Whenever a discussion about leadership comes up in conversation, someone is always going to bring up the name John Maxwell. Maxwell, who is a trained and experienced pastor who passionately loves Christ and Kingdom work, has also greatly impacted the secular world with his leadership principles.
Nate asked me an important question this weekend. He asked, “When and how did you become disciplined in spiritual growth?†That’s a great question. I wish I could say I was most excellently disciplined, but I’m not…just disciplined. I wonder though if some of you may be equal curious as to the answers to this question.
Our discussion centered with the fact that we need to see our closeness to God as more of a relationship than a religion. In religion, we have a list to check and complete, but in a relationship, we wrestle through the highs and lows of various degrees of intimacy. When we treat the relationship as something of value, we are more likely to intentionally work to protect and develop the relationship.
If you are a Christian, why not quit the pretense, drop the costumes, and get in on the life that God intended for you? Start acting like whom you really are; a child of God, bought with a price, born again for a purpose of glorifying God. Start being like Jesus!
While I believe the Bible is full of leadership principles and the church today needs better leaders, there are still questions I have about the subject. Perhaps you can help:
Consider your life for just a moment. How compliant are you to the will of God for your life? Are you willing to follow God wherever He may lead? What if following God involves extreme sacrifice, which it most often will require you to do? Will you follow God then? If doing God’s will involves a total surrender of your life to Him will you still do His will?
The best you and I can do when going through difficult times is to cling closer and stronger to God during the hard times. Trusting Him through the hardest times of life is called faith. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. When faith is displayed…God must surely smile!
Gerry True is someone I know only online, his leadership resume is intense and he’s worked with some great leaders. Gerry is a Minister of Communication Arts leading four teams; Worship Arts, Production Arts, Creative Arts, and Technical Arts at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. You can read more about him HERE. You can follow Gerry on Twitter HERE. Just reading Gerry’s answers, I hope we bump into each other at a conference soon!
I know that is confusing, so let me illustrate it like this. If you were to leave my house in Tennessee and head to my mother’s family in Kansas, there are several routes you could take to get there. Ultimately one route is probably best, but you could get there from several directions. In accomplishing God’s end goal for our life, God sometimes allows different courses of reaching that end goal. God will even allow us to take turns that are not really His best plan for us. In that way, God has allowed His plan to be altered, but the overall end plan remains the same.
The Grace Community Church middle school camp is this week. Thanks to our family pastor Michael Bayne for letting me grab this video from his blog. (I didn’t ask permission, so I hope he’s okay with this.) Our youngest son Nate is serving as student pastor this summer and so he’s at the camp and in the video. I wish they would let me go sometime. I’d show them a water party!
