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.
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.
We’ve declared our 2020 to be the year of learning to REST again. The “gold” of our lives comes from the ability to rest in the Presence of God, learning to zone down, learning to listen. In this episode we talk about our renewed commitment to really learn to rest, to have abiding peace in the midst of chaos.
At the beginning of every year I take the time to think about the passing year and reflect on what I need and hope the new year to be. Last year, in 2019, my word was “FOCUS.” We had a very large missions budget to raise and we knew we needed to stay focused on the priority of getting that looming task complete so we could move into the next phase of our mission and ministry. For 2020 the word is “REST.”
Every spiritual leader is responsible to develop the Timothies in their lives. Spiritual leaders have an obligation to lift those they love and lead. The very definition of “Spiritual Leadership” implies the function of helping people discover God’s purpose and calling upon their lives. In episodes 115 and 116 we discussed the first two of three vital relationships every leader must have, and this week we discuss to need and the obligation to lift the next generation of leaders.
Change and resulting life transitions are a big part of our lives, everything is constantly changing. We are either living or dying, but never really static. Transitions are the life zones between where we were and where we are going. In this episode of the Calibrate Life Podcast, David and Donna discuss thriving through life’s transitions.
Failure to take action raises my anxiety levels through the roof. Tasks unfinished, not started, and procrastinated cause an overwhelming feeling. When things are not moving forward the way we feel they should, we start to feel hopeless and depressed. Today, we talk about how the failure to take action on important things can actually push us deeper into depression.
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.
