The Call to Disciple Making is a Call to Transformational Servant Leadership

A call to disciple making is a call to leadership, not as the world leads, but according to the example of Christ.

We all have things that tip us over the edge. Call it a hot button, a line in the sand, a hill to die on, we all have things we’ve decided and when someone is cavalier in trashing it in an attempt to sound pithy or smart, it just irks you.  My hot button is when someone suggests that “leader” and “leadership” is a corporate principle that has little place in ministry. Brothers and Sisters, according to our calling we must be spiritual leaders, transformational leaders, and servant leaders after the example of Christ. 

When I was 14 years old Dad put me behind the wheel of his Mercury Montego on the back roads of West Virginia and told me to drive. I will never forget how scared and excited I was at the same time. I remember meeting cars on the curves of old Gardner Road and having difficulty judging where the car was in relation to the road. My grip on the wheel made my knuckles white and I probably left fingernail marks. I drove, I steered, I was driving. When that first experience was over I was shaking and thinking that driving was going to always stress me out. I remember Dad telling me that he was as comfortable driving as he was sitting in his chair at home and I would be too one day. He was right. 

One of the side benefits of driving was that when I was driving I did not get motion sickness on the twisted roads of West Virginia. I’d get nauseous every time I rode in a car, but when I was driving I never got sick. Because of that, I came to prefer driving over riding. 

I am a natural born follower. I don’t have to drive, I don’t have to steer, I don’t have to be the leader. Most of the time I sincerely don’t want to lead. Thirty-six years ago, when I became the spiritual leader of a church, their pastor, I realized that if I were to align what the Holy Spirit was directing with my strengths and weaknesses and with the gap between where we were as a church and where God was asking us to go, I was going to have to grow as…a leader. Thus my journey began. 

One of the greatest challenges for the church of today is a lack of leaders and leadership. Our leadership pipelines are severely leaking. I did my graduate degree in leadership rather than theology because of the call of God on my life to raise up, lift, equip, and encourage spiritual leaders. At that time, after over a decade of supporting pastors and churches in our network I realized most of our pastors loved God, most of them knew enough of the Bible to make disciples, and most of them were fairly sound theologically, but often their deficiency was not knowing how to lead — they did not know how to take a vision from God, inspire it as the corporate vision God intended it to be, and move it forward. They did not know how to follow the Holy Spirit in such a way as to have others follow them as they followed Christ. For too many of them: They did not know how to lead a God-vision forward. And worse, they did not know how to disciple and develop the leaders around them, sometimes to the point of being intimidated. Jesus builds his church, and the Holy Spirit will help us to be his agent to lead it forward. 

I have witnessed it over, and over, and over, and over as a church and leadership consultant. A church organization DOES NOT MOVE BEYOND its leadership infrastructure. Call it whatever you want to call it, it never moves beyond its leadership structure. This is why there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. You have to put the leadership structure in place before a vision can move forward. When there is no foundation we will be ever building and never growing. This is the mission of the church, making disciples who can then multiply and reproduce within the transformational story of the redemption of humankind. 

Spiritual-transformational-servant leadership structures are not intended to elevate those that lead, just the opposite, they are intended to assure that everyone has the care, support, encouragement, and transformational leadership they need to successfully engage their purpose in Christ. 

Why am I so passionate about this? Because I am a man of the Holy Spirit with a prophetic calling on my life. God actually wired me as an engineer to build things and he called those skills out for his glory. God called me to lift, equip, encourage, and lead spiritual leaders. I often “see” what God is doing in the spiritual realm and the pieces that have to come into place for us to get where God is asking us to go. My hot button is when someone suggests that we are somehow selling out to the world with “all of this leadership stuff.” I am not promoting leadership stuff; we are employing the revelation of the heart of God, principles of the Word of God, and following the example of Christ as humble servant leaders and equipping and encouraging the disciples we are making into the purpose and calling of God upon their lives. 

When I say leadership, corporate leadership and worldly leadership principles are the furthest things from my mind. When I say leadership I mean transformational leadership, servant leadership, spiritual leadership, making disciples who make disciples, and influencing the called toward the purposes of God.

My 4th quarter is developing and supporting spiritual-transformational-servant leaders, and for that I cannot apologize. 

Vision and Influence – Who’s Gonna Clear the Weeds?

Every passion and vision comes with obstacles. It is as though there’s always a path to be cleared through deep weeds before we can forward a passion or gain traction with a vision. When God gives us a piece of His vision it is ours to move forward with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and with the passion that arises from the practice of the Presence of God. When God causes a passion to arise within me the forwarding of that passion becomes my responsibility. When the vision is bigger than me and it can also become the vision of others, then it becomes “our vision,” rather than “my vision,” and together we can whack the weeds. 

As a leader I cannot tell you how many times someone has come to me with a passion or a vision and expected me to give them 100% support, platform, finances, and influence — ah, they wanted a piece of my influence. They wanted to tap into an anointing that rested upon me, maybe because of a mantle I’d been given, and use it to forward their agenda. 

Sometimes I do the same thing, unwittingly, but I sometimes do the same thing. When I expect someone to lend me relational capital and influence to cut a swath through the weeds so I can do what God has asked of me, I might be doing the same thing. 

This morning I am thinking about the things in my heart that I and/or our team needs to move forward. I sometimes feel an emotion that I will call frustration because I need help cutting the weeds down to make a way. Reality is, when God has called us to do something challenging and difficult, he puts a machete in our hands and he points to the weeds. Not even God makes the weeds disappear for us when he gives us a passion or a vision, he expects us to cut a path!

Cutting the path is part of pursing the vision. You know, I’ve become really good at standing on a hill and looking at the weeds in front of me and complaining that if someone would just cut a path through those weeds just think of what we could do for the Kingdom. Alas my friend, when God gives you a vision, you also get the weeds. 

When I build my grand plans rooted in the passion and vision in my heart, and when I make grand plans, I have to make a plan for the weeds. How will we clear a path? How will we inspire, encourage, enlist, and include people in the vision and how will we clear a path together. No one is going to clear weeds for my vision, but if my vision is a part of a greater vision in which others are engaged, we can clear the weeds together. 

I don’t want to give my limited influence away unless it is a wise expenditure. I cannot give my influence to something I don’t believe in wholeheartedly, no one can expect me to do that, I cannot expect anyone else to do that.

Leadership by Necessity Not Choice

Transformational Servant Leadership

I’ve always been more comfortable as a follower than as a leader. I am first a follower, a follower of Christ, a follower of the people who have been put in my life to lead and direct things of which I am a part. If you don’t learn to follow well you can never lead well when that necessity arises.

I like it when someone else has the pressure of taking the risk, when someone else takes the hit when something goes wrong, someone else has to make the hard calls and I can do what I do best without those added pressures. But throughout my life I keep finding myself in the place of leadership, not because I want to be or need to be, but because it is necessary to steward the call of God upon my life and to accept the weight of giving something of myself and my experience to someone who is on a transformational journey themselves. 

I would not say that I am a gifted leader. Because leading what I saw in my spirit was not an option I did my best to learn. I worked hard at learning what a Christ submitted leader was and how they should lead and respond. I worked hard to understand that the way the “world” leads is different than the way Christ calls us to lead. As a Christ-following leader, Christ is the lead leader and I follow his lead. As a Christ-following leader I am a servant leader, meaning that for me to lead is for me to serve. When I of necessity lead, I do not seek to achieve the things that I want, the things best for me, but I seek to serve Christ and those who depend upon me to be a good leader for the sake of Christ and them. 

As a Christ-following leader I am a transformational leader. Jesus’ leadership was about leading people toward personal and spiritual transformation. I cannot transform anyone but I have learned that if I lead like Jesus I can cause transformation in someone else by leading them to the source and resource of transformation. As a Christ-following leader my only focus is serving the mission of Christ and leading in such a way as to accomplish the mission while simultaneously lifting, nurturing, encouraging, and causing Holy Spirit initiated transformation in their lives.

151- Grieving the Death of “Normal”

151- Grieving the Death of “Normal”

We’ve heard people talking about a “new normal” or “when things get back to normal.” It occurred to us that sometimes “normal”  gives way to a new reality full of purpose, hope, and opportunity. Having lived through a deep grief process, we’ve simply recognized a grief process at work in the world around us. In this episode we are talking about “Grieving the Death of Normal.” 

Listen or subscribe to the Calibrate Life Podcast in Apple Podcasts, in Google Podcasts, in Stitcher, or in any podcast player.

In today’s podcast we want to focus on opportunities. 
This fully hit home to me about a month ago on a zoom call with a leader. I could see the weariness in his eyes and we talked about it. 

  • Transitions and change are always difficult. 
  • We’ve been in an increasing time of discontinuous change for about 2 decades, or more. Change used to be more predictable, but it continues to lack continuity. The change in our lives for the past couple of decades has included unpredictability. 

I recognized the weariness in this leader and it began to settle in on me for the first time that we are grieving the death of normal. (CONTINUE FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE)

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150 – The Power of Saying “Yes” to Adversity

150 – The Power of Saying “Yes” to Adversity

Embracing adversity, being willing to say “yes” to the tough stuff gives us new lenses to see things differently, it exercises atrophied muscles needed for new adventures and callings, and it deconstructs our inferior plans to make way for God’s excellent plans. In this episode we talk about saying “yes” to adversity in expectation of the joys ahead.

Listen or subscribe to the Calibrate Life Podcast in Apple Podcasts, in Google Podcasts, in Stitcher, or in any podcast player.

Yesterday, I found myself being thankful for the Covid-19 disruption. I was taken by surprise by my sudden fondness. Why? Because I got a glimpse of the positive, of God’s hand working us through adversity. I got a fresh look at our partners and their tenacity as God emboldens them and carves new paths for them. 

I liked the world the way it was. I did not want the world to change. I liked fundraising the way it was pre-Covid, not to say it won’t go back. I liked the way the world and the markets functioned pre-Covid. I have moments of wanting to run back to the pre-adversity ways.  (Continue for the rest of the article…)

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