Transcription
Everybody who is at the top. If you are not at the top of wherever you work, take time, go and talk to the chief executive of your company. You know, sometimes you go to a company and you find somebody who is maybe about 38, and he is, he or she is the chief executive, and somebody's 55 and reports to 38. Now, in normal life, 55 sitting reporting to 38, 38 should report to 55. He's your senior brother, your uncle. But here, here you are, 38 is giving you assignments, and you are wondering, "Where are we? Been sitting here, and we'll be here all this stuff, and this young man comes and looks at what has happened. Where he left, he followed, stayed, and never learned how to rise to the next level by moving away from something that you are familiar with into something new."
The person who rises to the top is the one who learns to live and follow. Not everybody rises to leadership, and at every level of leadership promotion, there's going to be a living and a following at every level, at every level. All right, so let me make a few statements about, uh, the call to leadership. Number one is that the call to leadership separates you from the crowd. The call to leadership separates you from the crowd. The crowds like company. There is a fancy proverb that says, "The ghosts like their crowd, their company." The crowds like company. Crowds like to keep everybody where they are. But leaders are pathfinders. They must find a way to move to the next level for the crowd to follow. So anytime God calls a person to leadership, it is going to separate you from the crowd. If you just want to be a person who pleases everybody, and that's what everybody likes, people will like you, but they'll keep you where they are. You will never rise to significant leadership because most times, leadership requires that you're going to do something that is not being done now. And if you want to do something that has not been done now, those who like what is now cannot envision the possibility that what you are saying is better than what they have been comfortably used to. So when you start doing that, you're going to come against roadblocks, criticism. If you want to be loved, want to be appreciated by everybody, want everybody to accept you, God bless you, stay with the crowd. But if you want to be a leader, you're going to be different. Your views will be different. In the process of making you, you will acquire new perspectives, different from the crowd. And when you come telling the crowd about what to be done, they're not going to like you. And one thing about the crowd, they have a way of bringing you back to their level. Oh, yeah, yeah, they are very good at it. They are very good. Have you, have you ever been in a situation where somebody comes, he's new, he has fresh ideas, and he's talking fresh ideas? He faces so much opposition. Within three years, he's back to where everybody is because they will make life uncomfortable for you. Sometimes I see, you know, Ghanaians who have traveled outside, maybe they've lived in America, lived somewhere, they come here, amen, amen, amen, amen. They're going to change in three years. The day inside, like everybody else, because you see, the crowd has a way of constantly pushing against you. They'll push against you for so long that you get tired and weary and give up. But leaders must always constantly push against the trend. That's what leadership is. You're going to push against the trend. But everybody who likes comfort, life is life is nice when nobody's fighting you. But it's better when people are fighting you. The call to leadership requires separation from the crowd. The call to leadership will move you beyond where you are. The call to leadership will move you beyond where you are. Once God summons you to rise to leadership, he will move you from where you are as a person because you cannot move followers until you can move yourself. You can't tell people about something when you are not experiencing and doing it. So when, when God calls us to leadership, he makes us so we can point others to what he's made us. And he's not going to make you as you are. He's going to make you different. The call to leadership will always move you beyond where you are.
Now, I think all of us have heard the phrase being used that the problem of Africa is leadership. How many of you have heard that phrase? And it's true. But why can't we solve it? If the problem is leadership, most times when we say the problem of Africa is leadership, we are thinking about the positional leaders. So we say, "Well, is the president, is his ministers, his regional means, that district chief executives, and so and so, and so. The problem of Africa is leadership." So we change the position and bring people in. But leadership is not a position, it's an attitude. So you bring the people in, you find the mentality is still the same. Because one of the fundamental problems with us Africans, me included, all of us, is we are very traditional. Africans hate to change. Tradition. The way conference did it, we will do it very dedicatedly. And when somebody criticizes, they say, "I don't want to be a white man." Then we close the argument. Once you say, "I don't want to be white man," we close that. This is what, no, no, this is what we would do. Well, I appreciate that. Where, what is the result? Have we been able to develop our community? No. If it is not, then the leadership model is wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. We may like it, we may appreciate it, we may love it with all our hearts. But here we are, because the leader must go beyond himself. If all my life's ambition is to be like my father, and my father's ambition is to be like his father, and his father's ambition is to be like his father, and all our ambition is to be like what has been, then what will we become? We will never become anything. We will only be what has been.
The challenge of Africa is not that they are not intelligent people, but we are so committed to becoming what we used to be that we never become what we should become. The leadership call is going to change you. It's going to move you. It's going to place a demand on you to be different, to do things differently. And although you may love the culture of your ancestors, it will compel you to be different. And be very careful what you call African. Be very careful because Africans, we have, we have specialized in calling underdevelopment Africa. So we eat with our fingers. We say that's African. By the way, for your information, every culture on this planet at the point at with fingers because there was no cutlery. All right, I don't want to whack myself too much into that. A call to leadership will expand the limits of your capacity. It will expand the limits of your capacity. Leadership calls will stretch you. It will increase your capacity to perform. Now, what does that mean? Can a person who cannot handle the tantrum of one two-year-old manage a class full of two-year-olds? So if you have a two-year-old challenge, hey, I'm doing, and you say, "Oh God, what kind of world is this?" Then you can't manage two. You can manage three. So, so let's say God's calling was for you to manage a nursery school, but you can handle one. It means you cannot fulfill your calling because one one is putting you to flight. So what's gonna happen when God calls you to leadership? What he's going to do is where as you couldn't handle one, he would stretch you to the point where you can handle two or three or four or five or ten. So that the calling upon your life can find room in your heart, in your mind, and in your spirit. Leadership will stretch your capacity. If you can't preach to one person, how can you preach to a hundred? You know, the, the, when I started ministry, a young man came to see me. He said, "Pastor, I see what you are doing, but if I had a church like yours," those days I had about a thousand people, he said, "I will do powerful things." I said, "Yeah, that's why you don't have a church like mine because your capacity cannot handle this. If you had a thousand people telling you about their problems and annoying you, you, you will stand in the pulpit and insult people every Sunday." But God gives you the capacity. Leadership stretches your capacity so you can accommodate the distortions of life because life has distortions. Life is not orderly. Everything is distorted. And the leader must be able to hold the mania together and bring order and direction to it. So a leadership call will expand the limits of your capacity. A call to leadership will refocus your strengths. A call to leadership will refocus your strength. Jesus told Peter, "I will make you fishers of men." Their strength was fishing or fish. They knew how to fish, but they didn't know how to use that strength in another context. So Jesus says, "I know what your strength is. It's a, it's, you, you know how to fish, but you are using it for fish. But I can show you how to take this same strength on another level, fishing for men." I'm going to refocus your strength. Leadership will refocus our strengths.
Let me conclude quickly. Mark chapter 3, verses 13 to 15. That's my last passage. Mark chapter 3, verses 13 to 15. This is Jesus calling the apostles, the first twelve. You call the twelve. You know, one was the devil, but you know it means that no matter how careful you are, one will sneak in. You go through the interviews, I've done everything, but one who's sneaky. Remember, one was sneaky. You can get it always perfect. So Mark chapter 3, verses 13 to 15: "And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he himself wanted, and they came to him. Then he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, that he might send them out to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils." I want you to note the progression of what is happening here. The first is that he called them to partake of him. He called them to partake of him. The passage says, "He called them that they might be with him." Their first call was to partake of Christ. Now, that starts with salvation, it continues through to discipleship. Jesus wanted a team whose first priority was not, "Let's go do something, let's go do something," but, "Let's be with him. Let's be with him. Let's be with him. Let's learn from him. Let's see him. Let's watch him." Because many times, people are so eager to perform that they have no time to partake. It's like people who, who don't finish the training and set out because they're too eager. Training is too boring. Now, I know people would say, "Well, but Bill Gates quit college." Are you Colgate? Are you Colgate? There's only one Gate. There's always an exception to a rule. But don't ever think you'll be the exception. Follow the rule. The rule is you stay through the process before you step out. That's the rule. Now, once in a while, there may be some people who for some very special, unique reasons don't follow that rule, and it goes well with them. Now, you can't make the rule the exception. The rule. There are many people who follow exceptions, and and that's one of the things I see, especially as I see young women, young men and women, and they're looking at exceptional cases to make it the rule of their lives. You will shipwreck yourself because one out of seven billion should not become your rule. The rule must be that which is the general principle that works. And when you follow the general principle, it works. When I was in primary school, middle school, as a classmate of mine who left class and started working. But you know, when you leave class at middle school, what kind of work can you do? So he was a driver's mate. And he used to be a driver's mate. You know, if you remember those days, and the driver's mate normally was outside the bus. So they hold on to the top of the bus with one hand, and one leg is at the base of the bus, and the other is hanging. And, and, and when they are coming through, you know, everybody's watching the driver's mate, and they're a very fancy full, and they work all kinds of tricks with their movement at the back of the bus. And this boy used to do that. And when was school on break, and his trotrow is coming by, and you know, his driver would honk the hop, and there we see him, and he's doing his nice style, and you know, and we, we saw him and said, "Wow, he has developed." It was the argument amongst, yeah, he's gone ahead. He's just about 12 or 13. These days, we'll call it a, a child abuse, but then he was a driver's mate. And, and, you know, sometimes he will come with some money and buy oranges for us and groundnuts for us. And I mean, he's fixing us money. I met him later in life. He hadn't made much progress from where he started. This time, he had advanced a little bit. He was driving, but life had not been kind to him. But I remember when he broke the rule, and we thought he was the model. Can you imagine if all of us are going to be driver's mates? Follow the rule. So Jesus says, "Partake of me. Learn from me. Stay with me." That's why Jesus preferred Mary's approach to Martha's approach because he says, "Martha, you were just working, working, working. You're not learning. Active, active, active, not learning. Nothing. Yes, you're a hard worker, but there's nothing in your head." And there are a lot of hard workers who have nothing in their head because they don't spend time to learn. No improvement. Jesus says, "The first priority, be with me. Stay with me. Go where I go. Watch me. Listen to me. Listen to my teaching. Let me mold you. Let me change your attitudes. Partake of me."
Second, he says, "That they might be with him, that he might send them out." It's a call to partner. "That he might send them out." As we stay close to him, he helps us to become partakers of what he is doing. We, we begin to play a role in the team. So for the disciples of Jesus, he says, "You be with me. Then after I really know I can do work with you. I can now work with you. I can partner with you." And then the third level is the call to perform. "That they might go out with power to preach and to heal." The third call is the call of performance. Now, many people who want to become leaders, they want number three first. They want performance first. "Give me a rule. Give me something to do. I, I want to learn. I want to learn. But give me something to do. Let me go out. Let me do this." But you know nothing. You don't even know the way I think. You don't know my philosophy. You're still, you, you haven't been made. You haven't been transformed. But you are performing. But in the sequence of Jesus, you partake, you partner, you perform. You partake, you partner, you perform. You partake, you partner, you perform. That's how he raises leaders. Was it a good model? Well, Jesus' training school was for three years, three and a half years. So let's say that he trained them for a period of three and a half years, and that's all the physical contact teaching he had. Twelve people, villages, fishermen, most of them never been to school, picked them from the streets, literally trained them for three years. And this is the model: "Be with me. Partake of me. Partner with me. You go perform." After three and a half years, he left them and he said, "I trust you." And when he was leaving them, he says the most outrageous thing a teacher can tell his disciples. All the three years we were doing village ministry, all the three years you saw me do village, but what we've done village, you go to the whole world and change the world. How can you trust these misfits after three years of training to go do that? Well, the rest, as they say, is history. Those twelve people went and gradually started and developed the movement. In 300 years, that movement that started on the seashells of Galilee took over the Roman Empire, which was the greatest empire. It's almost like a village ministry from somewhere in the deep interiors of, of Ghana, with some village farmer who put some 12 farmers together in that village, and then the farmer dies, and those people go, and eventually they take over the world, take over America, take over Britain, take over France, take over the UN. Where did they come from? From the village. What university did they go? Some itinerant preachers spent three years with them. And this is what he produced. Is the model of Jesus to be trusted? The proof is in the pudding. All of us are a product of those fishermen. And what they did, has it worked? It is still working after 2,000 years ago. It's still expanding, and ever-expanding, never retreating movement. The most successful companies in the world who would spend all the hours of training and doing human resource training and training and training and training, sometimes after 50 years, the company collapses. 30 years, company collapsed. 100 years, company collapses. 200 years, company collapses. This is a 2,000-year company. And it's expanding. Branches are expanding. Even one outlet called ICGC is expanding. Just one outlet, and there are outlets all over the world, all over the world. Did he have a good model? I would say throw all your training manuals away and go learn from that man because he knows how to raise leaders and he has proven it. But the result of his life and his ministry. God bless you.