faith?”
I don’t ever want to live through that again. I know countless people who are still licking their wounds from the spiritual abuse they suffered while attending hyper-controlling churches in the 1970s and ‘80s. Some of them still cannot trust a pastor today; others walked away from God because leaders misused their authority—all in the name of “discipleship.”
Yet I’m still convinced that relational discipleship—a strategy Jesus and the apostle Paul modeled for us—is as vital as ever. If anything the pendulum has now swung dangerously in the opposite direction. In today’s free-wheeling, come-as-you-are, pick-what-you-want, whatever-floats-your-boat Christianity, we make no demands and enforce no standards. We’re just happy to get warm rumps in seats. As long as people file in and out of the pews and we do the Sunday drill, we think we’ve accomplished something.
But Jesus did not command us to go therefore and attract crowds. He called us to make disciples (see Matt. 28:19), and that cannot be done exclusively in once-a-week meetings, no matter how many times the preacher can get the people to shout or wave handkerchiefs. If we don’t take immature Christians through a discipleship process (which is best done in small groups or one-on-one gatherings), people will end up in a perpetual state of immaturity.
David Kinnaman, author of the excellent book unChristian, articulated the problem this way: “Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision.”
A friend of mine had to face this question while he was pastoring in Florida. As a young father, he had a habit of putting his infant son in a car seat and driving him around his neighborhood at night in order to lull him to sleep. Once during this ritual the Holy Spirit spoke to this pastor rather bluntly. He said: “This is what you are doing in your church. You are just driving babies around.”
My friend came under conviction. He realized he had fallen into the trap of entertaining his congregation with events and programs, even though the people were not growing spiritually. He was actually content to keep them in infancy. As long as they filled their seats each Sunday, and paid their tithes, he was happy. Yet no one was growing, and they certainly were not producing fruit by reaching others for Christ.
How can we make this paradigm shift in to discipleship? How can we add “the D word” back into our vocabulary?
Churches must stop exclusively focusing on big events and get people involved in small groups, where personal ministry can take place. We must stop treating people like numbers and get back to valuing relationships. Leaders must reject the celebrity preacher model and start investing their lives in individuals. When we stand before Christ and He evaluates our ministries, He will not be asking us how many people sat in our pews, watched our TV programs, gave in our telethons or filled out response cards. He is not going to evaluate us based on how many people fell under the power of God or how many healings we counted in each service. He will ask how many faithful disciples we made. I pray we will make this our priority.”
From Charisma, 600 Rinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32750. Used by permission.
"One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always."
- A. W. Tozer
There are a lot of pressures and stresses for senior pastors and ministry team leaders, but one of the compensations is this privilege: you get to choose your team. In principle, you should not work with people on your team that you did not choose. Never violate that principle.
Though we must be open to the leading of the Spirit to accept those God sends us, and though others may expect us to “inherit” team members by virtue of the fact that they were there before us, or the organization believes they should join us, but in the end, it is your team. You have the final say in who joins you, and you should exercise that God given responsibility with care, courage and wisdom.
When leaders choose team members or consider new hires, they instinctively know to build a great church or organization they need the best team members possible. We all want to work with great people. But how do we go about selecting team members or new staff? Few leaders take the time to define what they are looking for in team members or new staff hires. Far too many of us accept the first person that is eager to join us, without taking time to probe deeper. Don’t let desperation for help drive your team building!
Let me say again, don’t ever accept team members without confidence that God has brought them to you and that you are absolutely sure that they are the right fit. It is far easier to add someone to your staff or team than to fire them or ask them to leave.
Effective team leaders define the key roles they need to be filled on their team, but more importantly, they have a clearly thought through set of qualifications in mind for team members.
Ask yourself these questions when you consider adding a person to your staff or team:
Do they share my DNA? In other words, are you sure they have your values? More important that great skills or good education is a team member who has your DNA, who shares your values, and grasps and loves the vision of where your team is going.
Do I have good chemistry with them? It took some bad experiences and some personality clashes for me to realize that God gives me freedom to choose who is a good fit for me on my team. This was not the case in the early years of emerging leadership when God was using other people to test me and shape my character, but in my convergence years, I learned that the ground rules change, and God actually wants me to choose people I enjoy working with. Chemistry counts!
Are they a person of trustworthy character? It is better to train a teachable person with integrity, than contend with a person who is unteachable, unfaithful, and unreliable.
Do they have the skills necessary to do the job? Can they get the results you want and others expect? There are some tasks that require better than average performance; a high level of excellence is a must for some roles. There are some projects that should not be launched unless you are absolutely sure a person can get the job done.
Are they courageous? Rather have a team member who takes risks, than one who is cagey and tries to figure out what will “please the boss”. Better to coach a teachable risk-taking person than create dependency on you. Team members who are fearful of making decisions rob your church/organization of passion and zeal. If you have created clear boundaries via clearly communicated values and vision, then empower your team members to get on with the job within that framework.
Will they contribute to the culture we are creating? I ask myself if new team members are high maintenance type people, or are they initiative takers? Do they grasp what we are trying to build, and do they see it a privilege to be part of our core team? Are they “adders” or “subtractors” to our culture?
Lastly, are they humble, honest, hungry and smart? For this part of the list, I can do no better than refer you to Michael Hyatt’s excellent blog, “Four Must-Have Traits in Every Person You Hire”
Conclusion
Trial and error is a good way to live if you like gambling, but it is not the best way to build a great team. One mentor told me, "Floyd, the first time you make a big mistake, it's free, but after that, God will lift his grace from you and let you suffer the consequences of bad decisions".
Though not an absolute, there is great wisdom in my mentor's advise. Learn quickly or suffer. And I might add, learn from the mistakes and wisdom of others, so you won't suffer.
The seven questions above are a road map to follow. As Michael Hyatt says, "It's hard to find a treasure if you don't have a map". Use these question as a map for choosing your team, and you will find the treasures God has stored up for you in the people he has for you. Great team members are a great treasure!
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter".
Proverbs 25:2
A church community can be torn apart by negative gossip, but in the same way, it can be healed and drawn together in deeper unity through what one leader I know calls, "positive gossip". When you are with people and they speak negatively about someone, take time to speak out positive things you know about that person, even if there are not many. Gossip good news, gossip encouragement, link and network people by gossiping at least one good thing you heard them say about someone ...to that person.
Build bridges or love, reconciliation, and a culture of honor and encouragement by gossiping good news. If you as a leader gossip good things about people, you will reap what you sow. And if you criticize and gossip negative things, you will sow a culture of division and mistrust that you will also reap one day.
Ephesians 4:29 says we are to "only speak what edifies, what imparts grace to the hearer..."
Confidence - security to carry out the vision - the opposite is a driven, insecure, controlling person
Capacity - emotionally to endure opposition to see the vision become a reality - the opposite is a person who is emotionally fragile, emotionally unstable or emotionally unhealthy
Competence - skills to organize people and manage resources to see the vision come to pass - the opposite is a person who lacks the skills to lead the people around them through each season of growth as they fulfill the vision
Calling - from God to persevere and endure - the opposite is a person who is acting in the flesh, who has human enthusiasm for a vision or dream but not the leading of God’s Spirit
Character - necessary to live righteously as they see the vision come to pass - the opposite is a person who yields to temptation and is compromised by pride, or immorality, or ungodly behavior
Concepts - knowledge from the Bible to build on truth and sound doctrine - the opposite is a person who teaches false doctrine or is easily deceived by false prophets or false teachers
Core-values - that are apostolic in nature and kingdom oriented in order to sustain and give quality and depth to the vision - the opposite is a person who is guided more by an unbiblical world view and cultural blind spots than by kingdom values, a person who at the core of their being is a prisoner of worldly values
One has to look no further than the Book of Acts to find a pattern of how apostolic movements evolve and develop. The five stages of growth described below are based on the assumption that just as there are natural stages of growth for us as human beings, so God has designed movements to evolve and growth through natural growth stages. Each stage of growth is intended by God to teach us certain life skills and character traits that prepare us for the next stage of life.
Each new stage is preceded by a crisis, and if that crisis is seen as an opportunity and not a threat, the movement can successfully navigate the crisis and move into the next stage with fresh understanding and wisdom.
It is possible for movements to grow unequally, that is, they can move from one stage to another without learning all the lessons that should be learned in the previous stages. This “uneven” development is quite normal in human development as well. An adolescent can have the physical maturity of an adult, but the emotional maturity of a child.
However, if an apostolic movement is to survive, it will have to assess it’s strengths and weaknesses on a regular basis, and adjust accordingly. Wise movement leaders draw on the wisdom of others from outside their movement.
Stage One - Creativity – Acts 1-5 – Jerusalem
This stage is characterized by creativity, fresh life, new initiatives of advancing the gospel, and a strong sense of God’s presence and blessing. There is happy chaos in this stage of new beginnings, but the new life and blessings are so great that they overshadow the weaknesses of the movement.
Leadership presence and style in the first stage in Acts was strong, active, directive, but non-hierarchical. This allowed the apostles to serve the fresh move of God’s Spirit, but not to the extent that they created dependence on them as leaders. The spontaneous growth of the churches meeting in homes was encouraged. These house churches were holistic in that they integrated all three major components of church: worship, mission and community. Disciple making was not confined to a structure but a spontaneous way of life in the church.
Challenge to move into next the next season: The Challenge of Re-structuring
To move into the next season of life in the church there was a great need to release new leaders, create more systems & re-structure to respond to the challenges of a growing church movement. That included delegating leadership, helping existing members/leaders find the right role and place for their gifts, and continuing efforts to preach the good news of Jesus far and wide. In one sense, the creative stage of growth and the building stage, described below, are complimentary and essential for the church to move into the third stage of reproduction. Failure to encourage creativity, and failure to build systems and structures to serve the movement, will inevitably lead to slowing down the growth and to eventual death of the movement.
Stage Two - Building – Acts 6-12 – Jerusalem, Judea & Samaria
This stage of growth requires re-structuring to accommodate growth, and in most instances, suffering and sacrifice to advance the gospel. While restructuring, to meet the needs of a growing church movement, the apostles in the book of Acts continued to preach the gospel. Don’t relent in apostolic thrust during seasons of alignment and restructuring or the momentum of apostolic mission will be lost. Acts 6:5-7 are key verses. Some of the men chosen to carry out the practical work of the church were also apostles. The goal of building/restructuring must always be reproduction. Those in management roles should carry the DNA of the movement with just as much fervor as those in senior apostolic leadership.
Challenge to move into the next season: Challenge of Releasing
To release your best people, trust God to multiply more leaders. Releasing leaders involves first of all prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit, then choosing to trust God for more leaders to take their place. If you hold on to them, you will lose them.
Stage Three - Reproduction – Acts 13 – 28 – Antioch, Asia, Europe, Africa
In the third stage, a movement hits it’s stride as a rapid multi-generational growth takes place. The mother church is no longer the sole center of mission in this stage. There are multiple mother churches and centers of mission that are growing and reproducing. Senior leaders cannot control this life, but they can and should serve it through discipling leaders, teaching, visiting, writing, and speaking into the life of leaders of new “movements within the movement”.
Senior leaders must continue to model the values and vision for the movement to reproduce the same DNA. This may call for key leaders to move out in new pioneering initiatives, leaving behind the comfort of established roles of leadership. It will definitely require all the leaders to be hands on in making disciples among the lost. Paul and Barnabas, pastoral leaders in the church in Antioch, led new church planting initiatives and mission trips to regions beyond, and thus reenergized the church in Antioch, but also impacted the movement in Jerusalem.
Challenge to move into the next season: Challenge of Maturity
New life means new problems. The vision and values must be strengthened and deepened in multiple cultures and locations as a movement grows. Traveling teams of visiting pastors, teachers, prophets, evangelist and apostles are needed. Some of the challenges to be overcome include nationalism, parochialism, false teaching, leadership compromise, loss of vision, and conflict.
Stage Four - Coordination – Acts 15 – Jerusalem
When movements are growing rapidly in multiple locations, one of the challenges is maintaining doctrinal purity and leadership purity/integrity. Such challenges must be responded to promptly, but without over-reaction. The apostles and elders did not over-react to doctrinal crisis in the early church, nor did they create unnecessary rules and requirements to choke the movement’s growth. They met, listened, debated, and then communicated their decisions promptly, wisely, clearly, and personally. The crisis of doctrinal conflict brought the leaders of the early churches together, it did not separate them. Every apostolic movement will face similar crisis if it is growing rapidly. Senior leaders in the movement would be wise to do what the apostles did in Acts 15: listen, debate, understand, and submit to wise senior leadership, like that of James when he summarized the essence of the issue they faced, and then gave clear direction for moving forward in unity. If necessary, call in such leaders from outside the movement to help it overcome the crisis, but make sure such leaders carry the similar apostolic DNA.
Challenge to move into next season: Challenge of Kingdom Collaboration
Leaders in movements and apostolic networks must reach out to one another and build across network and movement lines to share resources and lessons learned from strategic breakthroughs. This will require a willingness to not take credit for breakthroughs, not brand the movements they serve, and see themselves as under leaders, not over leaders.
Stage Five - Kingdom Collaboration–Acts 20-28 Romans 15-16 Rome, Spain, Africa
Every movement must be reborn in every generation. Church must continually be re-imagined and re-invented. The way this happened in the book of Acts was to continually start new church planting movements, and to provide training and fresh beginnings within each movement as it plateaued. New movements are born out of the same values but in with different emphasis and different expression, and often, in different locations. There is a temptation in existing movement for the new apostolic leaders to turn their apostolic fervor and creativity inward, and not outward toward the lost. If the apostolic gifts of the church are not directed toward church planting, the creativity of those gifts are often dissipated on creating more programs that do not lead to disciple making outside the church walls. Apostles will pioneer! The challenge is to pioneer new churches in places where the gospel has not yet gone.
Challenge to move into next season: Release and Encourage Emerging Apostolic Leaders to Start New Church Planting Movements
"The men that will change the colleges and seminaries here represented are the men that will spend the most time alone with God. It takes time for the fires to burn. It takes time for God to draw near and for us to know that He is there. It takes time to assimilate His truth. You ask me, How much time? I do not know. I know it means time enough to forget time."
- John Mott
You are commissioned to supernatural ministry!
Matt 16:18
Jesus said, "I will build my church"
Serving God will give you purpose. He builds his church through you! That is His purpose. Only the Holy Spirit can save people - but, He does it through you.
Matt 16:19
Jesus said, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom".
He is saying, "To the degree you are yielded to me, I will work through you". The promise is that we will overcome "the world, the flesh and the devil". The key is a yielded life.
John 16
"I will send the Holy Spirit to be your helper"
If you stay close to Holy Spirit, He will help you!
Thoughts shared by friends Bob and Joanne Leach with CPx students this morning as they are commissioned for church planting outreach:
John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you".
- God chose you... amazing!
- God appoints you to go...
- God promises you fruit...
- God declares He will hear your prayer...
You exist to fulfill the purposes of God!
David Grieved Well
There are times we must get alone with God and grieve, like David did in the psalms. We cannot grow spiritually, we cannot keep a clean heart and a tender spirit, if we dont know how to grieve before the Lord. If we grieve well we will not accumulate resentments...take up offenses...blame God or others.
There are things we lose in life...do not rush pass them. Grieve what is lost as an act of worship, as an expression of honest trust before the Lord.
Spiritual leaders are sometimes so occupied with caring for others and standing strong, that they lose touch with their own hearts. As I read through 1 Samuel about the life of David, I'm impressed that he grieved his losses as a way of worship, of giving his disappointments to God.
To grieve well is to trust God, it is a way of making covenant with God, to bow our heart and will, to declare to the Lord that "in all things You are at work for Your glory and my good".
"Unless a man obeys, a man cannot believe."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship, page 66
"THE NEXT BIG THING IN YOUR LIFE AND MINE SHOULD BE THE NEXT THING GOD TELLS US TO DO, WHETHER IT LOOKS BIG OR LITTLE IN OUR EYES. The very fact that God tells you to do it makes it big! Our next big thing is the next person God puts in front of us to love or to serve in His name. It is the next action He tells us to do, whether it be big or little in our own estimation. It is the next encouraging word we can speak to someone who needs to be built up, the next hug we can give to the lonely, the next act of mercy we can show to the poor, the next smile we can give to the depressed, the next prayer we pray, the next commandment we obey"
Danny Lehman from The Next Big Thing
My friend Bruce Chitambala from Zambia gave me some great insight into how to communicate “church” to emerging African leaders. Bruce said he has learned to speak of church as family not as institution. As soon as we speak about church in the more traditional way, it conjures up salaries, positions, titles, education and power. But when we speak of church as “family”, then we are speaking the language of Africa. Everyone understands family is about belonging, sharing, honoring, and upholding the family values.
My African friends seem to view family and extended family in a deeper and often more profound way than myself and others of us from the West. Church as family is about belonging and caring and serving together.
Which are we? Local church or apostolic mission agency?
I have pondered this question for years. IS it God's will for all he does to happen in and through local churches? Or is there a role, biblically speaking, for mission agencies?
I have worked on the side of the mission agency, then served as pastor of a local church, and now am part of a movement that seeks to integrate the two. I believe God never intended His church to be separated from His mission.
A friend recently used a picture of a new plant tied to stick to give it support. Think of the plant as the local church, and the stick as the mission agency. The stick is there to give support to the plant until it can stand on it's own.
Some gifted great apostolic leaders are pastors as well, and many pastor/apostles prefer to do everything in and from the local church, with good reason, as I explain above. The danger for apostolic/pastors, or their blind spot, so to speak, is their lack of cross-cultural church planting. They assume the model of church that has been successful for them in their culture, works everywhere. In this context, the mission agency can play an important role of providing expertise, wisdom gained from years of cross cultural church planting. Even for a apostolic/pastor who has visited many nations, there is the danger of thinking they understand the culture and context of planting church planting churches.
I believe there is one God, one mission of God, and one people to fulfill that mission, the church. The local church therefore, is to be the primary apostolic agency in the earth today. There is a place for trans-local agencies and ministries, but they are biblical and empowering to the degree they are sent from local churches and are committed to planting new local churches.
Why is this important?
1. If we separate mission organizations from church communities, we have separated the mission of God (the great commission and the great commandment) from the people of God, the church.
2. Mission agencies and para-church organizations are practical structures that exist to serve the church and her God-given mission in the nations.
3. Missional activity that is separated from local churches are in actuality church people who don't acknowledge they are the church, so they don't function as church consciously and intentionally. This results in unhealthy mission organizations that are driven by goals and not community, and anemic local churches that are robbed of her apostles and evangelists.
4. Mission organizations that don't see themselves as church often draw away from local churches her apostles and evangelists; they model independence from the church, which has weakened local church communities. This reinforces the idea that to be apostolic you need to join a go-getting mission agencies or organization, which in turn weakens the church.
5. One of the freshest things happening in the church worldwide right now is the Spirit inspired trend of local churches and local church networks reclaiming the apostolic mission of God without being dependent on agencies and organizations. What is the role of mission agencies, then? To connect local churches to the harvest to plant more churches, to serve as bridges of God, providing cultural expertise and mission wisdom for local churches to engage in the great mission of God to reach the world with the transforming power of the gospel.
6. The local church is most natural structure for getting the gospel into the culture of a people, and therefore, the primary way God brings transformation to a city or nation. Missionaries come and go, but the local people stay. They are there, assigned by God to carry His good news throughout a city or nation.
7. Missionaries sent by agencies or by apostolic sending local churches are in effect, outsiders, sent to raise up locals, the "insiders". It is the local people, the insiders, that are best equipped by virtue of language, culture and being born in a place, that are the best ones to carry on the generation to generation work of the kingdom of God.
I believe that to the degree that we are holistic (local church and trans-local mission agency married in creative and empowering relationship) we are in sync with what the Spirit is saying to the church today. To the degree we separate these two dimensions of the church, the local church and the apostolic mission of the church, we are dualistic and unbiblical.
For more, I address this issue in greater depth it in my book,
You See Bones, I See an Army: Changing the Way We Do Church
I also recommend ‘Shaping of Things to Come’ by Hirsch, and the weightier ‘Transforming Mission’ by David Bosch.
1 Samuel 17:24-25
Our enemies will defy us, and sometimes our friends will, too! Goliath defied the army of Israel – out of a proud and evil spirit. 1 Samuel 17:25 says, “So the men of Israel said, ‘Have you seen the man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel...’ ”
Defiance can be defined as everything from outright insubordination to passive lack of cooperation, from boldness in the face of evil to insolence toward servant leaders. The fruit doesn’t always indicate the root. There can be different causes for the same kind of behavior.
A wise leader discerns what type of defiance they are up against when people resist their leadership. There are emotional processes at work between people that can cause people to react to one another, like ice bergs colliding in the sea – the biggest issue is often what is unseen in the area of emotions and sensitive areas of ego and identity.
Sooner or later, you will meet a person who will defy you, or you may feel you must defy a person. The temptation is see defiance only as sinful rebellion, and not see more deeply what causes the rebellion, or what role we might play in provoking a person to rebellion and defiance. Most importantly, a discerning leader prayerfully discerns how God wants them to respond to the someone they see as defiant. Below are ten examples of ‘defiant’ behavior in the Scriptures, and ten different motivations for people’s defiance to leadership.
Ten kinds of defiance:
1. The Goliath defiance – deceived, evil defiance
2. The John Mark defiance – youthful, homesick defiance
3. The David defiance – sexual compromise defiance
4. The Absalom/Micah defiance – wounded child defiance
5. The Saul defiance – insecure leader defiance
6. The Jonathan defiance – wise leader defiance
7. The Bethsheba defiance – discerning spouse defiance
8. The Barnabas defiance – “stand up to a pushy leader” kind of defiance
9. The Apostles defiance – resisting ungodly leadership defiance
10. The Sloth’s defiance – the defiance of a lazy man
Someone wrote to me after listening to my 3 minute podcast on Saul and his struggle with lack of courage and deep insecurity. I wrote back with some practical suggestions that have helped me on my journey. Here they are:
I cried out to God for revelation of his love for me as a father and for understanding of who I was to him...
Godly men laid hands on me and prayed for revelation and for healing from deep wounds and insecurities - and kept on praying for me over time
I started on a journey of exploring the Father's love through prayer and scripture meditation. I took hold of my place in Christ by faith as Paul describes in Ephesians 1 and Romans 5:17b
I started identifying lies i was believing about myself and started speaking God's truth over my life. A great help to me at that point was the book, The Search for Significance by McGee. I saw lies in that book that I had been believing.
I prayed every day for a new revelation of the spirit of adoption and rejoiced in it by faith.
I learned every day to confess negative emotions to God that I had toward people - hostility, fear, hurt, jealousy - and to receive by faith the Father's love. I learned to confess the sin of negative emotions without condemning myself but as simply the result of working through my heart issues.
I got involved in reaching out to others with the gospel - it is impossible to get over insecurity and lack of courage without going on mission with God to make him known to others all around us. Boldness and courage are the result of obedience, not the other way around.
I hope this is helpful. I describe these processes in much more detail in my books, The Father Heat of God and Finding Friendship With God.
A lot of people have written to me in the last few days asking me to share more about the Saul Syndrome. Rather than focus on a negative leadership style, I would prefer to share about the positive strengths, the life-giving strengths, of Samuel's leadership, and in the days and weeks to come, I will write and podcast more about David's leadership. I have learned a lot about the strengths of Samuel in his interactions with Saul and David in first seventeen chapters of 1 Samuel. Below are some of those qualities, what I am calling the "Samuel Style" of leading. Samuel was a man trained in God's School of Leadership. He was a man who responded early to the voice of God - and he not only obeyed God, but he internalized that obedience into an inner security and confidence that allowed him to lead in a godly, confident, strong style of leadership.
1 and 2 Samuel is about leadership.... and 1 Samuel 17 is a unique and special chapter about leadership. David followed in the footsteps of Samuel...he followed in the footsteps of his mentor, in the “Samuel Style” of proactive leadership. The “Samuel Style” of leadership teaches us that leadership is primarily a mindset, an attitude, a healthy self-confidence that is imparted to others. People can hold a leadership position, but without this mindset, a person becomes a keeper of the prison walls, not an innovator and creator and liberator with God.
The Samuel Style type of leader is someone who has clarity about his or her own God given life purpose and goals, and therefore, someone who doesn’t become confused or lost in the emotions of others swirling about them. The Samuel Style leader is a person who can separate from others while remaining connected to them, they have their own identity but can connect to the hearts of other people by respecting them, engaging with them in healthy debate, loving them, and seeing their strengths – as well as their weaknesses. Samuel Style leaders build bridges of loving respect between themselves and other people.
A Samuel Style leader has a healthy self-confidence in the sense that they know who they are and what they want to do in life. That enables them to maintain a Godly, emotionally healthy perspective on what God is up to in their nation, their culture, their city or neighborhood, their church and their work or family. They don’t get thrown off-balance by the emotional issues of others, including those who are corrupt or violent or victims. They are able to manage well their own responses to the responses and reactions of people. Therefore, they are able to take stands at the risk of displeasing others without becoming manipulative. No one does this easily, but most leaders who are healthy, inspiring leaders ...do this ...and continually improve their capacity to do it.
When a self-directed, initiative taking, imaginative person is consistently being frustrated and sabotaged by others around them, like Saul did to David, we can be sure they are surrounded by Saul-Syndrome people who are highly anxious risk-avoiders. They are fearful, insecure, reactive, and anxious. These are persons who are more concerned with good feelings than progress and breakthroughs...they hold others hostage by the “victim” mentality of their culture, often because they themselves are being held-hostage by victims.
David was a man who was not a prisoner or victim of the armies raging against his nation, nor was he a prisoner of other people’s insecurities and relational issues, nor of the giant who was defying him and his people. He was not held hostage by the overpowering presence of fearful leadership modeled by Saul. David was a leader, a confident, imaginative person who followed the example of Samuel.
1. Confident in themselves – they know their own goals and purpose
2. Permission giving to others
3. Values based – Samuel style leaders don’t rely on rules and policies but values and relationships, they don’t try to control behavior but teach values behind behavior
4. Positive and encouraging - Samuel style leaders see the potential in others, like a young David, people that others overlook
5. Lead by an inner sense of what God is saying to them – and encourage others to hear God for themselves as well
6. Not sabotaged by the relational issues of other people – they carry on obeying God and pursuing the goals they have in life and don't let the emotional swirl of unhealthy relationships around them undermine them
7. They don’t make the problems of others their problems, and they don’t allow others to make their personal problems their problems
8. They take responsibility for themselves and allow others to do the same Samuel learned his style leadership even though God placed him under Eli, a weak and ungodly older leader. Samuel learned true submission, not the doormat kind of doing anything a leader asks of you without thinking for yourself.
Godly submission is an attitude of respect, honor and willingness to serve another person. SUBMISSION IS NOT being CONTROLLED, but submission doesn’t have good fruit in our lives until we can obey leaders when we disagree with them, without making a big fuss about it.
Healthy submission allows us to connect to the heart a leader and follow what they ask of us out of respect for them. Submission is not blind obedience, but an attitude of honor and respect. With this kind of submission, you can submissive, or what God has called you to do.
If a leader is an autocratic, controlling leader, at some point, God frees us from that leader, like God freed Samuel from Eli and freed David from Saul. We can tell the difference between godly, strong willed, assertive leaders like David and Samuel, and a controlling, autocratic leader like Saul, by contrasting the lives of Samuel and Saul, or contrasting the leadership style of Saul and David. Just because a leader is assertive and strong willed does not mean they are controlling.
Both Samuel and David were strong leaders who expected submission, but they were not controlling leaders. The qualities of a Samuel Style leader I describe above will help you set goals for yourself for being a healthy, confident, godly leader, and not a controlling leader. Being secure in who you are in Christ is the most important thing you can do to be that kind of leader.
By human standards, David was not qualified to be a leader. He was too young, too untrained, too “wrong family”. David became a warrior...but his tender spirit was his defining trait (See The Maxwell Leadership Bible, page 340). David was defined as a man by two things:
tender heart - he spent time alone with God in tender intimacy to build a personal relationship with God
tough spirit - he was made tough and could fight God’s battles as a warrior that God could call on to fight his battles
David began his leadership journey as the last of the family hierarchy, the one on the bottom. While his brothers looked down on him, God lifted him up. When his family bypassed him, God did not. God sees who you are, God sees who we are as a nation, and he doesn’t forget his promises to us. God sees the young leaders He wants to bring out and He uses you and me to do that. God uses intentional relationships to disciple His future leaders.
David’s life demonstrates this truth: faithfulness in small things is rewarded by God, faithfulness in physical things - for David that was taking care of the sheep - is rewarded by spiritual rewards, and faithfulness serving another man’s plans and vision, is rewarded with your own spiritual responsibilities to take care of for God. Faithfulness results in larger assignments of influence and greater responsibilities of leadership.
David grew into a warrior one step at a time: he first fought the lion and the bear, then he fought Goliath, then the Philistines. And that is still how he grows young leaders, one step at a time, one battle at at time.
How do you recognize a David in our midst? 1 Samuel 16
Don’t look at good looks - verse 7
Don’t look at his family or race - verses 8-11
Don’t look for existing recognition - verse 8-9
Don’t look at his past - verse 11 (keeping the sheep)
Don’t look at what others look at - verse 3