(Here at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit praying for God to give me new insight to help me in leading with Operation Christmas Child)
Whatever You Do:
1.
Should not be prohibited by the law of the land,
unless the Bible commands otherwise.
2.
Should not be prohibited in the Bible.
3.
Should emanate from the local church and be
transformational to the local community.
4.
Should be replicable and multipliable. Please don’t build Taj Mahals.
5.
Should be culturally relevant and appropriate to
your context.
6.
Before you make the final decision, always ask
and answer honestly—if Jesus was here, would He be doing what I am going to do?
After we were married my wife wanted us to visit the Taj
Mahal on our honeymoon and I asked an eight-year-old slum dwelling boy to come
with us on our honeymoon. As we traveled and I learned about his life it
derailed my own plans for my life.
I was challenged by the parable Jesus told of the master who
went away and gave his servants talents to manage. The first two invested and built up those talents and the
third hid the talent he was given.
The first two were commended by the master and takes the talent from the
one who hid it and gives it to the first two. The first two proved themselves worthy to be trusted with
more.
All of us have been trusted with something. How are we proving ourselves to be
trusted with more? Jesus has
entrusted the church with everything necessary to transform the world, but I
was becoming like that third servant and I thank God for that boy who came in
and transformed my life.
What are you doing with your talents? To Jesus faithfulness is multiplying
what you have been given. Just
maintaining your things is not God’s plan or mission. If you are faithful in small things and will multiply them
He will give you more.
The third servant who buried his talent is never heard from
again. I hope you won’t be one of
those. Just maintaining and
keeping safe is not an option, especially for the followers of Christ. He always gave the command to multiply
and bear fruit. We have no excuse
or reason not to multiply. God
gives us the starting point, but what we do with it is up to us.
3 “E”s of Leadership—
ENLARGE your vision – the first two servants had a growing
vision. What is your vision
today? Is it about the mission of
multiplication? Is the Master
pleased with your vision? We need
to reactivate the gifts and talents that have been entrusted to us and take
risks and we will see fruit emerging around the world. Being rich doesn’t make you a
good leader or being poor does not make you insignificant. When people hear your vision they
should see the vision of your God and be inspired to do bigger things in their
own lives. Sometimes well-meaning
people will try to pop your vision (vision-poppers.) We had a vision to plant 100,000 churches and people said it
was impossible. But others have
not seen or heard what God has put into you. Don’t worry what other people say anyway. In India we try to keep our skin white
and cover it up—then I went to a beach and thought everyone was dead and robbed
as they were lying in the sun and his friend said, “They’re all just trying to
look like you.”
Don’t let culture or popularity determine your vision—let it
be determined by what God has put inside of you. Stay focused but allow your horizon to get bigger and
bigger. Last year our prime
minister was encouraging us to build toilets because so many have no facilities
so we decided to take that on. Now
we have a toilet vision—it’s an enlargement of the vision to transform
communities. There are opportunities
all around you to enlarge your vision.
I pray you will have the opportunities to see the vision around
you. You need to become passionate
and have a living vision. Your
vision statement on the wall will not make people sacrifice their lives; they
need to see your living vision.
EMPOWER your people—as leaders empowerment can backfire and
people in whom you’ve invested may leave.
We can lose confidence and start to lead with hurt and stop empowering
people. Did Jesus know Thomas
would doubt him and Peter would deny him?
He did, but He still gave them a chance. I pray today you will start to empower your people. Don’t be fooled by the package they
come in—they may be unlikely leaders.
(picture on screen of a crazy, homeless man they found under a bridge
who is now leading and transforming three communities.) Stefan was found by the side of the
road 18 years ago and he now leads the ministry all over Asia. Pascal is a blind man who is starting
to plant his second church.
Your leadership reach will be determined by your empowerment
abilities. A good test about how
you’re empowering is to take a long vacation. I intentionally live on another continent so the leaders
under me will do the work of ministry.
As leaders we often get stuck in the project and have no
capacity to determine a new horizon.
--you
should focus on building character before
empowering them – Great leaders focus on building character
--empowerment
has to be through relationship –
without knowing a person you can’t truly empower them. Empowering is about leading not from
the front but alongside. All of our future leaders have to live
in a small groups with established leaders for a year.
--make
sure you have the right agreed outcomes
in place and build in processes to measure them (KPI=Kingdom performance
indicators)
Eighteen years ago when I started I had the goal of 100,000
communities being transformed. When we recently added up the goals of all our
leaders it totaled 127,000.
EMBRACE risk—To me risk and faith is the same thing. The Bible says, “Without faith it is
impossible to please God.” How
many of you are pleasing God by taking risks? It’s easy to move from pioneering to preserving unless you
embrace risk.
To embrace risk:
--see
it as your friend to love and not your enemy to be feared—the Bible says, “God
has not given us a spirit of fear,” so we should be the most audacious people
in the world. Give the fear back
to the devil and embrace faith and go after the mission God has given you. Don’t let the fear of losing what you
have keep you from losing what God wants to give you. When we stop taking risk we underachieve our potential. In Jesus’ story, not taking risk was
considered lazy and unfaithful.
--see
comfort and safety as your enemies—Comfort and safety and risk cannot
co-exist. Who is missing out
because you are refusing to take the next step of faith? Don’t see comfort and safety as
good. One of the ways we play it
safe is trying to work everything out before we do anything. I’m not saying you shouldn’t plan but
don’t let the earthly practicalities make you forget the heavenly
possibilities.
--begin
to increase your pain threshold—You cannot take risk if your pain threshold is
small. Some of the greatest ideas
that could have changed the world are in the grave because someone played it
safe. Don’t take your gifts to
heaven. Heaven doesn’t need them;
they were put in you for a purpose.
Today is a decision day.
One of my greatest regrets—I loved my grandfather and wrote him a letter
telling him this but forgot to mail it.
Then my grandfather died and he never got to read it. When you get to eternity don’t have any
regret about steps you wish you had taken.
I want to ask you to do 3 things before you go to sleep
tonight
--make
a list of all the dreams you have not followed, then make a column of the date
you will take action on them, then
make a note of the person who will hold you accountable. God has sent me to encourage you to
pull the trigger on the things about which you have been procrastinating.
God has given you talents and people are depending on you to
use them. In eternity you will be
so glad you did.
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