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.
