Transcription
You know, when guest speakers come in here, they usually at the introduction say, "Hey, thank you for what you do. It really does make a difference." And you know, sometimes you wonder, is that just courtesy, or um, how does that play out? I'd like to give you an example from this last week. Last two Sundays, uh, I have heard testimonies from local churches whose lives have actually been impacted because of materials that have been put into their hands from the national office.
This last Sunday, I was in Columbus, Mississippi. It's um, a church of maybe a couple hundred, 250 people. A young pastor who's been there seven years, took on kind of a historic church and is journeying through. Twenty miles from Columbus, Mississippi, is a community called Starkville, Mississippi, where Mississippi State resides. Um, Starkville does not have uh, what we would call a healthy uh, growing Assembly of God Church in their community. And um, they've had several attempts. It was down to about five people. And the district was going to close it, but Pastor Jody Gurley from Columbus, Mississippi said, "You know, I think we can kind of help and we could kind of pack that." He had a young man on his staff by the name of Shawn who has an educational background and felt the desire to want to go and plant or to pack and to relaunch. He started in the process. His wife Morgan, a beautiful girl, loves Jesus, had never been baptized in the Holy Spirit and was finding, hey, if we're going to go and be the leaders of this package, she had desperately been seeking the Holy Spirit. She believed in the experience of the Holy Spirit.
So, several weeks ago, Pastor Jody went through the hashtag asking for a friend who is the Holy Spirit. And on the one session when the challenge was, "Please come forward. This is going to be a no-touch altar call, but if you're simply desiring to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, I want you to take that step of faith." Morgan did that. She was gloriously baptized in the Holy Spirit. She is now able to sign, you know, to to feel like she can with great conviction accompany her husband to be uh, the pastor at Starkville. That church is launching not this Sunday, but next Sunday, February 3rd. They have about 85 in their launch team and it's going to be right next to Mississippi State. So uh, you know, thank you for those who who are technical editors making sure scriptures line up and making sure sentence structure. I saw firsthand this week a young couple who uh, who can continue following their dreams and their passions and Assemblies of God minister because of the materials that are developed here. So uh, man, thank you. Give yourself a hand for something like that. That's just it's cool. It's um, it's materials. It's church planting. You can just kind of see how it all ties together. And so I'm grateful for that. So it isn't just uh courtesy when you hear ministers come up here and thanking you for what you do that makes a difference on the field. People who travel get the opportunity to see that week after week. So cool.
Hey, take your card out if you will please. We're going to walk through this is our leadership chapel. You know that we designate this chapel just to kind of focus on the topic of leadership or or cultural um, I want to do some corporate training as it relates to corporate values, some of our values. And um, I was intrigued. This teaching was motivated by an article that I read in the Harvard Business Review on taking your organization to the next level. It identified some fundamental practices that put your organization or your ministry in a position to go to next-level effectiveness. It really captured my attention because as they outlined these six principles, I thought, "Yeah, yeah, I I see that happening here at the National Office."
First thing they talked about in this article was was creating a unifying vision. So you have this unifying vision, a healthy church in every community that's marked by spiritual numerical growth. That's that's what we're about. When we want a healthy church to be biblically literate, we believe that church planning and church recalibration is our way of ensuring healthy churches in every community. Then they talked about shaping culture. They talked about uh, having your culture be a place where people enjoy working where they want to go plus one, where they want to go above and beyond, where they feel valued for what they do and they feel a sense of of of contribution to something bigger than their own. That's why we're going to start spotlighting ministry. I want to take advantage that you have an understanding of what publications does or what certain ministries do. They talked about thoroughly building a great team. I have to tell you, I'm pleased with the team that God has assembling. I'm pleased with persons that are that are coming into the organization here. Fourth, it talks about uh, focusing on results. Focusing on results. That's really what the whole over-the-top theme that that's driving us this particular year. I want to measure. I want to measure. I want to quantitatively measure um, our results and what we do and how we do it. Then it talks about innovating or aligning for the future. And I can tell you this is this is the u this is the heart of the executive leadership team. We talk about this in each of our meetings that the decisions that we make are not just based on personal preference, but how are the decisions that we are making setting us up for future growth, setting us up for future uh, health and development. And um um, you know, culture demands that we we change. We can't always do things the way we did 25 years ago. In fact, I read an article in the Heritage magazine about this. I'm going to skip and I want you to jump to the slide of A.B. Cox. Has anybody ever heard the name besides Darren? Uh, A.B. Cox. Anybody? Okay.
Well, A.B. Cox was an early leader in our fellowship and he was very influential in seeing J.W. Welch experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But A.B. Welch, or excuse me, A.B. Cox, um, when he was attending Bible school. It was called Emanuel Bible Institute, felt an inkling to want to ask Dora Hicks to be his wife. But at the time in their culture, at that time when you were at Bible school, men could not talk with women. They could only correspond through letter writing. So in May 13, 1908, A.B. Cox wrote this letter to Dora Hicks: "Dear Sister Hicks, the time has come and I feel compelled to write a few lines. I promise my Lord to walk in the light that he has given me. I would much rather ask you face to face what I have to ask. But of course, understand that we have no chance to talk around here, so I have to do the next best. I'm coming out plain and simply and asking you if you've had any leadings of going into the work of the Lord with me. The Lord has placed a deep conviction upon me that you are the one and that you should join me in this ministry adventure. I've prayed to him if it was his will for us to be companions in this life to show you and make you see it. I want to be sure that if it's the Lord's will, please let me know if you've been feeling led this way. And if you haven't, then I will have to get down and fight this feeling. Oh, he says, 'Now, I know the Lord will answer my prayer, and if it's his will, he has already spoken this to you.'" And so, he signs it, "Since, I remain your brother in Christ, A.B. Cox."
So, Dora's reply letter back to A.B. Cox goes something like this: "Glory be to God for answering my prayer. I think that's kind of the same thing as a fist bump emoji in our heart. I've been feeling this way every time, ever since I've come back to Bula, and I told the Lord, blessed be his name, if it was his will that he would make it known to me. Glory be to God. He is talking to me about this very thing. Glory be to God. Isn't it wonderful that the Lord can do it if we'll just let him have his way? Oh, glory be to God. How glad I am to know that the dear Lord can speak to both of us in this way." Times have changed a little bit in terms of communication. Uh, but when we talk about, you know, aligning and innovating for the future, uh, I think culture demands that we look and how do we respond to the needs of the church to help them be missionally effective. So those were the five things. There was a sixth thing that captured my attention. It was called learning how to lead yourself, leading yourself. And that's really, you know, I read down through that one. "Okay, great. We got this unifying vision. Yes, I think we're shaping culture. We're trying to we are building a team. We are focusing on leading yourself." I thought, "You know, I haven't talked about that much. I haven't really reflected on that much," and that's what led to um, to today's chapel.
Now in recent years the practice and the discipline of leadership has sort of expanded to include a lot of gimmicky marketing buzzwords, things like self-improvement techniques, maximizing to reach your potential through social media evolvement. There's a lot of leadership has just kind of evolved probably the last 25 years. And forgive the simplicity this morning, but I think leadership is work. Leadership is work. Just flat-out work. Influence, it's it's work. It's work to inspire other people to move with action in the same direction. Right? So no gimmicky, no fluff, no developing the leader within you, developing the people around you, all that kind of stuff. I just want to talk about leadership being work, the work of leadership. And I want to start by talking about leading yourself, the efforts, the work that you do by leading yourself. And we're going to do that in the form of having you ask yourself some questions. And when people write or when people talk about leading yourself, it it usually centers around well knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, knowing your weakness, where do you fall on the on the DISC chart and all that stuff. Or maybe it focuses on growing yourself or reinventing yourself or reproducing yourself. But this morning, I just I just simply want to talk to you about asking yourself. Asking yourself and whatever your leadership is, if it's a department or if it's just at home or leading your family or maybe you're a single grandparent that's really influencing the raising of your grandchildren. I want to talk about asking and I put it in the form of 10 questions to reflect on in this area of leading yourself and developing your leadership productivity.
So, here we go. Question number one: Am I investing in key relationships? Am I investing in key relationships? Solomon writes in Proverbs 20, excuse me, 12:26, "The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray." Can I tell you particularly in ministry, friendships and networks and ministries are not optional. They're very essential. And what I'm developing or what I'm discovering in my own life that the broader your leadership becomes, the more critical your relationships are. You see, good relationships help you have good perspective. Good relationships provide um, in-season encouragement. Good relationships correct you when other people are afraid to tell you uh, the truth. So I would just encourage you with this question. Do you have and are you investing in key relationships? Do you have a good friend? Are you a good friend? Because Solomon says the righteous do choose their friends carefully.
Second question: Am I stewarding my resources generously? Am I stewarding my resources generously? Jesus said in Luke chapter 12, "When someone has been given much, much will be required in return. And when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required." You know, um, we're held responsible for what God has given us, not what he has given others. Okay? So, we're we're held responsible for what God has given us, not what he's given to somebody else. And I think I'm learning that generosity is really an aspect of character. You think about it because the opposite of generosity would be selfishness. And and when we talk about generosity, it goes way beyond the use of money. It's the generosity of your gifts to helping someone else. It's the generosity of your efforts going beyond just what you do. Am I stewarding? In other words, what God has given me in time and talent and resources and perspective. Am I stewarding that generously or am I kind of hoarding that?
Third question: Am I praying in a way that activates the supernatural? Am I praying in a way that activates the supernatural? Second Peter 1:3, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who has called us by his own glory and goodness." One of the reasons why I I want intensity when we come in here on Tuesdays and when it's time for prayer, corporate prayer, because my feeling is what would happen if we don't pray some of the prayers we pray. They never have a chance to be answered. If we're not praying for a 10% increase in, if we're not praying for x number of new churches, if we're not praying for x number of trips to go to the to the holy, if we're not praying for over-the-top kinds of results in our areas, then there's no opportunity for God to answer that prayer. So, it's important to me, not for some kind of charismatic hype, but I think it's just really important for us to pray big prayers, to pray dangerous prayers, and what happens if God answers those prayers? How are we going to be able to steward that? But I I fully do believe this. When we are in right relationship with God, we never have to worry whether or not God will answer our prayer. Amen. So if a right relationship with God and man we can pray for 400 churches to be planted next year, x number of church recalibrates, x number of units to be called into missions, x number of college campuses to be open. And I think I don't want to I don't want to get comfortable just managing what we have. I want to pray for what we don't have. And then when God answers that prayer, feel the need to Okay, we got to steward this the right way. We got to steward this the right way. So it's not it's not just some morning hype, okay? It's it I promise you when when we engage in our Tuesday prayer time, I'm wanting myself personally to pray in such a way that it activates the supernatural.
Question number four: Am I taking good care of my body? I know it's going to get really quiet in here. I'll go through this one real quick, but uh, I think it's important. Paul said it this way: "I eagerly expect and hope that I'll in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always, watch this, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or death." You see, our bodies were designed by God and after he designed, hey, that's good. In fact, can I just submit to you this morning? Our bodies are so important to the Lord that he's actually promised to raise them back to life after we die. Amen. You ever thought about that? Your body's gonna actually be raised back to life after we die. So, I want to take this one seriously. I want to be a good steward of the temple of the Holy Spirit. I want to I think as we do that, that gives us greater productivity.
Question number five: Am I listening and applying something now or something new to my leadership practices? Tell them I said hi. Uh, Proverbs 15, "Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance." You know, it's possible you can listen to a podcast every day, every week. It's possible you can read a book a month and still not learn. I get you can ask, I get I get books sent to me all the time. I get people who feel they've got the great the right product. It's going to just put us over the top. But but it's one thing to be saturated with leadership principles and materials and all of that. It's another thing to really be putting that into practice, to implement that, to upgrade your game, to upgrade your effectiveness, to upgrade your ministry. So, are you applying something new, something now to your leadership, develop it?
Number six: Am I loving my family in a way that they feel loved? Am I loving my family in a way they feel loved? I mean, this may not have 100% application for our campus family. Paul says in Romans 12:9, "Love must be sincere." Here's a challenge for you and your family this year. Don't be satisfied with you thinking that you're loving your family the way they should be loved. Make sure they're feeling it. Let the indicator be that they feel your love rather than you think, "While I'm loving them the way they should be loved."
Number seven, it's a biggie. Am I forgiving someone who needs it? Am I forgiving someone who needs it? The writer of Hebrews says, "Look after each other so that none of you will fail to find God's best blessings." That's pretty heavy right there. I don't want to fail to find God's best blessings. So, what do I need to do? "Watch out that no bitterness takes root among you. For as it springs up, it causes deep trouble hurting many in their spiritual lives." We could go a lot of different directions in this whole unforgiveness and and and hanging on to to hurts and things like that. Here's what I would submit to you. That the burden of carrying around unforgiveness is always heavier than the strength to find a way to seek forgiveness. The weight the the bitter the burden of carrying unforgiveness is a whole lot heavier than finding strength to try to find a way to find forgiveness. And you know what? Forgiveness is so much more than just releasing the person who hurt you. Because let's be honest, sometimes we're hurt by people. They don't deserve to be forgiven. But the issue is not whether or not they deserve to be forgiven. It's all about putting yourself in a position to receive the grace of God. It's all about putting yourself in a position to keep bitterness from taking root in your heart. It's all about putting yourself in a in a position where Jesus prayed in the Lord's Prayer, um, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." So, is there a correlation between the forgiveness of God to us in direct proportion to how we're forgiving others who hurt us? Maybe.
Number eight: Am I growing a positive perspective? Am I growing a positive perspective? Paul says, "We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him who've been called according to his purpose." You know this more than anyone, effectiveness and leadership is directly linked to perspective and attitude. And here's what I've discovered. More attitudes have crippled ministries than more bad attitudes have crippled ministries than moral failures. I'm serious. Because a bad attitude that's not dealt with perpetuates itself, has this rippling effect. There's a moral affair. It's discovered because there's a restoration program, but a bad attitude sometimes can linger on. And I've watched bad attitudes [ __ ] ministries more than major major failures. So, I want to encourage you, find a way. Find a way just to grow in a positive perspective.
Number nine: Am I hearing God's voice? Am I hearing God's voice? You know, it's our theme verse for the year. Jeremiah 33, "Call to me and I'll answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things or secret things that you do not know." Um, here's what I'd ask you. What's the latest that the Lord has spoken to you? When's the last time you can say, "Man, I definitely heard God on that one. He told me." I would encourage you grow in that area. We're talking about, right, we're talking about leading ourselves. We're talking about asking ourselves questions, leading ourselves so we can have uh leadership productivity in our areas.
Last one: Am I ministering under the anointing? Am I ministering under the anointing? I promise you, this is the company line. I know it's our company verse. I love Zechariah 4:6, "It's not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord." And you know where I stand on this. The anointing has nothing to do with volume or intensity or am I shouting or am I whispering? To me, the anointing is this supernatural assistance to do what I otherwise can't do or can do on my own. I used to say it this way. It's supernatural assistance to do what I otherwise can't do on my own. Till I started discovering we can do a lot of good things. And so what happens, you learn to do those good things and you quit depending on the supernatural assistance. And so my new phrase, my new definition, the only supernatural assistance to do what we otherwise can't do or can do on our own. It's kind of the it's the supernatural factor, right? It's the infusion factor of that. So 10 questions maybe just to reflect on um, and your leadership, talk about maybe your team, keep them at your desk. Uh, let the Holy Spirit just sort of speak that to you.
So here's what I want to close and put in place in Phil. Have you ever heard the word habitude? Has anybody in this room ever heard the word habitude? Okay. It was made popular about 12 years ago. It's the combination of the word habit and attitude. Habitude. It simply means a repetitious tendency or a way of behaving. I want to share with you some attitudes that I hope we at the national office will develop right here. Just just some some national office habitudes and uh, they're in no particular order. They're as fresh as Sunday night as I was just kind of thinking about leadership and shaping of our culture and where I want to go and I thought, "You know, I remember this book from Tim Tim Elmore." Thank you. Uh, who kind of came up with this the concept attitude and just hit me. So what are some repetitious tendencies or ways of behaving that I hope we at the national office will focus on? Here they are. No brand war. Number one, steward your responsibilities carefully. Just whatever your responsibility is, steward it really carefully. You say, "How do I do that?" Show up on time. Don't waste time and give back more than you take. Amen. Show up on time. That was who said that. Thank you. I received that. What do you know? No, seriously, just steward your So take it whether General Soup Church Ministries, you know, pick your responsibility and then just say, "Okay, God, if you really did provide this for me, I want to steward this very carefully. How do I?" That sounds really lofty. How do I'm telling you, show up on time. Show up to work on time. Don't waste time. I'm big into management by walk-around. You know that. I know every area in this place that's got food and I usually visit it. All right. I steal it. I steal Cokes out of Tammy Stoneaker's refrigerator. That's not a policy even being in their office anyway. But I I I already hear I have lunch on his refrigerator more time. So, you know my style. There's management by walk-around. But I also know that sometimes that can become so casual. That's a waste of time. And so I want to I want to be conscientious. Lord spoke to me. I don't want to give back more than I feel like this organization gives me. I don't want to I don't want to take advantage that yeah there's always going to be pens and paper and I I want to be giving. What is it that I'm giving that nobody else in this position could give back to? So steward steward your responsibilities carefully.
Secondly, a habit. This repetitious behavior. This kind of attitude we want to say. I want us to have a follow-through mentality. I want us to follow through. So, what do you mean? I want you to follow through on things that you say and follow through on things that you start. I think sometimes in the name of capturing a vision, coming back from a conference, being influenced by a pastor, something we we can start some things and then they not really go all the way to completion. Let's follow. Let's follow through. Let's make sure that if it's worthy of a start, we're going for it.
Thirdly, uh, this is just practical and and these aren't because I see it not happening. These are just what I think good habits that we want to continue to strive for as we're seeking to go over the top this year in this organization. Thirdly, exercise courtesy. Just exercise courtesy. Let me give you about four or five ways that I want I want to see it demonstrated in our office. Number one, when you're in a group discussion,
Don't interrupt. Let the other person finish their expression before you jump in. And I know that probably only applies to me, but uh I can get so anxious that every time Donna takes a breath, I step in and go, she never finishes her sentence. And you know, and and I I recognize that. And so, but I don't want I don't I don't want my personality to hinder me from being the best leader I can be. I want God to use my personality, but me to cooperate with him to continue to improve in that area.
So, don't. Secondly, I want to encourage all of us to allow for tough and constructive conversations to be had when it comes to evaluating, when it comes to looking at, is this the right way? Is this we've done it this way for so long? Just allow for uh healthy, good, even sometimes tough conversations.
Third, just say please and thank you more. Just say please and thank you. Whether it's design, whether it's down in the cafeteria or at the coffee shop or whatever, just just practice saying please and thank you more.
And here's one that I want all of us. I want to start respecting the 8:00 prayer. You know, when I first came here, there was a scripture reading and then there was a prayer. It's about a five-minute deal. And I remember saying, I you know, that can get a little clunky. That's just a and so but at 8 straight up, James breaks into a prayer and I just I kind of felt like, man, I want to respect that prayer. I just pause. It doesn't usually go over two minutes. And if we're going to do it, and right now I I want to keep it going. How cool is it for this organization building wide just to pause for the first minute or two minutes of a day and join in prayer? So I'm guilty because eight computer's fire upd and it's I have the natural tendency to want to just keep going while that's on and I just been convicted about that the first year going you know what if we're going to do it let's respect it. So I ask you to just help me with that. The eight comes stop just kind of put your head down and listen to the prayer in your own heart agree with it.
Fourth thing, um and this ties into the introduction of of the teaching here. I want us to work harder. I just want all of us to work harder. I know that a lot of times people say work smarter not harder but I think that can be a copout. It's assumed that we want to work smarter but sometimes I think it's more important just to work harder just to roll up our sleeves and say all right we got we got to tackle this thing. We got we got to do this. I could give you several examples. I'm really really wanting our general council to have more churches represented and have more in attendance than ever before because I believe in what happens. I believe in fine art festival. I believe in the spiritual things are going to take place and the influence conference as well and I want more people. But I also know I can't just well how did we promote it last year? How did we do last year? I've got to I've got to put some sweat equity into making sure that I'm pushing for our fellowship to be at this event. So I ask you to just think through how can you work harder. What what can you do to to say you know I'm giving more of myself into this responsibility that God's given me.