Making The Mundane Miraculous X, The Paradox Of Great Leadership

Messages throughout the whole summer. Maybe you've been on vacation, maybe you've been away at camp or whatever, and now you're back and can see some things you've missed. Pick up the tapes, the tape ministry is one of our great volunteer ministries. And by the way, I'm just so pleased and thankful for our volunteers, the people that serve us, the ushers, the deacons. I thought John Wall did a great job leading worship today, didn't you? I think it's just good to have John do that when he can. Thanks to Greg Shearer who did the arrangement for the song that Katie could do. It's all, it's a team working together and the Lord just builds us up through those things. 1 Peter 5, To the elders among you I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings, and one who will also share in the glory to be revealed. Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be. Not greedy for money, but eager to serve. Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. Now remember that phrase, the crown of glory that will never fade away. Young men in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud. You might want to underline opposes. That's a much stronger word than God is sort of indifferent or passive. He opposes the proud. How many would like to line up on the other side of the ball from God? Does that help? It says He opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your cares or anxieties on Him because He cares for you. Leadership. I want to talk this morning for the moments that I have about leadership. You may or may not see yourself as a leader today, but I want to go on record as saying there are far more of you who are leaders than really like to acknowledge that it's so. What I want to talk about is the fact that much of what we give our lives to, to produce some kind of crown, some kind of accolade, some kind of accomplishment, will fade away. But when we commit ourselves to rising to godly leadership on our lives, it's a crown that will never fade away. The Olympics just completed three weeks ago, the 100th Olympiad. We heard and saw many terrific athletes. In fact, the world's greatest athlete is the moniker given to the person who wins the what? The decathlon. Ten events over two days, incredible amount of agility, speed, strength, skill, everything to win the decathlon. An American won it this year. Don't put your hand up, don't whisper the name out loud. How many of you are sure you know his name? How many of you are sure you don't know his name? It's about 70-30. Three weeks since the Olympics, greatest athlete in the world, 2 billion people watched him on TV, 150 hours, all the endorsements. The majority of us don't even remember his name. Dan O'Brien. A year from now, it's likely it will be like 10%. Now, I am in all these awe of the man's skill and ability. It's great, praise God. I am terrific, glad for him. But friends, do you see the point? The crowns fade so quickly. I am here to challenge us today to look at what we might invest our lives in. Peter says right here, when the chief shepherd appears, he is talking about the second coming of Christ. He says that you are going to receive a crown of glory that will never fade away. It will be a crown in heavenly places that you'll be known by for all of eternity. I'm not asking anyone here to pull away from the pursuits that you're into right now, business, athletics, family life, whatever might be. But I am here to say, consider giving something of what you are and have to the leadership of the kingdom of God. Three things that I believe Peter would say here. Let's say this, that the church is the hope of the world and is about to be renewed one last time in these last days. Back in the book of Acts, the same Peter, this rugged fisherman who had been called out of this life of sort of, you know, average everyday, hauling in the fish and doing his things at the docks. This Peter prophesied through the Holy Spirit. If you have your Bible, open it back to Acts 2.17. He quotes the prophet Joel and he says this, Acts 2.17, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit in all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. Here's this fisherman who never studied the scrolls of Scripture. He quotes this man word for word. He says, we're in the last days. And I want to say today in 1996, we are in the last of the last days. We're saying, well, 2,000 years, how do we know we don't have another 2,000 years? Listen carefully. This same Peter writes in 2 Peter 3.8 that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. In God's economy, we've lived two days since Pentecost. Six days, some would say, since the earth was established as we know it. And I believe that we are moving much more quickly than most of us perceive toward the end of the age. The Holy Spirit ushered in the age of the church, the age of the Holy Spirit with the words in Acts 2. And now Peter's writing some decades later and saying, we are at the very end and 2,000 years have passed. And you say, well, Jay, why do you stand up and say that you really think we're at the end? Because everything I'm going to share in succeeding weeks is telling me that we are moving inexorably, but most assuredly towards God's consummation of his purposes and plan. So the question is, where do you fit into it? Are you rising up to what God has put you on the earth to do? Or will you miss this one and only opportunity of a life that you have to be lived for God and your eternal glory and your destiny? I believe the church is the hope of this world, and I believe it very strongly. How many of you have been watching the political conventions? You can confess that here. If you miss the Republican convention, you're going to see the Democratic convention starting tomorrow. How many believe that the politicians are the hope of the world? Not hardly. How many believe it's education? Get everyone educated in the world and work all of its problems out. Who are the most highly educated people in the world? I think Americans. We don't have all our problems worked out, do we? Oh, well, it's business. If you get the right business climate, all the problems will... You see, whatever you put your faith in, in the world system, it is not going to solve the problems of the world. I am more convinced than I've ever been that you are amongst those who represent the hope of the world. Not because we're better people than anyone, but because we represent the power of God to change lives. Bill Bennett wrote these words in a speech, and it was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. He said, I submit to you that the real crisis of our time is spiritual. What afflicts us is a corruption of the heart and a turning away of the soul. Nothing has been more consequential in this societal demise than large segments of American society privately turning away from God. And to turn things around, there must come a widespread personal spiritual renewal. And church, I want to say, let that widespread personal spiritual renewal start right here, right now, with everyone that's hearing my voice. Please don't look down the aisle and hope that your neighbor will get renewed. Don't look at your spouse and say, you know, honey, here, this sermon is really for you. Look at your own soul, dear one, and say, am I hungry for God? Am I all that God wants me to be, or am I even on course to find what God wants me to be? You see, if you're looking around to someone else, you're going to miss what God's saying to you. And I want you to know, as I've done some reading in my study break, and I did some calling and investigating, I can take you to places around the country where the Spirit of God is renewing the church, where people are hungry enough to stay more than an hour and a half to seek God, because they know they're going to find Him. What if I said to you, hey, this service is going to go until 6 p.m.? I'd mess up your lunch plans big time, wouldn't I? And I wouldn't want to stay either if it's the same old, same old. But if I said to you, the Spirit of God is going to meet us here, and He's going to touch your life, and He's going to heal you and restore you, and He's going to speak to the deepest needs of your life, how many of you would say, I'm hungry for that? I want that, whatever the cost. Church, until we get hungry, listen, I've learned something in my nearly 30 years of following Christ, God does not give His pearls to those who are casual about them. If you want something from God, you say, I'm going to seek after this with all my, and then the Lord says, if you seek Him with all your heart, then you will surely find Him. And so I'm asking today, who wants to see God renew the church? I pray it's you, but I can tell you this with a certainty, this is Roman Revelation 2, I believe that this church renewal depends on godly leadership. If there aren't leaders showing us the way, we won't move forward. And one of the things that we have tended to do is to wait for someone else to lead. We'll wait for one of the pastors to lead. We'll wait for one of the televangelists to lead. We'll wait for some well-known personality to lead. I want to say today, the leaders of this renewal are seated right next to you. It's the person that you may think is least likely to lead, because God says, I come to the humble, and I exalt them. There's some fascinating things. I want you to follow me for just a second here, because many of us disqualify ourselves from leadership, and we shouldn't. This is going to take a couple moments, and I want you to use, if you'll look on your outline here, I've got a couple of continuums, and I want to talk about a couple of things. I want you to rank yourself, so get your pen out, and just take a minute to do this. Because leadership, you see, examine your life now for a minute, leadership begins when you're born. Now, all of you lead something, don't you? Or pretty much all of us lead something. I mean, you may be a leader in the marketplace. In your job, you have a little part of the office that you lead, or you have a sales team that you lead, or you have some drafts people that you lead, or maybe you're an athletic coach. You're an athletic coach in the first service, and he has a team that he leads. Maybe you just lead your family, and that's no small chore. Some of you lead here, as Jeff said, we have hundreds of you who lead here in the church, and I thank you for that. So, all of us have some measure where we lead, some lead in school, where we're the leader of our homeroom, or our class, or our team, or whatever. Now, some of us like to lead, and in fact, every time we get the opportunity, we're there. In fact, if we don't get to lead, we're getting frustrated. Others of us like to lead when the circumstances are right. You know, you give me the right sort of responsibilities, yeah, I'll do it. And others of us, when it comes time to lead, take a deep breath, and you go and do it, and you get out as quick as you can, because you really aren't comfortable there. Now, why is that? Why do some people just love to mix it up? I mean, it's not an ego thing, it's not selfish. They just love to lead, and others really don't like to lead at all, but they know they have to now and then. Well, my answer is, this is number one there, I think, for some people, it's just the way you're created. You're created by God to be a certain kind of leader. Some of you are created to do other things extremely well. How many of you are very artistic? Let me see the artist's hands. God bless you. I can't even draw my name correctly. How many of you are musical? A lot of you are musical. How many of you are mechanical? Athletic? No, I mean, right now, not 30 years ago. Yeah, I saw some of you wishing. How many of you are just very naturally relational? Get along with people all the time, just sort of boom, easy. And we could go on and on. Well, leadership is one of those things, some of us are just kind of born with that little bit of a dose from God. And it's not anything you earn, it's just kind of there. I know in my life, and this is something I've just marveled at, I don't know why, my first conscious memory of leading anything was when I was in Catholic school in first grade, and we used to go out for recess and hide from the nuns and stuff like you do to try to... And the kids used to come to me and say, well, what game do you want to play, Jay? Because we kind of discovered when other kids made the games up that not everyone got to play, but I could always come up with the games that everyone could play. And it just built from there, all through school of different things. When the scout troop thing came along, I wasn't that much of a scout, I mean, I got people lost and everything else, but I was the head scout thing. I even got to college, they elected me president of the fraternity. I mean, that was a contradiction. Then I realized that that was all set up. I thought to be president of the fraternity, you had to be Mr. Party Man, which I wasn't. They said, no, we want you to be the front man. You can go out there so we can party and they'll think everything's fine. How about you? Okay, rate yourself in terms of natural inclination to leadership. Now, take your pens out. This service is not as participative as it needs to be. Mark yourself, if you hardly ever really find yourself in leadership and don't really care to be that much, give yourself a one or a two. If in certain circumstances, you're kind of in the middle there, give yourself a five or six, you're happy to lead. And if you live to lead and it just happens, it flows out of your life, give yourself nine or ten. All right? Go ahead. No one's looking. We're not going to turn these in, but do it just to help yourself track along. Second thing I see here, in 1 Peter 5.5, he says, young men in the same way be submissive to those who are older. There is also an environmental thing here where if you are given the right kind of encouragement as a small child, leadership tends to grow in your life. How many of you had a coach or a teacher that really influenced you and helped you to rise up a couple of notches in your ability early on? You see, if someone comes alongside and gives you that little nudge, it raises your confidence and helps you to believe that you can do more than you ever imagined. Early experiences are vital shapers of this leadership kind of orientation. Maybe you can point to somebody here in the church that was that way for you. And that's a valuable thing. We need to have more of that going on. Early mentors, early models. Maybe it's a parent or a grandparent, but someone that helps you to believe that you can be more than you ever thought you could be. So, if you had a lot of opportunities or you had a mentor early on in your life or a model, give yourself a 9 or a 10. If you had one occasionally now and then, give yourself a 5 or 6. And if no one ever really encouraged you to be much of a leader, give yourself a 1 or a 2. Alright, got it? But the third one is the most interesting one. This one I find fascinating because the third one has to do with what we're going to call the spiritual gift of leadership. The spiritual gift of leadership. Now remember, when you come to Christ, when you give your life to Jesus as your own personal redeemer, the one that you trust to bring you to God the Father, not going to church, not being a good person, but Christ. The Bible says that God's spirit comes to live in you and he brings with him gifts. Some gifts are very dramatic. Some are very obvious. Some people have a gift of teaching. Some have a gift of encouragement. Some a gift of serving. Some a gift of hospitality. Some have a gift of prophecy. Some of healing. And some have, Romans 12, Romans 12a says, a gift of leadership. I mean it's sort of a God infusion that enables you to become all that God wants you to be in the context of his plan and purpose. And I want us to look at this. And as I go through this list rather quickly, you just sort of tick off the ones that you relate to and maybe you'll see that you're here more strategically than you might have ever imagined. Because God's put in you the gift of leadership. And if, as I go through this list, you say, well come on, some of them I do and some of them I don't, then maybe you can develop that gift. And if in the next five or ten minutes you're saying, man, you know, gosh, it's too long. How many names are on those banners? Then you probably don't have that gift. Maybe you have another one. And let's look at those. All right. First of all, first thing that a leader does is to develop a compelling, God-honoring vision. Leaders through prayer and dialogue and just exposure to different needs receive a compelling idea to advance a part of the kingdom of God. And they can't wait to get after it. They want to see it happen. It might be in a kid's ministry. It might be in outreach. It might be sort of caring for the sick. It might be helping the poor. It might be meeting people at their point of need in marriage situations or students. But the leader thinks, well, what if this happened? Or, well, just imagine if we could align these things, what could we do there? Martin Luther King, thirty years ago, gave a speech in the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, arguably the most vision-oriented speech that has ever been given, because you all know the essence of it today. Because he said these words. He said, I have a dream. I have a compelling vision of a nation where people no longer judge men by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream. And Martin Luther King lived his dream, believed his dream, called others to his dream, bled for his dream, and eventually died for his dream. And to this day, it still motivates and inspires people to give their lives to seeing a racially integrated society where people learn to live together in love. Visions can be great, like that one, or much smaller, but leaders believe in the vision, and they can compel others to join in. People often ask me, where did you get the vision for this church, Jay? And I don't have an easy answer to that question, because nobody said, read this book and try to do that. In fact, I have to say to you, it goes all the way back to the time that I worked with kids in a little town in southwest rural Virginia. And then I worked with some kids at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, and then in sort of a semi-urban setting in Pasadena, California. And then here, over on the other side of the North Hills. And every time I'd just spend time with kids over the course of months and years, I'd see their lives change. And I'd see them come alive with a hope and a possibility. And I'd see them begin to relate together. And I had the thought one day, well, I wonder if you could do this with a whole church, where people would be relating together in authentic relationships, where the word of God would be honored, where the Holy Spirit could meet people as they worship. And I had this vision. And I shared it with some others who had similar vision. And a group of nine couples committed their lives together to see something like this begin to happen. And it redirected my whole life. People say something like, Jay, did you grow up wanting to be a pastor? Very few people grow up wanting to be a pastor. I wanted to be like all of you. You know, I wanted to be happy and rich. But I became so captured by this vision of seeing lives changed that I had no choice but to throw my life into it. And you know what? I am happy. And I'm rich. Not in a worldly sense. But I'm rich in fulfillment. And I have to say, the importance of what I've been called to do and what you're called to do so outshines anything else, I have difficulty knowing why anyone would settle for a lesser vision of any kind. In fact, to this day, I still wonder why you'd give yourself to anything less than the kingdom of God. And I have no problem with people investing in their businesses and in their careers and in, you know, their little leagues and their soccer leagues and social activities and all that kind of stuff. But I want to ask you, why can't some of us put some of our leadership energy into advancing the kingdom of God? Because it's what's going to last. Just give God a portion of your leadership energy. Don't just walk out the door and start another week back in the old grind. But walk out of the door and say, God, send me out to build this kingdom that's never going to pass away. That's what leaders do. Number two, leaders form teams of people to help them fulfill their dream and vision. True leaders don't want to do it themselves. They know that other people have better gifts in certain areas, and so they get those people together, much like you see here at North Way. You see it when the church is led by people with leadership gifts and taught by people with teaching gifts and served by people with serving gifts and so on and so on. It grows as a powerful, powerful force in the world today. Thirdly, leaders establish their vision through inspiring and motivating others. I love the power of inspiration, don't you? It's amazing. You get an inspiring leader and you can do stuff you never imagined you could do. This was years ago. We took our youth group leadership team on a team building experience at a YMCA camp. One of the things we had to do was to climb one of those ten-foot walls. There weren't a lot of walking around. You had to go over it. You had to get the whole team over it, like ten or twelve people. I know a few of the guys, they could jump up to the top of the ten-foot wall and pull themselves up, but there was a lot of people who weren't big enough or strong enough to do that. We had to craft a strategy to get that tenth person up over the wall. After he had people climbing on their shoulders and so on, how do you get him over? Someone said, well, we'll just drop a snake down there and he'll jump up. We thought about this. I forget how we did it. I honestly do. I think it had something to do with someone taking their jeans off while everyone looked the other way and throwing them over and pulling the person up. Part of what happened was we were inspired by a leader who said we could do it. If any of you have ever been part of something that's bigger than you, you know how valuable it is to have a team leader that can help you to rise above your ordinary potential. Leaders inspire and motivate. It is a challenge at times to inspire and motivate in the church. We don't have a whole lot of options here. Some of you are inspired and motivated in your jobs because you're told if you don't do it, what? Take a hike. We'll get someone else. Or if you do it really well, guess what? You can share in the spoils. You can become as successful as you want to be. I have a lot of friends in the military from times past and I still know some guys now. In the military there's all kinds of motivations. I think it's a lot easier to be a military leader than it is to be a church leader. Imagine if you could say, I need five people to go to the nursery right now. You want to go to the nursery? Thirty days in the brig right now. You take that. That's your choice. That's the kind of discipline. The offering plate comes down. What's all you've given? Give me 50 pushups. What is this right here? Those kind of things. Well, my question is simply this. What motivation do we have? We have the love of God and we either do it because we love and serve God or we do it just simply because He's worthy. Leaders know how to inspire and motivate people and friends. I know some of you have those abilities. God's given them to you. For spiritual gifted leaders, initiate positive change. I just want to say in this one very quickly that leaders realize when things have to be different, when it's not any longer good enough to keep things the way that they were. And so leaders go about the business of changing things slowly and constructively. And they make a difference by introducing change at a pace that people can bear with and understand. Some of you know this. You know by working with people, sometimes they're afraid to change. You say to someone who's working in a factory, well, you've got to do it this way to do it differently. And they say, no, I like to do it this way. Don't make me change. But they don't understand if they don't change that the company down the street is doing it a better way and they're going to lose their job and so on and so on. And so we have these important examples and illustrations. I don't know. I mean, for me, when I see something that needs change, I set about to do it. And it's sometimes really difficult. Some years ago, Carol and I went to a wedding. Another church, another city. And we got there kind of just when things were supposed to start. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, nothing. You know, just sitting there waiting. The service took about an hour because everything was like looking around for different things. And you know, I'm not responsible for anything, but I'm sitting there. Then for the receiving line, they had everyone stay in their seats while they individually let the rows out. So by the time, and we were near the end, by the time they let us out, I bet we'd been there two hours and a half. You know, and Carol's patting my legs and calm down, honey, you're not responsible. Now, what I understood was a leader would have seen that circumstance, like Karen is our wedding coordinator. She would have said, we need to change some things here because the people are missing out on the blessing. And then it really got bad when we got to the reception. I won't tell you about that. Except Carol said, here's a medicine bottle. Just go sit in the corner and behave yourself. You know, I have another sense here that when you see something that needs changed, we're sometimes afraid that we're going to offend somebody. But my suggestion is this. If you're burdened by it, maybe God's speaking to you. I've often thought that you know better in many cases than I do, things that need to be changed and improved here. All right, let's go on. Leaders establish core values. All I want to say there is that every organization, every expression, even your families have values that they hold up and elevate. And friends, if you don't know them, then time will come when you'll compromise your values. And I want to urge you, don't do that. If you've been here at North Way, you know, we value worship and exalting God. You know that we value authentic, loving relationships. You know that we value small groups and community, the authority of God's Word. And you know that we value the presence of God's Spirit because we believe that's what changes lives. Two values, by the way, which I believe sometimes, in my own observation, we've allowed to slip a little bit. One of them is this. We say that prayer is the touchstone of our power. But I'm concerned that we don't pray as we ought to as a church. And starting September 4th, every Wednesday night, we're going to be praying more fervently and more disciplined than we ever have since we've been in this building. I'll talk more about that next week. But it's a value we have to restore if we want to see God move. And number two, it's the value of loving lost people. How many of you know someone that you're concerned about their eternal destiny? You wondered if they died today, they would not spend eternity with God. My question is, what have we done to build a relationship that will pull that person in? When's the last time we've allowed God to use us to reach out to somebody who doesn't know Christ? And in the coming weeks, I pray that God will urge you, stir you up, just to share naturally with those that God gives you. Because friends, we are the message. And if we don't share it, they're not going to hear. And I believe God wants to restore that passion in us. Number six, those with leadership gifts look for new leaders. They are happy when others come alongside of them. They're not intimidated or threatened. And number seven, leaders remain humble and dependent. And all I want to say there is that's the paradox of great leadership. Great leaders don't take this thing and say, well, look how wonderful I am. Look what a great leader I am. They say, you know what? No, wait. God gets the glory. God is the one that's to be honored by my leadership. It's interesting to me that the Apostle Paul, when he began to write his epistles, he said things like, I am not the least bit inferior to these imminent apostles. Then a little later on, he writes, well, I am actually the least of all the apostles. Then a little later he writes, I'm the least of all the saints. And finally he writes, I'm the greatest of sinners. You know what was happening in Paul's life? He was maturing. He was realizing in true humility what he was. And that's why he became such a great man of God. Number three, I believe that God is calling forth many to lead in our church. And as I end with this, I just want to say I could go down the list today, but I want to ask you a friend, are you in a leadership role right now? Then lead with all that you're worth. To those seven things that we just listed, does that define you? If it does, by the way, put your little circle near the nine or ten. If you related to many of those things. If you related to a few of them, give yourself a five or six. And if you just didn't get it, well, maybe that means you have another gift of another kind. Give yourself a one or two. But listen, if you're called to lead, then by all means lead. Because God wants our church to be all that he's designed it to be. Let's stand together. Father God, right now, how I pray, Lord, that you would give us a glimpse as to what really matters in your eyes. That we would live for a crown that does not fade away. That we would live, oh God, with our eyes toward a heavenly reward and not an earthly one. And Lord, that those many leaders that are just spread throughout this congregation today would sense your calling them to that place of leadership where they will exercise their gifts and move forward in their families, move forward, oh God, in their places of business and influence and lead as you've called them to lead. And I ask it in Jesus' name. You know, I was praying about this and asking the Lord, what could I do, Father, to remind everyone as we go into this new year how important leadership really is. And I had this idea, and I always get these ideas too late to do much good to anybody, but maybe it will be a blessing to you. I believe that godly leadership is the key to seeing the release of God's spirit and the mighty move of his presence and power. Godly leadership is the key to the church fulfilling its mission. I've asked our ushers to pass out, and I hope we have enough. We may not, but if we don't, I'll get some more for next week. I'd like every one of you who's willing to say, Lord, make me the leader you want me to be, husbands and wives, young people, teenagers, if you want to be the leader God wants you to be, as the ushers come, take one of these keys and put it on your key ring. I have my key ring right here, and I just have two keys on it, my car key and my church key. And now I put on my leadership key. And every time I see it, it's going to remind me to pray that God will make me the leader he wants me to be. Because I'm responsible to lead my part of the world, and so are you. Take a key and say, Lord, let me be the leader that you want me to be. Let's sing this little chorus. I offer my life to you. As we sing it, the ushers are going to come now and pass out the keys that we have. Let's sing together. Lord, I offer my life to you. Everything I can do. Use it for your glory. Lord, I offer my life