Leadership Seminar I and II, Foundation of Character, Value of Vision

I just have to say tonight, when Scott and I talked about doing this weekend, we really didn't want to do it this weekend because we knew that all these conflicts, gee, you know, honey, we want to go camping, we got to get on the campgrounds by Friday, and it's such a blessing in my spirit to look out there and see this number of people. I mean, it's like God sending a message through you that you really want to grow in Christ. And I want you to know, I want you to join a hand with somebody, and we're going to pray that God tonight begins to loose something very powerful in these next, let's see, 15 hours, alright? Let's do it. Let's pray. You know the one on your right and the one on your left? Pray for them by name. Just whisper their name, Lord. Ask for God's anointing to fall on that one. Go ahead. If you don't know their name, ask them their name so you can say it. Go ahead. Alleluia, Lord. Oh, Holy Spirit of God, I pray that tonight, far beyond that which we do in the flesh would take place, but Holy Spirit of God, you'd see these hungry hearts here tonight, Lord, giving up the normal course of things, Lord, and just the leisure direction and bent of life, and Lord, giving themselves to you, bringing themselves tonight as living sacrifices. Father, I pray that you would touch what I've prepared, Lord, and light a fire under it, Father God, that it would go beyond human words and make a difference in the lives of these, your people, Father. I pray they'd hear from the Holy Spirit tonight, and God, that from this point, they'd see a little more clearly and with a little more discernment the nature of the call in their life and the provision of leadership that you've already set apart for them. What I think, the fact that they're here tonight, Lord, shows that they have leadership quality in their hearts. And I pray, Lord, that only because you're worthy would you meet us tonight, Lord, and touch us. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. Praise the Lord. You may be seated. Those of you who are tucked kind of in the back over there can feel free, there's a little better seating. Danny, all of you, and Chuck, brother, and all the rest of you, do you want to slide over here and see better? Because I'm not going to stand up, I don't think, up here because I'm going to be using the overhead pretty much. I think that's all going to work out. Pastor Scott's going to ask you just to, we have most of your names because you signed up to be here. Did anyone from Brother Gene DeMarco's church make it tonight? I know he was going to try to send some people, this was true. So everyone here is from North Way, is that right? If you're not, you better get out. No, I'm just kidding. We're glad you're here. But it looks like we're all from our families, so that's good. Now let me give you a little insight into the format and then you can know what to expect. The timing's going to be fairly crisp. We're going to keep moving along. I'm going to give you time within the course of each segment to dialogue a little bit among yourselves and ask some questions. How many of you have been to a conference, have you been to a seminar, and you wish they touched something because it would have tied it all together and it never happened? And then the speaker's whisked off and that's the end of it. Well, that won't happen here. Scott always likes to have you ask me the worst questions you can imagine so he can laugh and we'll probably do that tonight. Tonight's topics, if I am able to cover them, will, number one, be talking about, oh, I need an overhead person really bad, and Jeannie, you can use the corner to write on too. Well, I'll complete that thought in a minute now since Jeannie's getting organized there. I'm going to give you tomorrow morning a bibliography of my top ten books in my own personal library on leadership. One of them, one of the top ones, is this book called Lead On that a number of us have already studied. I've had secular authorities tell me this is one of the best books on leadership they've ever read, and that is saying something. But let me read just a quote from page three. John Hagai is a, you know, he's not a name, a common household name, but he's a man who's had worldwide influence, and his vision was to raise up leaders around the world. And his headquarters is in Singapore because he wanted the third world leaders to have access to this kind of professional type preparation that he provided. Here's what he says. At all levels, our world societies plead for leadership. In our educational system, in international politics, in our Christian churches, the masses look for true leadership. The world does not need a coterie of elitists who talk love and compassion while isolating themselves from real people. Boy, is that true. That's ivory tower is another way of saying it. It does not need a retinue of cliche-spouting, self-avowed, quick-fix magicians. The world is looking for men and women, leaders, committed to God and compassionately concerned for people. Wow, I love that. Committed to God, because that's the source of it, and compassionately concerned for people. That's the nature of our ministry. The world needs leaders who will exert that special influence over aching people looking for a way to resolve their personal crises. This influence carries a stamp of beneficial permanence. I'll be talking about the definition of leadership. Dear ones, I'm not here tonight, and I'm sure you're not either, to just get a bunch of principles under your belt and say that you completed another little teaching. We're here because I believe you want to help people find God and be all that they can be. And I believe you want to be all you can be in God. You wouldn't give up all this time. Now, we don't need that up yet. We're not quite to that point. I feel like if you'll stay with me, and if we can feed back, and we can be honest with each other, six hours may sound like a lot of time. It's going to go fast, because I've got an awful lot here. And I'm going to want you to be as honest with yourself as you possibly can be. This material probably won't help you if you say, well, I knew that, or ah, maybe this, or ah, well, you know, once upon a time. It's only going to help you if you're really honest and say, hey, I've really got to bear down here. I need God's forgiveness here. I can believe God here in a way I've never seen before. Because by God's grace, I've had lots of exposure to wonderful leaders in my life, and I've been privileged to be in positions that I didn't really desire in some ways or deserve in any way. And I've been able to learn a lot that way. And yet every time I approach the subject, I realize how much bigger than me or any one person leadership is. I guess if I have one quality of my life that I'm thankful for, it's the fact that I love to keep learning about. And I get away from this body of believers every once in a while just to be sharpened a little bit in my leadership. I have more notebooks and notes and things, and I'm not embarrassed to go to somebody and ask them everything I can about who they are and because I see leadership qualities in them. And as long as you're hungry, God has something to work with. As long as you're desiring, there's a place that he can keep shaping in you. When you think you know it all, you're in serious trouble. Or when you don't care anymore, that's when you hit old age. That's none of you, right? You wouldn't be here. So I'm glad about that. But the principles that I'm going to be talking about will, listen, they'll apply, I'm confident they'll apply in the workplace where you are, in ministry, wherever that might be. They'll certainly apply as related to your career and pursuits of your own personal items there. And one area that you may not even think, but it certainly will, will be in your family. You're going to hear some things that relate very definitely to family. But if you set yourself to develop some of these things after today, after tomorrow, I guarantee that you'll see an effect in your life. Because I'm going to give you a very profound things because most of them are based in God's word and they will work in all arenas of life. I have so many, I think, very helpful illustrations from secular life because leadership is not just a God issue. How many of you know that? I mean, we have leaders in every walk of life. And so these things will apply no matter where you find yourself in the spectrum. And I want to encourage you not to just dismiss it as something that's only good for home group leaders. Now, there'll be a part of tomorrow that we are going to have a seminar, a sub-seminar where Pastor Scott will be speaking to home group leaders. That material is more directed for you specifically. And you know, I thought it would be good for us to focus on one person in the Bible through my four sessions. One leader that I think of many we could use exemplifies a lot of the things, a lot of the qualities. I could talk about Moses, who was the great deliverer. I could talk about David, who was the great warrior. I could talk about Elijah, who was the great prophet, Samuel, the great priest. I could talk about Paul, the apostle, or Timothy, his disciple. But I believe we're going to keep as a focal point over the next several hours, Daniel. And I chose Daniel for this one particular reason, because Daniel was stuck in a godless culture. He was stuck in a culture that was crazed with self-effacing kind of hedonistic pursuits, things that they just did for themselves. And did you know, by the way, that Daniel was a slave? Did you know he was a eunuch? I mean, he was in bad trouble by most cultural standards. And yet, as we read the account of Daniel, we won't take time to read much of it tonight, but we realize that even in the midst of that, he stood out among even his peers in that culture. And we're going to see tonight and tomorrow some of the things that made Daniel such an outstanding man of God and leader of his people, and someone who, in the end, we all can look to as a model of leadership. Now, I want to begin by touching on what I think is the ground level foundational quality of leadership. How many think it's prayer? Some of you? When you think of leadership, you think of servant spirit. How many have heard the term servant leader? The only kind of true leadership is servant leadership. Some of you might think the ground level necessary endowment to be a good leader is administrative expertise because if you can't keep it together, you're not going to have it. All those things are important, and I have to say to you, I'm going to probably touch on each of them over the next couple of hours, tonight and tomorrow, but the number one thing I want to talk about is character. I want to talk about character. Turn in your Bibles if you brought them to Daniel chapter 5. Daniel chapter 5, and I want us to look a little bit here at character. Are you there? Daniel 5, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel. All right. Daniel 5. Now, I don't have, can't have the luxury of taking the time to go into all the background of this particular scenario, but Daniel is in the service of the king. He's at a king's command, and during this incredible banquet, this lavish party that the king had thrown, it's interrupted, verse 1 tells us, it was a banquet for a thousand of his nobles, and they drank wine, and they were getting really out of it, and while they're drinking wine and the silver goblets were going, look at verse 5, suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. I can't tell you how many fraternity parties I wish that had happened at. Would have changed the whole flavor of things. His face turned pale, and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way. The king had, he was having a bad time right now. This hand, just writing this thing on the wall. The king called out for the enchanters, the astrologers and diviners to be brought and said to these wise men of Babylon, whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he'll be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom, a pretty high honor. Then all the king's wise men came in, you know, here they are, the opportunists, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. So King Belshazzar became even more terrified, and his face grew more pale, and his nobles were baffled. Verse 10, the queen, hearing the voices of the king and his nobles, came into the banquet hall. Oh, king, live forever, she said. Don't be alarmed. Don't look so pale. I'd love to just play this out a little bit, you know. I could just say, hey, you know, chill out, king. It's okay. Well, don't look so pale. There's a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father, he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father, the king, I say, appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners. That was his company. How would you like to have that for your company, you know? Did you see that? Telling someone, well, in my own room, I got a magician, an enchanter, astrologer and a diviner. Verse 12, this man Daniel, whom the king called Beleshazzar, was found to have, how many Bibles have this word, an excellent spirit? Any Bible? New King James Bible says, an excellent spirit, full character, a keen mind. The word mind there in Hebrew means more, though, than just the head. It's talking about the whole spirit man and knowledge and understanding and also has the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel and he will tell you what the writing means. You see, I want to talk about an excellent spirit for the first few minutes here tonight because more than anything, a leader is something that you are, far more than something you do. If we just think in terms of leadership, in terms of our tasks or what our function is or how we're to, you know, that will not satisfy the basic foundational description of what a leader is all about. Folks, a leader is a leader because of who they are. And if they are doing a task that's a leadership task and their character is not in order, it won't be long before the task will overwhelm them and the people will see right through them. Character development is what makes you a leader. And I want you to know something. If you want God to give you character, he has his ways. What does God use to give us character, folks? Oh, how many of you really want a lot of character? Did you hear that? I don't know. See, what is character? Let's use this for a moment. Take that one off, please, Gene. This definition. It's from the Greek word keraso, which means one who sharpens, scratches, or writes on stone, wood, or metal, an embosser, one who makes a stamp. You see, basically to be, right, basically to be a man or woman of character is that God has stamped his image on your life. You also see the word keraso there. It's a derivative of keras, which is a Greek word for grace. So character is a grace enablement. It's God stamping you. Or I even like the idea of embossing because then it isn't embossing pushing from the inside out. It's God embossing his image on you. And the only place that this term appears is in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3 when it talks about God implanting, imparting, and we'll look at that a little bit later, his image. What a fantastic picture. Now I want to ask you a question. If your character could be seen in the mirror like your physical body, what would it look like? How many of you would love for that to be right up here on the overhead right now? Your character as described in public for everyone to see. Think about it. You know, if we take the character, the sum of your parts, your emotional, mental, relational, spiritual parts, and physical, put it all up there, what would it look like? Whoops. You know, I wonder if it would be like for some of us, you know, like those mirrors you see at the funhouse at Kennywood? Just a little bit out of whack and a little bit out of balance. And since character is the sum total of all the parts of who we are, I'm never going to be able to cover all that. I'm not even going to try tonight. But I do want to talk to you about a few parts of that because there are some things very tangibly I've discovered that shape how the rest of me grows. Let me give you a definition of maturity. Maturity of character. Maturity is balanced growth in every area of life. Alright? Balanced growth in every area of life. Maturity is the ability to sustain balanced growth. Folks, maturity is not something you arrive at. It's something you are always doing. Can I say this? When you stop maintaining that balance, you are slipping back. It's not like age. When a person hits a certain age, he's considered mature. I'm not sure what that age is. I don't know if I've made that yet. But in the character issue, maturity is the ability to sustain a balanced growth. Keep growing. I love people. I'm honored by the people here tonight in their 60s who probably walk with Jesus longer than I have. But they realize that maturity is a process and not a place that they get to. And they're still here. They're still growing. And that's a wonderful spirit to have. And it only happens. Listen now. I believe that maturity of character only happens because of discipline. And I do not like the word discipline. Do you? The last time you walked into, such as I recently did, TGI Fridays for dessert. And they slip this menu in front of your face with these incredible desserts. They've got these unbelievable descriptions. Fresh this and fresh frozen that. And piled on cream. The biggest one on the menu is Friday's Outrageous. Who knows what that is? Pastor Tom does. Tell us what Friday's Outrageous is. It's four scoops of ice cream on a piece of cake with strawberries, whipped cream, and shavings of chocolate. Now see, I saw that on the menu and I said, Oh, no, that sounds like me. I mean, that sounds like my kind of dessert. But I had to be a man of discipline. So I let Tom order that one. And I had my own mocha mud pie and my wife got a piece of cake. But everything in me wanted to just binge out. And we're all like that. We hate discipline. We hate having to say, well, maybe not. I don't need all that right now. Tom shared it with his wife. And I want to talk for just a little bit here about those five areas of our whole person that need discipline and how it affects our growth and our capacity to be a leader. Number one, I want to talk about emotional discipline. I have to say, ladies, listen carefully. Because you know that you're unique, first of all, in your emotional makeup. You're different than men. You're also unique in that God's given you leadership abilities. And in our church, we're not ashamed or hesitant to see those things employed. But ladies and gentlemen, we both know many people who disqualify themselves from leadership because of the inability to discipline their emotion. Discouragement, depression, defeatism, just being flat down to where you're not any good to anybody, let alone yourself. And I know far too many potential leaders. And I have to say, it grieves me when I see a lot of qualities in a person. But emotionally, they're just always on a rollercoaster. One time you see them, whoo, hey, glory to God, that's changed the world. Next thing, I don't want to do that. I hate going to church. And all these kinds of things come up. Let me just share my own spirit a little bit. I have, on many occasions, experienced what I call the Monday Massacre. The Monday Massacre is my version of an emotional downturn. Now, most pastors will tell you this. Satan loves to beat us up on Monday morning. I want you to know something. It doesn't matter. I've had more than one occasion right here where we've had a glorious Sunday. We'll have 15 or 20 people open to Christ. We'll have people filled with the Spirit. We'll have people healed. We'll have the place will be full. And I'll remember that Sunday evening, something like, you know, I forgot to announce that we need four new teachers back there. Oh, God. Or something, you know. Or maybe I, you know, I've had more than one occasion where I've walked by somebody and I forgot to say hello or I wasn't thinking about it, you know. And I knew, you know, boy, they were offended. Oh, man. And Monday morning, you know, and especially this, if the message doesn't have the impact, you know. If I look out and I see people nodding, God, you know. My life's ruined. You know. And you don't know. I want to tell you, my Mondays, it's always, if you ever think of me on Mondays, just pray that I'm winning that battle. Don't pray for me to have great exploits in ministry. Just pray that I'm staying alive that day and beating the devil off. And I've discovered some things about winning this emotional. It's a lot worse, was a lot worse a few years ago than it is now. I have to say. I had three options. A few years ago, I had three options. I'd stay in bed as long as possible. And I don't like to stay in bed that long. But I just didn't lay there and sleep. See if you do this on days when you're done. Number two, I'd like to eat and eat and eat, you know. We have breakfast three times and then go out for lunch and, you know, sweets and all that stuff. Or my favorite one was to pick on my wife. That was the best way to, you know, vent all this stuff out. For no reason, you know, I'd find something that she didn't do just the way she did. And folks, I want you to know something. That kind of stuff didn't get me anywhere. It was not a blessing to God and it certainly wasn't fighting off the enemy. He was having a field day. And I remember more than once just sitting down about 5 o'clock on Monday afternoon and saying, boy, you've really been a fool today. The devil's really gotten a victory. And by that time, I'm starting to get geared up for Tuesday, see. You see what I'm saying? I can see Tuesday coming, so I'm starting to feel better. And that's, psychologists will tell you that's very typical. They tell pastors to take Friday off. That's what they tell them so they don't go through that stuff. But that doesn't work for me. I tried that. Let me tell you what has been working. And this can work for all of you in any time that your emotional stability goes up and down. Number one, stay active. Require yourself to stay active. Don't lay in bed. Don't sulk around the house. Don't indulge your emotional roller coaster. Do something. Go to the mall. You'll get thankful in a hurry. I'm serious. Exercise. I almost always do some extra exercise on Mondays. I'll run a little farther. I'll get up and game of tennis with somebody or do something like that. Cut the grass. Just something to be active. Because if you let it, if you just sit there and think about it, it'll just keep pushing you down. And I found that increasingly so. Another thing I do, I take the Word of God. Early in the morning when I get up on Mondays now, I say, Lord, just wash over my spirit. And I get a little extra time on Mondays in the Word now because I'm in a hurry to get to the office. And I want you to know something. There's a cleansing in that. It scrapes away a lot of that stuff. Sometimes, here we go, I just go in and I start singing a psalm. I'll make it up and start singing. I've got some great choruses that we're going to learn that I've sung from psalms that the Lord and I like. I don't think anyone else would, but I like them. And then number three, if I'm on an emotional roller coaster, I discipline myself especially if I sense that I need forgiveness from somebody, if I make a point of getting forgiven. If I offended someone on Sunday, if I didn't do something well or whatever, I make a point of it. Because listen, that repentance opens the doorway for God to do His work. Stay active. Don't let yourself sulk and get in a big puddle. Be in the Word of God and then seek forgiveness. And by the way, if you don't do that, you're just going to carry a big weight on. Number two, how about physical discipline? If you're going to be a leader, if you're going to develop character, listen, I want you to know something. Our culture is very physically oriented. Is it not? I mean, everything around you shouts physical messages. And I have to say, I have not had the liberty yet here on a Sunday morning, I don't know if I will or not, to give a message about physical discipline. And I have to say that it doesn't sound spiritual at all, but if your body is breaking down, you're not much spiritual good. I won't say you're no spiritual good because I know of people who have made a great impact, but if your body, especially if it's breaking down by abuse or neglect, and I have to say that there's no real excuse for it. Does your Bible say what mine says? This is the temple of the Holy Spirit? How does that temple look in these days? How much? Don't be too hard on yourself now. I'm very sensitive. There are some people who I know are consciously already have their senses up because you have a little bit of a weight problem and here you are, and it's not wintertime so you don't have a big coat on. And I say, well, I know what he's thinking. I don't feel that way about anybody. We all have our own set of physical things that we need to be working on. But this temple is where the Holy Spirit is taking his residence. And I have to say, if you don't eat properly, and I don't mean, I'm not a, Lord knows I'm not a health food nut, and I don't even want to call them nuts because sometimes they're health food. I love the health food nuts. But there are some sane things to do with your diet. There are some sane things you can do. Bring some things into balance. Rest is important. I want you to know something. You don't need as much rest as you think you do if you get the right kind of rest. I've discovered, maybe it's age, but I'm getting along in a lot less sleep than I used to just five years ago. And not just getting along, I'm feeling pretty good. Every once in a while I'll fall asleep while I'm counseling somebody, but other than that, it's not too bad. Number three is exercise. And I apologize if this sounds basic. Put your heads down, everybody, for just a second, please. Go ahead, put them down. Close your eyes. Lift your hand if you're doing regular exercise. That's very good. There's probably at least 50%. So that's very good. Let me tell you what I think is a result of taking care of your body, resting well, and getting exercise. It translates into energy. Have you ever wished you had more energy to do what you really wanted to do? Energy is the byproduct of taking care of your body. And if you don't have energy, you're not going to be a leader. Because, dear ones, there is so much demand in our lives. How many of you have a job and kids? That's a tough assignment, let alone serving God in some ministry, perhaps, or trying to win nonbelievers to Christ or whatever you're doing. You need energy. Some of you amaze me with your energy, I have to say that. Some of you just keep going. I don't know where you get it. I'd like you to disciple me in that. But if you don't have the physical vitality and the mental alertness, you're not going to be a leader that's going to last too long. You're going to die out. And around here, without some discernment, it's very easy. You get on the wrong train to the wrong place around here, and poof, your energy gets zapped in a hurry. But it is the capacity to go on. Someone said to persevere. You have to have the physical stamina to do that. All right, number three, mental discipline. Mental discipline. You know what? We're going to try, I have one for each of you. There's the physical discipline one. Mental alertness, capacity for hard work, resistance. That's how you'll know that physically you've got it together. I'll leave it out for just a second. Now, folks, I want to just pause here. If this isn't going as spiritual as you want it to go, it's only because if you don't have this down, you're not going to really go very far spiritually. This is groundwork, but it's important. All right, mental discipline. Are you a tube head? Ross Park Mall last year, I don't think it's there anymore, right in the front section there where they have all the... They had a mannequin like this with a television on its head. The television was its head. More than we'd like to admit, folks, that TV set has crept in and robbed many of us of valuable time. And I'm not saying that I throw the TV out. I don't know too many people who have made that work, although some have. But we are responsible to discipline that TV set. And if you're locked into it, if your normal Friday night is three hours of TV, and your normal weeknight is two hours of TV, and your normal quiet time is 15 minutes on the way to work, folks, you are making a big mistake. Mental discipline and the television, I think the easiest way just to check out and justify it, because it's basically harmless, neutral basically, and yet it doesn't do anything any good for the most part. What are some alternatives? Well, number one, every one of us should be reading Scripture. Do you have a plan? I know some of you are newer Christians. Let me mention once again, I have it right, I have it clipped to the back of my Bible, my Victory Bible reading plan. There it is. I used to lose it. How many of you have ever lost one? All right. Well, I fix this thing. I read it all the time. That's how I know where I'm meant to be in my Bible reading. Number two, reading good books. I'm going to give you a list of ten good ones tomorrow. You ought to go out and buy a couple and get started if you're not reading something. How many of you like to read good books? Most people do. Do you find it's often intimidating? Scott gave me a book a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, called Thriving on Chaos. He looked in my office, saw my desk, said, here, you'd like to read this. I understood it's a good book. It's about management and helping people to work well together. But it's an intimidating book. The print's kind of little and it's thick. But I've discovered a little secret. You can read a book through the door, the front door, or you can read a book through the window. So what I do with every book I get now, before I open the front door, I look in the index and say, ha, I like the look of that window. I'll go back to chapter 16 and say, let's read this chapter. And I can discover real quickly if it's a book that's worth going through the front door. This little something you'll find is very, very helpful with books. People walk in and I don't have all that big of a library, but I have a couple thousand books in there maybe. People say, have you read all these books? I always say yes. I've read through a lot of windows. Now, I've read through, I've read the whole book, when the book's been worth reading. Like this book, the one I told you about already. Read this book door to door, coast to coast, cover to cover. I've read it maybe four or five times. It's worth it. Any good book, any good book should be read three times. All right. Please read, well, I've got some good news. Can I tell them, Scott, what our good news is? By the first of September, Susie, is this correct? We think by the first of September, we're going to have a bookstore here in our church. Nice little bookstore where you can go in and we're going to choose the books and we're going to get stuff in there that's going to challenge you, feed you. Because I think the written word is a powerful tool. So that'll be here. As soon as we move everybody out like we're planning to do, we're going to put the bookstore right out there in the lobby and make it available to you to get some good stuff. Let me move on quickly. Periodicals. If you're going to be a leader, you need to know what's going on in the world, folks. I get a lot of good Christian periodicals. I can tell you what those are later. Or on occasion, every week, I get three major news magazines. You say, you read them all cover to cover? No, I read a lot of windows. Very helpful stuff, though. A lot of