You were wondrously created by God, embrace the gifts God has given you and don’t diminish those gifts because you see something else as more desirable or important. Throughout my life I’ve wrestled with visibility, importance, and validating the absolutely unique calling with which God has called me. Embracing my “wiring” as a spiritual engineer is key to my contentment. My greatest joy is creating tools and structures that serve the Body of Christ. I recognize it as the gift of a prophet, to hear and see the heartbeat of God and to know how to accomplish it.
I get joy from building “bridges” and watching people use the bridge to get from one side to the other. Entire economies are changed by bridges. Where people live, where they worship, where they do business, all of this is shaped by bridges. Small businesses sometimes exist because a bridge expands their base enough to make a go of it.
Causing transformation is about building bridges to bridge the gap between where a person is and where they are called to go. Leading, coaching, mentoring, teaching, preaching, training, and resourcing out of a prophetic unction is about designing and building bridges.
When I build a bridge (a divine functional structure) it brings great satisfaction and fulfillment to take a step back and love that it is finished, that it is beautiful in its own way, that it is being used, that it is being used without people even thinking about where it came from or the skill that went into its design and construction.
The beauty of bridge building is I don’t have to man the toll booth because that is the role of the one with the gift of pastor. I don’t have to paint it when it needs a face lift, I don’t have to direct traffic on the bridge, I don’t have to sandblast it when it starts to rust. I build the bridge and then I take a step back and admire the work and its functionality and then I move on to the next gap that must be bridged.
What will Donna and I leave behind in Africa? Bridges, I hope. What will we leave behind in Africa? Functions, processes, bridges, paths. What will we leave behind in Africa? People trained, mentored, and lifted as transformational servant leaders, equipped to lift, in turn, those they lead.
We all have a root of pride that needs crucifixion. I have struggled my entire life feeling the need to be the apostle. I was constantly exposed to the idea that if I were to accomplish something of enduring worth I would need to be an individualistic swashbuckling leader who single-handedly cleared the path and built the mechanisms. If I wanted my work to be recognized I needed to be THE leader. When you build bridges, no one thinks about who built the bridge. The name of the designer or builder is rarely on the bridge. Who’s name is on the bridge?: The politician who procured the funding for the bridge. The bridge would not be there without the funding of the politician, the structure would not be there without an apostle or a superintendent clearing the way for it and supporting it. No one really remembers who built bridges, all they might remember is who championed the building of the bridge.
We can take solace in the fact that one breaks up fallow ground, another plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. We can take solace in the fact that the Body of Christ is made up of many members, each doing their part. Reality is, some apostles clear the way for the vision and may tend to not validate the work of other members of the Body of Christ who make the vision happen, and then we wonder why everyone wants to be an apostle. That is so wrong. (Which I must add for clarity that my Pastor, Don Gifford, was never this way and I enjoyed working with him for 13+ years.)
A politician says, “look at the bridge I built,” when they did not design it, they did not build it, and they did not pay for one cent out of their own pockets. They championed the cause, they pulled support from their colleagues, and they led a vote to fund it. See, this is what I’ve struggled with my entire life. I’ve collaborated on bridges that leaders have championed. Its not that I could not envision a bridge in a particular place or have the foresight to see how the eco-system could be helped by its placement; it is that my calling is prophetically seeing and building bridges. At the ribbon cutting the politician is front and center and the architect, the engineer, and the builder are in the wings looking on. I could take this even one level further to those who drove the rivets and raised the steel. They too point to the bridge and tell their grandchildren, “I built that bridge.”
Who built the bridge? They all built the bridge. God orchestrated a chorus to build the bridge. When we worry about who gets the credit or when we fail to acknowledge every contribution as essential to the building of the bridge we damage the hearts of those who gave of themselves for its completion.
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, they all built the bridge. I’ve heard Carolyn Tennant refer to the interaction between the five ministry gifts to the church as “a dance,” each deferring to the other as they mirror the collaboration of the Trinity. We aren’t very good at that dance, and as a result we devalue the necessary and critical contributions of every member of the Body of Christ.
If only we could be a people with our pride crucified, walking in humility, preferring and seeking to honor one another, the Body of Christ would be healthier. We would accomplish more. We would have people embracing in and anchoring in their spiritual gifts.
During the second Great War, Winston Churchill visited the coal mines. Churchill knew the critical importance of coal to the war effort. He also knew that cutting coal was not glamorous. In a speech to the miners, Churchill encouraged them with these words.
“We shall not fail, and then some day, when your children ask: What did you do to win this inheritance for us and to make our name so respected among men?” one will say: “I was a Fighter Pilot,” another will say: “I was in the Submarine Service,” another: “I marched with the Eighth Army,” a fourth will say: “None of you could have lived without the convoys and the Merchant Seamen,” and you, in your turn will say, with equal pride and with equal right: “WE CUT THE COAL.”
On that day, when I stand before Father, and he asks me what obedience I gave, I will say, “I built bridges, I built bridges that helped others fulfill what you asked of them. I built bridges that helped people overcome the obstacles to the fulfillment of their calling. I did what you asked of me, I built the bridges.”
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.
I sometimes need to say to myself, “I don’t care what people think about this.” But I do care what people think, I just don’t want my decision-making to be driven by the fear of what people will think or how they respond….
Whenever I say “I don’t care,” my mind goes back to 6th grade and a kid named John, an active kid with wild hair and really thick glasses. I will never forget this public exchange between John and our teacher:
Teacher: “John, If you don’t put more effort into this assignment you are going to get a bad grade.”
John: “I don’t care.”
Teacher: “You had better care because if you don’t straighten up you might fail the class.”
John: “I don’t care.”
Teacher: “If you fail this class you may have to repeat 6th grade and all your friends will advance and you will be left behind.
John: “I don’t care.”
Teacher (becoming exasperated): “If you aren’t successful in school you won’t get a good job when you grow up.”
John: “I don’t care.”
Teacher (completely exasperated): “Young man, if you take that attitude throughout your life you will end up in prison.
John: “I don’t care.”
John found the key to owning the teacher. He found the key to not feeling bad about not performing at expected levels. John had found a way to live the life he wanted to live, at least temporarily. That key: Just don’t care about the consequences.
There are some things in my life that I really care about, but I sometimes tell myself that I don’t care to keep my focus where it needs to be. Like my writing and the things I create. It is easy to create and publish when I tell myself I don’t care what people think, but it is also easy to be haphazard and lack excellence if I don’t care what anyone thinks.
The way I live my life, the decisions I make, the way I lead. I sometimes need to say to myself, “I don’t care what people think about this.” But I do care what people think, I just don’t want my decision-making to be driven by the fear of what people will think or how they respond. I do care what people think, but sometimes I have to have the courage to act upon what is right, or what I feel to be right and numb myself a little to the anticipation of the response or the criticism I might receive.
A better way to say it is, “I care what people think and feel, I care about their thoughts and opinions because people are important to me, but sometimes I need to put my focus on doing what I believe to be right.” I must have the courage to steward 62 years of living, over 30 years of leading, and the convictions I’ve developed along the way. I must have the courage to take actions I know are going to make waves for some but cause transformation far beyond the few well meaning critics.
A good leader cares about what people think or feel. When some of the people they care about criticize a decision or direction, it stings. And yet, a good leader prepares themselves to act with the heart of a servant and press forward even though some waves will be created.
When I say, “I don’t care,” it’s usually a mechanism I use to help me steel my emotions and still my fears to embolden myself to take an action not everyone is going to like because I believe it is the right thing for me to be, say, and do. I just need to keep reminding myself that I really do care, but I am going to take action and not focus on the waves but on the transformation.
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.
You know, something strange just happened and often happens when I open my journal for the morning. I thought, “I don’t have any thoughts to write.” My response to myself was, “I rarely have thoughts when I open my journal, the thoughts come after I start writing.” And that’s exactly what happens almost every morning.
Often I have nothing to write until I write, nothing to pray until I pray, and nothing to hear until I listen. It is the first step that leads us to the next step.
Journaling is the way I listen to God and the way I actively listen to myself. It helps me zone down enough to listen to the heartbeat of God, but the other very important thing that I don’t often think about is the journal helps me discover what I am really thinking and how I really feel about things. Writing is an important discipline, and I will even say it is a spiritual discipline, for me at least, because it forces the organization and articulation of thoughts. Journaling causes me to stop and listen to the heartbeat of God.
I am a written processor living in a world of verbal processors. I am always at a disadvantage in the moment with a verbal processor because I need to think and gather my thoughts and make sure what I am saying is what I mean. This is why I often say, if you have a question for me on Wednesday I am going to have an awesome answer for you on Thursday. I have learned the value of saying to a leader, a board, a critic, “let me think through that and let’s set a time to talk.” I am an extroverted introvert; I easily engage relationally with people, but quiet time is where I think and refuel. No more apologies for how I am wired, it has served me very well.
The journal gives me the gift of not needing to be perfect because no one will see what I write, unless I choose to share it (as I might with this part of today’s journal). I am writing for myself and if I do give others a window into my journal, maturity has finally gotten me to the place that I just don’t care how many views, likes, or shares it gets. If one person is encouraged by or resonates with or reflects upon one thing, that’s enough. When I write for an audience I inevitably start to think about what that audience will like, what they will criticize, how I can explain myself so they will not misunderstand. When I journal I have an audience of one, God, and He already knows my thoughts better than I do.
The journal allows me to liberally explore what’s inside me. Journal pages are infinite. I can go page after page after page because I have no one saying, “you need to cut that down because no one is going to read it.” In my journal, who reads it is not an issue and I love the feeling of being able to just go on a long and complex journey of writing until paths start to emerge.
I feel the unction to start sharing things from my journal that I want to share. To not worry about perfection or critics or even if it is worthy to be shared. Everything I write I write in my journal before it finds its way to an article, a resource, or a podium. When I used to write a blog I would sit looking at the screen trying to come up with something pithy and profound. Now, I just want Christ in me to leak out onto the pages and maybe some of it I will share when it feels right to do so.
David and Donna Delp are the founders of Calibrate360 and host the weekly Calibrate Life Podcast. For more info about them visit our About Us page. To learn about their mission, visit our Mission Africa page.
