Leaders Of Influence, Compelled To Share

Well, first thing I'd like us to do, we're going to dive right into the evening, and I'd like you to stand for just a moment. I want to have a word of prayer, and I'm going to have you do a little exercise in sharing for just a moment. And it's cold and flu season, right? How many of you have had a cold or flu already? Oh, well, great. Let's join hands, then, because we've all had it. If you're timid and don't want to join hands, just get shoulder to shoulder with somebody and say, look, I feel weird about these kind of things. You know, that's all right. It's just faith. I'll be going right into the bathroom after this. Heavenly Father, as we begin tonight, we thank you for the call, the calling on our lives, the intentionality with which we are permitted to live. Lord, of all the things that life has to offer, we thank you that we have been called to build an unseen kingdom and an eternal one. Father, I pray that in these next moments, as we just begin this new process of establishing our leadership direction for this year, that your spirit would engage us and that we, in some way, Lord, every person that's made the effort to come tonight would be encouraged, would be provoked on the inside to rise to the level of stewardship of their gifts that you would desire for them. And we thank you so much, Lord, that you're at work. We thank you that we're not having to raise the dead here, but rather, Lord, it's a matter of just caring for all that you're sending to us, as you have charged us prophetically to do. We pray you'd bless the one on our right and on our left right now, Lord. Just bless them with your spirit. Encourage, invigorate, renew those who are weary, Lord, and give us all fresh vision for tonight, in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, praise God. If you'll just come as far forward as you're comfortable. If you have to be in the back section, that's the only place we're taking the offering tonight. Oh, I still run up front here, it's easy. Tonight is really very significant, even though we're not gauging things by numbers right at the moment. But what it really represents, folks, is a beginning of a new approach, which we think will serve you very well as we move forward. How many of you were here when we had what we called SALT, Servants and Leaders Training? Okay, so quite a few of you. Well, that was a monthly attempt to gather leadership together so that we could be on the same page. One thing as a church like North Way continues to grow, you often feel left out if you're not somehow informed about things that are happening. And I would venture to say there's at least one thing going on here you don't know about. And you can add them to the 50 that are on my list. And I mean, it's just a lot of things. But as leadership gathers, at least periodically and regularly, our goal is that we would move together as a leadership, not all doing the same thing, but understanding some of the same values and goals, and along the way, training you to feel confident in what God's called you to do. One of the biggest impediments to this was the fact that the small group focus that we believe God's really led in our hearts and cells being the core of that small group required a certain kind of level of leadership that was different than some of the ministry training things. I mean, sometimes in ministry, there weren't the same skills and so on necessary for a specific ministry call that were in small groups and so on. But what we've landed on, I'll just make a real quick synopsis of this, is that we are on basically a trimester basis, three times a year, we're going to meet like this for a couple of weeks on a Wednesday, Saturday basis, and then turn you loose for the next 10 or 11 weeks to work out your ministry calling. Take a break while some events happen, whether it be the Christmas break or the Easter break, have these gatherings again, send you out again, and so on. In the summertime, August will be sort of the month where we'll take our little bit of a rest. So three times a year, we'll have this two-week period when on a Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, we'll gather together as leaders and then just shoot you right out into the ministry fields that you're working in. The goal there, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but if we do that consistently, you'll know every year when it's going to happen, you'll be able to plan for it, and you'll begin to know something we apparently didn't do a real good job of communicating, that all leaders will be part of that. So I look around and I see about half or less of the elders. I think elders are leaders. I didn't, let me check that here. How many believe elders are leaders? Okay, well, half of them didn't get that message. So it's clear that we didn't communicate that firmly enough. So we're going to come back to that. And by the way, I might just say, if you know some leaders that you feel maybe just didn't understand, invite them to come to Saturday. They don't have to, they won't feel out of it if they don't catch tonight. So that's the idea. Any questions about that? That's the idea. You may generate a question too along the way now, but the idea is to give you a regular quarterly input and hopefully you'll feel more equivalent and also a little more confident about what's going on overall. There may be some of these nights when we say all together. I think next Wednesday, is that the plan, Dave? Next Wednesday, we're going to stay together and minister to one another in the spirit and ask God to recharge and refresh many of us who feel that that's an important ingredient maybe that gets drained sometimes. So we will follow the Lord's leading. Tonight will be a little different format. Tonight, I'm going to just share one important concept that's driving a lot of my thinking these days. And then we're going to break into three optional seminars. One that Pastor Scott will be leading and one that John Size and Dave, which I'll describe in just a moment before we get there. Okay. What I'd like to do is share with you sort of what I think the kernel of how we're to move forward is all about. And we do have these little bay sheets to give you. I feel like taking something along with you is important in this process. So pick one of these up and get out your pen and take your Bible and turn to Mark chapter one, please. Mark chapter one. Mark is the shortest gospel and one that I particularly value because it seems the simplest to understand. And I'm just going to use Mark chapter one. And I want to point to five things that I think are critical to understanding how leadership where you are can function. I want to begin with a question. How many of you by a show of hands have been part of a team of some kind in your journey in life? Sports team, dance team, debate team. It is almost a universal experience and sometimes the experience isn't all that great. I mean, I've been part of teams where the team seemed to be playing and I was watching, but I was still part of the team. And other times I was a very integral part of the team and made it happen. The idea of a team, if you can put the nomenclature aside, but my conviction is that Jesus understood the power of the dynamics of people being together. And that's why, isn't it interesting, how many of you know that Jesus could have done what he did by himself? I mean, he had the power to just pull it off, but he chose to invest in a team. Now he didn't call him a team. I mean, maybe there's a new translation that says Jesus took his team. I mean, but it doesn't say that, but the disciples were a team. And what I want to lay into your spirit tonight and let you think about it and interact around it at different times is, here's the core question. Who is on your team? Who is on your team? Say that with me. Who is on your team? Not whose team are you on? That's an important question too, but who is on your team? And the question, I believe, needs an answer. I looked out tonight and I recognize that many of you are here with a real desire to make a difference. And when I read the gospels, I see Jesus doing incredible things. I mean, I see the miracles. I see him teaching Christ. I see those sort of big visual impactful kind of things. I don't know how many of us feel very confident in that. There's a couple out here today. You might feel confident leading a large meeting or maybe praying for someone for healing or whatever. Most of us don't know that we could do that or feel that equipped to do that. But again, I want to ask the question, could you build a team? Could you build a team who share whatever your passion for ministry happens to be? You know, in this season in the life of our church, I am praying for God to put it in the hearts of the hundred or so of us that have come out tonight and many others that will be coming in weeks ahead to want to be like Jesus. And that is to make it a priority to build a team so that we're not modeling just his message, but his methodology. Just think, how many of you are right-handed? How many are born with that genetic defect of left-handedness? Susie, now I've lost it. Michael, are you left-handed? Creative people are left-handed. Creative people are left-handed. How about proud people? They have a dexterous nature. Yeah, they go either way. We're all comfortable. I mean, we're comfortable with the message of Jesus, aren't we? The message of the gospel that we know and cherish, that we were dead in our sin and helpless to be made right before God. But God, seeing our condition, sent his son who lived a sinless life and then gave it up on our behalf so that we might be redeemed. That's the message. We believe that. That's the gospel. But I want to say tonight that the method is equally important because the method is what gets the message through to people. And what's happening right now at North Way, folks, is God's answering our prayers. Pastor Scott and I were just talking a little bit ago, a couple days ago, just about this season that we're in. I mean, if you've been gone for the last few weeks, the Lord is opening up the gates. We had a very powerful prophetic word on New Year's Eve where the Lord just reaffirmed some things that he is going to be doing. And I literally see it happening. In the second service, how many of you came to the second service Sunday? We had, how many? How many came to second service? Wow, see, that is the great majority of you. That's interesting. Then you recall the response. I forget if it was 17 or 18 individuals in that service committed their lives to Christ and 26 for that day that I counted in my head. And then Pastor Scott had a wonderful experience at this funeral of just yesterday with 70 people acknowledging a desire to follow Christ. And over the Christmas Eve service, we had received over 50 cards from people saying yes. So the Lord is sending it. I mean, he is doing what he said he would do. How are we going to respond? And the key is, will you build a team? Because I know that you can do it. I believe that you can do it. But you need to believe you can build a team. Your team might be two people or it might be 200 people. The issue isn't 12 or 10 or 15 or 35. It's just having a team so that you can begin to multiply your effectiveness. And I want to share with you what I've learned about building a team. And very simple. And I won't apologize for it, but I will say to you, if you're waiting for something that's super profound, this is it. Don't wait for the... Because this is what God wants us to hear tonight. Because this is what Jesus did. First of all, you have to receive a vision about what it is God wants you to do and then translate that vision. Look at Mark 1, 11. A voice came from heaven and said, you are my son whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. Well, there was the vision that God the Father... Do we have some more outlines up there? Did you all get them? Those of you who are coming in late, we're glad you're here. Just grab these outlines because you'll be out of sync. But you've got to be able to communicate what your vision is. And let's not go past this. Do you know what it is that you're called to do? Is it to lead a cell group? Is it to be a servant in the children's ministry as leading a fourth grade class? Is it to be part of a Kairos atmosphere team? Is that what we're still calling it? Are you on the worship team? Are you a leader of a rebuilder's group? What are you called to do? Do you know? And do you know how that will impact what's going on here? I'm astonished. I candidly... I get into conversations with people who really do not necessarily have any difficulty with what's going on in the church but can't tell anybody what it is because they have never really sorted it out. You've got to know your vision and be able to clearly articulate it. I had a phone conversation with someone yesterday morning who I was describing... to whom I was describing what we're going to be doing in this next quarter in this particular effort we're calling SOAR. And he had all the information and he knew kind of what it was about and you'll be hearing more about this. And I thought for sure he understood it. The more we talked, the more I realized he didn't understand the vision. The vision was not clear to him. And there's no way... Let me just pause here. There's no way someone will commit to being part of your team if they don't understand your vision. So you've got to get that vision clear. If you're a student ministries leader, if you're going to build a team, you have to be able to say this is what the vision is. Now, the vision of North Way Christian Community is to raise up a local body of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who will be loved, nurtured, and equipped to minister to God, one another, and the rest of the world in the power of the Holy Spirit. You should be able to say that just like I did. And that's in our notes every week just so you can clip it out and memorize it. But that's a broader vision than what you have. Your vision is a part of that. You've got to know what you're called to do. Okay? So if that's not clear, then go to the person whose team you're on and say, okay, tell me again, Paul, why am I on this team? Or Dave, tell me, what is this team? I need to know my vision because if I'm going to build a team, I've got to be able to translate my visions. Very, very important that you know that. Number two, as soon as you set out to do this, expect opposition. Look at verse 13, 12 and 13. And once the Spirit sent him out in the desert, and he was in the desert 40 days being tempted by Satan. As soon as you decide, hey, I am going to build a team, expect opposition, expect external circumstances to get kind of hairy. Somebody's going to say, you know what? You don't have time to do that. Or, oh, by the way, do you realize that if you do that, then what you said you wouldn't do over here, you can't do. And all kinds of things will happen, but the greatest opposition that most of you will face after tonight is doubt. You will hear me say what I'm going to say tonight, and maybe you'll hear something in your seminar, and you'll say, I don't think I can do that. Friends, that is from the devil. I'm going to say it again. Doubt is from the devil. Say it with me. Doubt is from the devil. Now, that sounds simplistic, but if it's doubting what God's called you to do, it's from the devil. Jesus was tempted by Satan, and if the Son of God was susceptible to be tempted, how many believe you might be? What was he tempted by? He was tempted, if you read the Matthew or Luke accounts, he was tempted to compromise the vision of who he was, the Son of God, Savior of the world. You will be tempted to give up your vision, and I just want to, I want to, I wish I could put my hands on your shoulders and say, don't give up your vision. If your vision's clear to build a team, don't give it up. Expect opposition, expect things to get in the way, but don't succumb to it. Do you know how many times I was told we'd never get into this building? Do you know how many people said it'll never happen? All the layers and layers and layers of opposition that came from every different, I mean, with and without. I was going to use Nehemiah, by the way, to use this teaching because he's such a wonderful study, but the Lord directed me to talk about Jesus because he's the ultimate model. If I'd listened to those voices, we would probably still be cramming people into the Bradley house, you know, and parking on piles of plywood at HOP Lumber. You can't succumb to that. You've got to hang firm and move forward. Expect opposition. Okay, number three, ask others. Look at verse 17. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men. And once they left their nets and followed him. As simple as this is, I have found that across the boards, all the way from pastoral leadership to relatively new servants in the body, people have an aversion to asking others to join their team. They're afraid. I'm not sure if it's fear of rejection, or maybe they feel like, gee, it's awful presumptuous, but friends, we have no idea who's populating these seats out here, who's just waiting for someone to come to them and say, you know, could we have a cup of coffee? I'd like to share with you my vision, what my team's about, and I'd like to ask you to consider joining my team. And you will be astonished. I mean, it's kind of an incredible thing when people give you the answer like, you know, that sounds pretty good to me. I think I'll do it. And I'm still amazed that God uses me, and I'm sure you'll feel that too. But it's such a blessing. There's two kinds of ways to minister. You can minister proactively or reactively. How? Proactively or reactively. And proactive ministry prays for God to send you people, and then has the courage to ask. Hey, would you consider this? Not, hey, you got to do this or else I'm going to die. You know, don't, it's never wise to threaten people with like, you know, if you don't do this, I, you know, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. I mean, those kind of pressure techniques. It's much better to say, let me share my vision and just, I'll just trust God. If it's not for you, you have the liberty to say no. Reactive leadership just kind of waits for people to come and say, well, I have this need and would you come help me? But that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for proactive leaders who say, God, who can be part of my team? And then has the courage to ask them. And can I say this? This is a challenge. And I, again, I've seen it across the gamut. Ask God to send the best people possible for your team. It's not too difficult to recruit just any old body. But you say, I want the, I want a person that will help my team to flourish. It will help my team to have an incredible impact. And you know how you begin to discern that is you just convert, converse with people as you interact with them. Sometimes in a cell group, you'll be sitting around a cell group and you'll begin to sense in some person, that cell group, a leadership potential. Maybe it's very latent, but you'll sense it. Well, the question is, do you have the courage to get to know that person a little bit and then ask if you could share your vision. If they show an interest in the vision, then ask them, hey, well, would you like to be part of my team? What's your team going to do? Well, my team is going to multiply this cell group because we see all the people that God's sending to us here that need to be discipled to become mature believers. Will you ask? Okay. Next, minister to them. As simple again as this sounds, I find that people skip right over this. Your team needs to believe that you love them. Look what Jesus did. I mean, many times you'll see this, but I just picked out one illustration. I'm trying to kind of keep it to chapter one. When Jesus went into the house of Simon Peter, his mother-in-law lay in bed with a fever and they told Jesus about her. You know, Jesus could have said, you know, I've got a lot of other busy things to take care of. A lot of people coming for teaching. Why don't you just, mister? Isn't, I mean, this is a little thing, but isn't it significant that Jesus cared for Simon Peter's mother-in-law? We don't even know if he cared for her. I mean, never know, right? But Jesus did. He cared for the family member. And as basic as this sounds, once again, if you show people on your team that you love them, not that you need them or want to use them, but that you love them and care about their spiritual life, they will serve you. They'll love you back. And they'll be a loyal member of your team. And I'll go all the way back to the beginning of the life of this church when I had eight other men and their wives. We were part of the original nine couples, the nine couples that formed the original team that was North Way Christian Community. We just devoted ourselves to each other. And I was committed to those other eight couples. That was it. I didn't say, well, now this is your assignment, go do it and you better do it right. No, I just loved them. And it's a blessing that most of those nine couples are still here today because they feel loved and they feel part of what God's been establishing all along. Show compassion and care for them. If you minister to them, God will minister through them. Simple. And finally, on a team, there comes a time when you as the leader have to stand in faith. Look at verse 35, very early in the morning while it was still dark. Well, we know today that could be seven o'clock. I think probably in this time it was earlier than that. But Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. I could talk about solitude, as I mentioned on Sunday, solitude, community and ministry. That if you weren't here on Sunday, that flow of life from solitude into community and then out to ministry, that flow is just a simple little paradigm that is still as clear in the scriptures today as ever. You need to learn as a team leader to stand in faith, to pray for your team and then to be disciplined to hang in there. I just want to conclude with this because the other thing that I see in leadership development is that folks kind of give up the dream. And it's easy to give up. There's a lot of reasons to give up. There's a lot of things that compete for our time. There's a lot of valid tension in our lives. I mean, many of you here tonight with children that you want to leave my kids tonight. I mean, I worked all day. I don't really want to come. And I understand that and I have deep regard, high regard for you in that. But those tensions will always be there. The question is, once the vision's been cast, once you've gotten through that initial wave of doubt and you've asked members to be part of your team and you've started to minister to them, can you stay firm in your faith? Can you stand while God begins to build that team and its impact and in its strength? I've often said that one of the things that I believe that the Lord will say to me when it's all over is something about prayer. We just, by the way, this is a good group to mention this to, we just re-established our commitment to Tuesday morning prayer, at least. There's prayer here, I think, Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings. But all the eldership and pastors will be praying up in the prayer chapel with those folks. That number dwindled way down there for a while because the elders had pulled out to focus on some of their needs, but we're all back together. I want to invite you Tuesday morning at six o'clock. If you're not doing anything, come on and pray with us. We're going to be at prayer. But I've often felt the Lord will say, if we didn't do a lot of other things right, one thing we did, we stood firm in prayer. We held our ground. We've never let the flame go out. It's flickered. And that's enabled us to expect God to move. So there it is. Does it all fit on there? Not quite, excuse me. If you look at it, it spells teams. Say it with me. Translate to vision, expect opposition, ask others, minister to them, stand in faith. Again, I want to underscore, this is the model of Jesus. And I could have gone on if the guys had given me more time. But that represents the essence of what I pray you'll have faith to believe God to use you to do, to be a team builder. If you want to be a team builder, turn to someone right now and just confess that. Say, I want to be a team builder. Turn to someone and tell them if that's on your heart. I want to be a team builder. Okay. May I say again, thank you for demonstrating your commitment tonight to be here. We're going to move forward in this whole process of building teams. And you're going to hear a lot more about this as we go. But friends, just imagine, just look around the room. Imagine if each of you had three, five, eight, 10 members of your team. I mean, the leadership potential in this church is huge. And as this church grows in leadership, it will grow in its impact. Simple as that. It's the way Jesus did ministry. It's how we want to do ministry. Dave, you want to jump up here and share what you're going to discuss in your foundations of influence seminar? Okay. We're basically going to do the same thing he just did. So it's basic fundamental ideas of leadership. What, no matter how long you've been a leader, some of the things we're going to talk about are going to be appropriate for you. And just how to maybe remind yourself of some of the more practical ideas of leadership and how to care for people. And also, I'm giving away $100 bills. So I'm going to give away $100 bills. That's in Mark 17, what? Okay, John, do you want to describe your seminar? Before I start, it's 200 in my class. What we are going to be discussing are you walk through relational conflicts, problems, and do that in a biblical way. How do we do that and hold fast to what we believe and what we do when we trust God for another's life? So it'll be exciting. In some degree, that relates to getting through that opposition and standing fast. Okay, thanks, John. Scott? 105 is back that way. 105 is the room there with Dave. 104 is that way. I am giving away a $100 bill and auctioning off this $100 bill in my seminar. Now he's thinking, we're paying this guy too much for him to have. I shouldn't have done that. You only want to go to my seminar. I expect a small group. If you are at a point of transition where you are sharing responsibility to start a new group, to form a new group, and you just want to regroup yourself and review those essentials, or if you literally are starting a new group, we'll start in the prayer chapel. If we're as small a group as I think we might be, we may end up in my office, but we're going to the prayer chapel. So that's for starting new groups. Okay, just review that one last time. Why do you think it'll be a select group? Why do I think it'll be a select group? Because we have fewer people registered for my seminar than the other ones. That's why I think it will be a smaller select group. I wish it would be the largest group, but I can't do anything about that. So wait, okay. I'm sensing there's some kind of competition for numbers here. Is there something I missed? I mean, I missed that part of the preparation. I see. So whoever has the biggest seminar does what? Doesn't have to clean up tonight or I don't know. Just go where you most need it. Jeff, do you have a sane question for this group? Okay. If you signed up for what? If you signed up for Scott's, no. If you signed up for any other one, yes. Just in case you're wondering, remember the dear fragile egos that you're dealing with here now. As you go into their class. Yes. That's very helpful. Thank you. So Dave's class, which is in what room? 105? Dave's class will be repeated Saturday. So if you're hopefully be back Saturday, you could go to Scott's tonight and really make him feel great and still catch Dave's on Saturday. That is, by the way, now there's two others on Saturday. There's one, Pastor Jeff's going to do mentoring for influence. And what a great principle that is. That gets down to the more personal aspects of team building. And Paul is on group influence, which is the larger. Where's 134, 136? That's over in the. No, it's 134, 136. Okay. Up in the corner of the kids area over here. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Paul's will be more of an outreach oriented component for this Saturday. Any other questions? That was a good question. Anyone, any others that I missed? Yeah, again, I want to underscore input and dialogue tonight and Saturday, then Wednesday, I trust you'll all come back. I know I'm planning to expect the Lord to really move next Wednesday night. And so come expecting the Holy Spirit to energize us. And I really expect that as team builders, we're going to see God use us. And my highest prayer would be that each one of you, by the end of this ministry season, would sense that God's brought you at least a couple of people to share your passion for your ministry. Let's stand together once again, please. Thank you for being so attentive tonight. I really appreciate that. And I want you to lay hands on each other right now. Just put your hand on someone's shoulder and just whisper, whisper blessing on their lives right now, would you? Just whisper praise and blessing. Praise for God's hand on them. Thank you, Father. Lord, thank you. Whisper their name if you know it. We pray. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Father. You've been faithful, Lord, and we just exalt you in that. Thank you, Lord. Lord, now I just rejoice in the gathering that has launched this ministry season here tonight. And I pray that you would build us as your team, Lord. That here at North Way, we would speak with one voice and share one heart and, Lord, move as one body in the purposes of God. Thank you for the unity that binds us in Christ Jesus. And thank you, Lord, for the willing hearts of servants gathered here tonight. Anoint them afresh now. Bless each of these seminars in the mighty name of Jesus. And every Wednesday. Amen. Okay, all clear again about locations. 105, John, you're on 104, which is over here. And Scott is in the prayer chapel up above.