If you sat me down and asked me what is in your future, I would tell you that I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, and I don’t know.
If you pushed me, I am an insightful person with a bit of experience and I could make some good predictions. The seeds you sow will determine the harvest you reap. But how you reap and when you will reap, I don’t really know and nor do you.
In fact, as the title of this post reads, the only certainty is Uncertainty! Your future for certain contains a definite amount of uncertainty. I don’t know who is turning up at church this Sunday, let alone next year or five years time. There is a lot of uncertainty, and the larger your sphere of influence there will be more and more and more.
Every year comes with uncertainty attached. Ok, some recent years have had more than their fair share but that’s not relevant. None of the Lord’s anointed prophets prophesied about a national shortage of toilet roll. Most of them didn’t get the American election right. Not one of them saw people wearing masks to go to the shops. Being born again and Spirit filled does not make you immune to uncertainty.
We must learn how to deal with uncertainty, that’s for certain. In my last post, I spoke about the number one which is building an attitude of faith. See uncertainty as an opportunity not a threat.
My number two piece of advice is this: develop a mindset that is comfortable with alternative is ideas. Uncertainty means sometimes you cannot go with plan A. There are times we have got to church and the projector doesn’t work. Adapt … Play some simple choruses everyone knows.
We had a pastor disappear once. He was pastoring our church and then just stopped and left. He has never spoken to me again despite me reaching out to him.
I had to immediately adapt. I had to step in, travel more, pause other projects and keep that church stable. We raised up another pastor and she is doing such a good job, I’m glad I had to adapt.
One of our church plants failed. So we approached church planting from fresh, changed the way we did it, and our new process has planted healthy, growing churches in four new locations. The unexpected forced us to think of alternatives, alternatives that have made an impact that we would never have made without them.
Not being able to meet in person forced us to work on our YouTube channel and now we have some messages that have been watched thousands and thousands of times. I am glad we were forced to work on an alternative.
Become comfortable with alternatives. Remember David was the alternative king of Israel, due to the unexpected, uncertain future of Saul. Yet David worked well! Really well. God can take an alternative and raise it so well, you would never know it only came out of your uncertainty and being backed into a corner.
Become comfortable with alternatives. Because uncertainty is certain
I recently read a survey of CEOs of growing businesses, and I found out that when asked what is the most important skill to grow a business that 84% of them said it was dealing with uncertainty.
The last couple of years have definitely been times of great uncertainty, and recent events proves that uncertainty is here to stay. So, as a pastor, a businessman, an elder, a dad – how do you lead your sphere of influence in uncertain times.
You see the problem is that uncertainty feels like a threat. You cannot know what will happen next, there are gaps in your expectations for the future, and your mind fills in the gaps with negative thoughts. Then when you feel threatened, it can be difficult to operate in faith – or even objectively.
So, your first thing to do is to stop seeing uncertainty as a threat and see it as an opportunity. This is the pivot you need to make to handle uncertain times. Stop seeing them as threats and start seeing them as opportunities. This is vital. When we were restricted from having live, in-person services by law, I was very much tempted to see it like a threat. I was tempted to be dismayed, to think that we could not continue as a church, as a family of churches, that we would not survive. My flesh was very keen to fill in the gaps with negative pictures and images. But I did not that win, I focused on the opportunities available and really pushed into online services, we had over thirty services some weeks, we build the system with webcams, sound equipment, we still have online prayer meetings and teaching ministries today In the first year of lockdown, we grew financially by 24.9%. That’s staggering. The root of thriving in uncertainty was an attitude of seeing things like this as an opportunity not a threat.
Opportunity should be defined by how can we make a difference. How can we help people? We could not reach people in-person so we needed to think about how we could still make a difference in people’s lives – we used YouTube, Facebook, phone calls, letters, everything. We did all we could – some of it worked, some didn’t, so we kept refining, kept doing, and kept advancing.
Your first thing to do in times of uncertainty is develop an attitude. Ok, I cannot do what I wanted to do, I cannot do what I used to do, I cannot do what I planned to do – but I can do something. I can help someone. I can do something similar, something useful. I can take my skills and abilities – both my soft skills and hard skills – and I can do something. That attitude will lead to ideas coming, it will lead to you taking bold action, it will lead to things changing for the better.
Now, the reason that is easier said than done. The reason for that is because uncertainty is emotional. In fact, studies have shown that uncertainty affects our emotions and stresses us more than knowing for certain that something bad is coming. That means a pastor would be less stressed not knowing if they are about to go through a church split than actually know for sure that they would. That’s staggering, but it is the reality of the situation. Even in good times, some leaders struggle to enjoy them and expect the future to be good just because they do not know it will for sure. They definitely need to work on that.
Of course it’s not fun making guesses, no matter how good those guesses are. Most leaders like knowing what is about to happen next, they like to analyse, to plan, to predict. Uncertainty makes us uncomfortable, and not only that make us frustrated. Frustration makes us forget to pray, to think, to have a positive, expectant attitude!
Uncertainty becomes a distraction. So, we need to change our focus, then as leaders help others focus on the right attitude. We have survived so far, and thrived in the storm, and we will not fail in this next storm. We will not even fail in the storms we are not even sure are happening. We will not fail. We can trust the Lord and even if certain paths are closed, we are both capable and called and we will reroute and find a new path to our destination – it could easily be a better path.
Develop the attitude that you can advance in uncertain times. You need to!
The late Bob Proctor used to say that if you are not creating you are disintegrating. In other words, if you are not going forward you are going backward. The Bible says it like this: the wages of sin is death (Romans 3.23). That’s a very stark and strong statement. If you do not trust God and dream big, and remember whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14.23), then you are now in reverse. You are flowing the wrong way – everything is a struggle.
It is a struggle to advance. It is a struggle to plant new churches. It is a struggle to raise new leaders, to build the character and loyalty in people to stand firm in higher places, it is a struggle to deal with the inevitable jealousy and envy that come when you are fruitful. Success is hard. Today I am reeling from a yellow fever vaccination I need because I am in Africa, I have to go to the embassy tomorrow to get my visa to Liberia on a one day emergency basis because next week I am in Turkey. I am preaching in five different churches in the next two weeks, I am travelling all over and it is a lot of fun but it is a struggle. I have only just got back from Argentina. We are growing, and I am being stretched so much right now. I am making new friends, building new relationships, operating on a new level. Our pastor’s meeting in the last few months has gone from six people to thirteen. It was busy! It has changed, and I had to learn how to process that and get stuff still done.
But I am advancing which means I am walking with this principle! I am working with the principles of faith – which mean advance. When a church goes backward, it goes against those principles, when a ministry, a leader, anything goes backward it goes against those principles – and that is infinite times harder! When you are advancing, no matter the struggle things work so well. The money comes in, the people turn up to lift up your hands to help, the people grow with you and it’s easier to promote them.
If the struggle to do something is so immense it hurts, double check you are going the right way. Are you doing God’s will? You of course cannot tell God’s will based on resistance, but if there is resistance AND on the inside you feel no strength or power to push forward and you are otherwise walking pure with the LORD and in the light, maybe this is a wrong move. No matter the resistance if you are walking in the Lord’s will there is a flow, I don’t know how better to describe it. Getting ready for this crusade in Liberia has been hard – it has stretched me, but there has been a flow every step of the way, and today things just snapped together in such a wonderful way. When things happen like that, you know you are doing it through the principles of dreaming, putting faith in God’s grace and operating in favour.
The major problem most pastors have with advancing is not big obstacles though, it is actually trivia. I don’t know how else to say this, it’s that people get worked up and spend far too much time taking care of things that do not matter and will never be remembered in history. Ever been in an elder’s meeting spending two hours discussing the colour of a carpet? That’s the sort of thing I mean. Often the choice doesn’t really matter, make it quick and get on with the big issues.
If some event or person is not changing the direction of your life, is not helping you find your purpose, do not spend time on it. That’s like the river bank if you stay there too long you will miss the flow of your destiny. If you flow, then the water will just guide you where you need to be.
We had a guy who was helping us with a project and he just disappeared. I mean vanished. So I kept going with the important bits, and someone else turned up and took over and it kept working. I love that – you walk in the paths of righteousness and life comes your way. You do not need to seek things, you need to seek the kingdom and these things will be added to you.
You have to find your destiny. You have to find your purpose. A couple of times the difficulty of planning a foreign trip this year, especially several in a row, and putting systems in place for when I go, it has pushed me to my limits. I also have other people misunderstanding me and what I am doing before God.
So I sit down and I see myself preaching at gospel crusades, I remind myself of my purpose, I see what I saw in person in Argentina – the salvations, the healings, the life, and then I keep sailing, keep flowing, keep going. If you understand nothing else understand this:
PURPOSE is the only reason you will be WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE TO DO THINGS.
You need to find your purpose – what you love, what moves you, what you have to change, what problems you have to solve. What you cannot sleep without having in place. I said at our leadership conference everyone has a super-power, something you are exceptionally good at. You are better at that than anything else you do. There is a major clue.
When I start dreaming, and share my dreams with people, I am often told I am dreaming too big, that my dreams are unrealistic. But what I do is see myself with what I already want and act and speak like I have it. I have often signed contracts when I did not have the money, I have made plans when I am not capable of doing what needs to be done, I have called people up to give them a prophetic word without anything in my heart for them. I consider in detail what God has spoken, what I want my life to be like and dream of that.
But when I train people to do this, and inspire them to do this, many people are concerned of reaching too far. They tell me there needs to be a little bit of reality in the dreams. We need to be realistic. Listen – pastors being realistic is one of the biggest problems in the UK. I know one pastor who genuinely believes God has chosen him to build a small church for people who like small churches. What a ridiculous conceit! Jesus came to dream big and inspire us to dream big. You can have a huge church and still organize it to help people who like and need small groups! Think! Dream!
People are concerned they will hurt themselves by dreaming too big. When people say be realistic, what they mean is a carnal and limited reality that everyone lives in. But we are called to change reality.
Question to think about: Were the Wright brothers being realistic when they decided they could build a flying machine? I just flew 17 hours from Argentina to London! There were several hundred people on the plane – why? Because it was part of reality now. But someone had to dream so big and stand on that dream until it became part of reality. They by everyone else’s standards in their day were unrealistic but they made reality.
When I was in Argentina, I went to a church of 12000 people. It was glorious. But 50 years ago, that church sounded unrealistic. It was outrageous that this would exist. But a man dared to dream and changed reality. Now that church IS reality for 12000 people. Because someone was not limited to what was realistic, they changed reality.
This is the point I am trying to make. If you limit your dreams by reality, you limit reality. If you dream above reality, dare to dream some unrealistic dreams, you change reality.
I don’t think there are any limits on you other than the ones you impose on yourself. Now you can try and manifest things too fast. Let’s take an obvious example. One of my dreams is to bench press 315lb for five reps. If I did that today right now, I would probably injure myself. I don’t know how much time it will take to build the muscles to do it, but I know I can get there.
I don’t know how much time it will take for you to be a millionaires, to run your own business, to be happy, to pastor a thousand people, your time frame might not be mine, but we can and will get there if we keep dreaming.
We must understand and grasp that seeds take time to grow, people take time to grow. Elephants take two years to be born, humans nine months, and your dream has a gestation period – and no one knows except God. Your best guess is just a guess. But keep believing and keep dreaming, and it will come.
Andrew Carnegie said “any idea held in the mind and emphasized, whether feared or revered will at once begin to clothe itself”. In other words what you think is what will manifest. If you are afraid of something like Job, it will come upon you. If you are desiring something in faith, it will come upon you. We need to dream big dreams.
I have a dream right now of running a family of one hundred churches in the UK and other churches across Europe, Africa and Asia. As I dream it, it is coming upon me. Our TV ministry is now available in well over 100 nations. We are seeing miracles on a regular basis, and I am in very high demand as a conference speaker. All of that is what I dreamed first. The picture was inside my mind, and now it is coming upon me. I am a long way away from my goals, but I act like I am there, and in my dreams I am there.
You need dreams that involve you going where you have never been. Now, I once heard Steve Jobs say you cannot connect the dots when you dream, you can only connect them after. In other words, dream big and stop worrying about how you are going to get there. You look back and see the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ when you start to get there.
When I started dreaming of five churches, I was also dreaming of five pastors. I didn’t even know five pastors – well I did probably know five, but not five who liked me, and certainly not five who would be willing to work for me! I look back now at the team of pastors that have been assembled in the Tree family and how they have been assembled, it’s genius. I could never have joined the dots looking forward, but now I can.
Listen carefully – STOP TRYING TO JOIN THE DOTS LOOKING FORWARD. You are not smart enough and not wise enough and not creative enough to see what God is about to do.
YOUR JOB IS TO DREAM – YOUR JOB IS TO HOLD THE IMAGE THAT YOU KNOW IS YOUR GOD-GIVEN DESTINY BEFORE YOU – then as the dream comes upon you, you will see how God did it.
Let’s look at it on a micro-level, let’s say you are in church this Sunday, you have already tithed this month and the offering bucket is being passed around, so you open your wallet or purse and get a fiver out to put in the bucket, and the Lord says “I want to get £1000 to you this month, give £100 in the offering”. You obey the LORD and give the £100 and now you are expecting the £1000. Your job is to see the £1000, not plan how it will come.
EVERY SECOND YOU PLAN HOW THE MONEY IS COMING – maybe God will tell Ben to give it to me, maybe God will tell my neighbour to give it to me, maybe God will tell this person to give it to me – every second you spend scheming in your mind HOW, every second you spend trying to join the dots is a second you are not dreaming. YOU ARE JOINING THE DOTS NOT HOLDING THE PICTURE IN YOUR MIND. That is not going to make anything come upon you.
Stop trying to work out how, stay with the whole picture in your mind and focus on it until it matters to you and sparks joy and life in you – and everything, and everyone you need, will turn up when you need it or them, but not before. God’s right on time!
I define willpower as the ability to still imagine the promises of God no matter what your circumstances or senses or feelings say.
Every leader, especially leaders in the body of Christ, should be eager for increase, for abundance, for more. Not because you want more money – or even a bigger ministry – but because you want to grow. Trust me running a church of 5 does not need you to be as big as a church of 50. Pastoring pastors needs you to be bigger. Believing for 100000 pounds needs you to be bigger than believing for 1000 pounds. Growth on the inside produces growth on the outside and growth on the outside forces growth on the inside. It’s a beautiful and brilliant circle and it is one we all need to be on the inside of!
To do this, you must put some grit in your imagination. You need to dream big and hold on tight to those dreams. You need imagination with grit in. You need to start at the end not the beginning. Do not look around and let your circumstances tell you what to dream. Look at the dream. ALL MIRACLES START AT THE END. You imagine the END. You dream the end until the end motivates you, inspires you, fills you with love and peace and joy. You get to that place then it will absolutely come to pass. This is where most pastors fail. They stop dreaming before it comes to pass.
People say live in the moment, but what we need to do is bring the future into the moment. Dream the future right now. I am in meetings right now about adding over 100k a year to our budget, and I know that is not enough and that is not the size that God wants Tree of Life to end up at. We have a huge destiny, and it’s my job to hold it in my dreams and act like it is so now. In the last two months, we have paid for the first month’s TV bills of two ministries starting on TV. Why wouldn’t we do that? We are a huge ministry in my imagination. We are stepping up all the time to reach the dream I have been holding onto in my head for years! That is how ministry should work.
Now other people (including other leaders, sadly) will think you are crazy. But that’s none of your business. Most people who think I am crazy think it because they cannot grasp why I am progressing – the answer is because I am doing things the Bible way and have some grit in my imagination. I think maybe only 1 in 20 pastors are doing the same, sadly. Success is 5% how you do things, and 95% your ability to use your imagination to expect good to come your way.
The world programmes us to be average, but we are not! We are born again, we are beloved of God, we are revivalists, we are apsotles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers! We are the children of the living God – let’s dream big and hold on to our dreams.
Listen – it’s time to dream big. If you only have goals you KNOW HOW TO DO – you are wrong. You are dreaming too small. Dreams should be big enough to unlock the power of God inside you. I was speaking to a man a couple of weeks ago believing God for a new car, and it was the same car he was driving, just newer. It was the same dream from seven years ago when he bought the car he had now. He hadn’t grown or stretched his dreams! I know pastors whose only dream is to survive! That is not a big dream, and you should repent of dreaming that small. God doesn’t care what car you drive, but He cares you learn how to dream big, and a car is a great place to start your dream.
Other people dream “if that person helps me, and if this person sees me and invites me to preach, and that happens, I might be able to do this”. Their dreams are dependent on earthly circumstances and other people. That is not a big enough dream. If your dream is standing on one person’s platform, your dream is tiny. If your dream is to teach at the Bible College you went to without going anywhere before teaching, your dream is miniscule.
What we need are dreams that you have no idea how they could possibly happen. I mean they are entirely a mystery to your peanut brain and you need spiritual power t o walk in them. Beyond anything you have ever done, but you want to do them. You so want to do them. The house you want, the job you want, the ministry you want, the influence you want. All done in love and peace and joy. Things you have no idea how to do, you don’t have the money, the time, you don’t have the power to make it happen – but it is a dream, and it is in your imagination. If you can hold a dream like that in your information and want it so much that it develops a grit inside it – then that is your spirit speaking and you need to yield to it and watch it manifest. Your spiritual self is perfect and limitless, you need to hold that in your imagination until it moves you forward.
Yesterday God spoke a new dream to me, one I have never seen before, but it immediately resonated with me. Within 24 hours I was sitting in front of the man who can make it happen telling me how much he wanted to help make it happen. That is the power I am talking about. I will share it all with you when it happens, and it will!
Selah selah selah!
Job said the thing I greatly feared came upon me. He used his imagination to attract evil into his life. We can reverse this principle and say “the thing I desired and dreamed and expected is come upon me”. Selah.
Jesus is the biggest thinker in the world. The plan of salvation is bigger than any single human could ever think. We need to tune into Jesus. When I was young, we never had mobile phones, we had one phone in our house and it was in the hallway attached to the wall. I shared that phone with my parents, my brother and my sister. Often you would answer the phone to find someone wanting to talk to someone else. The call was not for them.
Now over the years, the phone has transformed. We all have our own phone – our own frequency. We can all tune into our own calls. God had this idea long before we did – He speaks to all of us individually, giving us all dreams that are unique to us. The way you lead will not be the way I lead, the way you confront people, build systems, correct, inspire, challenge, encourage will not be the same as me. Every leader is unique. We are similar to others and less similar to other others, but no two leaders are the same. We can learn from others, there are enough similarities for that, but ultimately to walk in a great big dream you have to tune into Jesus and your personal frequency. You need to hang up on all other calls and answer His call!
Now your mind has a unique number, like your phone does. It’s able to receive from the Lord, but the way you answer the call is the way you think. If you are thinking small thoughts you will not be answering the call of the Lord, you will not be hearing God. You need to think big thoughts. While covid went on and lockdown went on, my biggest concern was not for people’s health or their employment. No, my biggest concern was that the whole situation would affect the way people think, it would make them think small, anxious, doubtful, unChristlike thoughts and disconnect their souls from the living God and therefore from their dreams and destiny.
The pandemic and lockdown is sad, but it has not slowed me or Tree of Life down at all. Why? Because I don’t think on it. What I dream about is who I am. Everything I need is coming my way. My needs will all be met by His riches in glory. I am the head and not the tail. As long as those thoughts swirl around my heart and soul, that is what will manifest in my life. The greatest danger of this age is a danger of limited thinking. We must as leaders help people think big – but that starts with us. You must believe that you are going to have your needs met. If you need it, it will come to you. That is the way God works. If you don’t see that, do not panic, but rather be patient, and keep the line open for God to speak to you. The bigger you dream, the easier it is for you to connect to God.
You need to have some grit in your imagination. If you are a true leader in Christ and called by Christ, I know something about you – you want more than you have right now. You want to do something big for the kingdom. That dream is from Christ. I want more money, not because I am carnal and materialistic but because I want to influence more people. I want to dream bigger not because I have an ego but because I am one with infinite intelligence Himself, Jesus “the Brain” Christ. If you grasp what I am saying, keep working at dreaming bigger. Keep going, keep dreaming. Keep feeding your dreams. And you will start to hear God speak.
Selah. We will continue this thought on grit in your imagination next week. Right now I am off to Guildford to see some miracles! DREAM BIG!
Most people do not think for themselves. I spend my life helping people think big, and what I find is that most small thoughts come from someone else. Most people get their thinking from their parents, their pastors, their peers – they do not stop ever and think about thinking and think about how and why they think in certain ways.
Deep inside your mind, a lot of your thinking is done at a reflexive level – often called your subconscious. You think and act before you have ever even thought about what you are thinking. Your mind spends most of its life on automatic mode, and you need to deliberately think about how you think.
Your mind is like mud. It doesn’t really do much, it simply responds to what you plant inside it. If you plant a certain seed in mud, that will be the only harvest you get. If you want to have a great, big life, you need to stop thinking small thoughts and having small dreams. You need to stop thinking you are small, thinking you are incapable, think that you are this or that. Like mud, your mind does not determine what is good or bad, it just takes the seed and creates a harvest. You have to stop sowing bad seed over and over and start thinking big thoughts and sow better seeds.
The starting point for this is that you need to take responsibility for your own thinking. You need to think about what kind of house you want to live in. A lot of people have never done that. They have never thought about where they would like to live, how much they would like to earn, what kind of people they want to be friends with. Most people have never written the answers to these things down in any detail. They have never once used their own imagination to plant good seeds of their future. And they have never ever used repetition to plant that idea over and over to plant that idea deep in their mind to grow the harvest of that life.
You are a leader, you need to control your imagination and mind. You need to think for yourself, you need to programme your mind yourself.
The best way to develop your mind is writing. Writing causes thinking, thinking causes images. That is how you plant seed in your mind. Over and over you choose to think about the future you want. THIS IS ESSENTIAL. You must write and think and dream. You must create images for your mind to think on. You dream your life then you live your life. We are dreaming our future. We must learn to do this by ourself!
This is how God designed you to operate, and so many people never change their thinking. When you dream, the universe must bow to your God-given dominion and manifest your dream. It’s that simple. The dream must be expressed. BUT YOU NEED TO DREAM YOUR DREAMS FROM YOUR SPIRIT, not what society and family have imposed on you. You must spend the time doing this.
A principle of science is that nothing is created or destroyed. All energy is just converted from one form to another. That is how God designed our universe. All the power to create your dreams is inside you – you just need to think differently. The only thing you need to do is change the way you think. As a leader this is imperative you learn this skill and learn how to show others how to do this.
Again – the first step is not thinking by default. Stop and think about what kind of life you want, what kind of walk with God, what kind of ministry you want, what kind of health and wealth you want, how you want to be. God has put dreams inside your spirit you need to let into your mind. Your mind works like a mobile phone – any thought can call you but you choose which ones you answer!
Right now there is a pandemic going on – it will not affect me at all. Right now there is a lockdown affecting some people’s finances – it will not affect mine at all. Because I don’t let the media tell me what to think. I choose what to think. I don’t think they way most other pastors think because I choose what to think. I am not about to start disobeying the law, but I am working with higher laws and everything I dream is going to manifest in my life. Be patient and keep sowing the seeds until the harvest comes!
I will continue to write about dreaming and thinking big until you start to get it. Love you all!
I am the founder of a first generational church planting movement called the Tree of Life Family. We have in the last ten years planted eight churches and are about to plant another two. Before I started I assumed incorrectly my major hurdle would be raising the finances. That’s not true – the hardest and most challenging part of my job is raising leaders. The hardest part of pastoring is raising leaders, the hardest part of leading is raising more leaders and developing leaders. That is the truth.
And I see a huge mistake that many pastors make, and when I outline it I think some people will disagree with me, but I have the experience to know what I am talking about.
For any church or business to grow and be healthy, it is essential that the main leaders can relate to many different types of people, but they must focus their time on the potential leaders of the future, the brilliant people, not the broken people. Most leaders, across the board, spend most of their time with the broken people, and that creates a regressive church culture, exhausted the leaders and creates a bottle neck that blocks the whole organization from growing. You cannot focus on the squeaky wheels.
I know many pastors who have spend their lives investing in broken people – loving the hurting, accomodating the offended, investing in those with trauma and those who are the most immature. Often their wives are doing the same, and the truth is that women often feel the burden of this more than men.
When you are dealing with broken people, you have to spend time showing them their identity, showing them that their past is not their identity but their identity is found in the love of Christ and His redemptive work for them. That is what defines people. That is how you help broken people. But the problem is broken people do not invest time in themselves. They miss church Sunday to get you to call Monday, when you have preached a powerful message to help them ground themselves in Christ. If you chase them you will always be chasing them.
The problem is that broken people are many steps away from being leaders, but often assume they are further along than they are. They lack the leadersip and management skills to even manage themselves, so they cannot lead others. So you now have a church that lacks leaders, and attracts broken people.
But worse than that, the pastor who is investing his life in broken people is now running on fumes, exhausted, tired, frustrated, and not making much progress. They want help, but cannot disconnect from the broken long enough to invest their lives in the brilliant and promote the brilliant.
The whole church knows that pastor veers to the broken, so the church as a whole tends to brokenness, not brilliance and the whole culture is pulling backwards, not progressing. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see pastors make.
If you miss church Sunday, I will not respond to your emergency Monday. You created that emergency by refusing to be with the people of God worshipping, praising, listening to the Word, investing in people. You are broken, and I will invest in you as much as you invest in yourself, but what I must do is invest in the brilliant so we have other leaders who can help you.
I have told pastors to do the same, but they have a sense of compassion that sadly is not helpful, and it is not godly compassion rather human-basd pity, and it means that the church never develops.
Moses tried to lead this way, and invest in the broken, and his father-in-law Jethro showed him a better way (Exodus 18.13-27). You may be the chief shepherd like Moses, so your job is to reproduce shepherds not pour out your life unto death.
I love what Jethro says in verse 18, “You are not able to do it alone”. We are not able to do it alone – no leader can do it alone, raise up a team, find the brilliant people, invest in them and build a team – then you can definitely help more broken people.
The brilliant people Moses had to invest in were:
able (they were competent)
feared God (they had a good walk with God)
trustworthy (they had character)
hated a bribe (they had financial integrity)
Pastor, leader, I beseech you – invest in the people in your church with competence, character, capability, compatibility with your dream and financial integrity. They are brilliant people and you can raise them up to lead tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands – imagine how many more people you could feed then!
Broken people demand your time and you are going to have to say “No” to them so you have your time and energy to invest in the brilliant people. They won’t come and demand your time, they are nice people who respect you are busy, you will have to make time for them and invest in them. If you think because they are ok and brilliant you can just leave them alone, you are making a huge mistake that will cripple and stifle your church growth and development so much.
Making this change is not easy, you have to discipline yourself, you have to do things deliberately, but it is essential you make this change – so much matters on this!
John Maxwell says the worst leaders are those who are full of mercy, because they find it hard to say no to someone, to hurt someone, to offend someone, to cause conflict. One of the keys to leadership is if you are naturally merciful, is be so careful who you spend time with and why. Be in charge of who you spend time with and do not be afraid to put rules on broken people like:
If you don’t come Sunday, I will not call you Monday
If you do not do the homework I set, I will not visit you again until you do
These sort of principles will change your life and enable you to invest and promote the brilliant. You have two choices – do it all yourself and limit your life to your strength, your time and your capacity, or invest in the brilliant and with a team do things you could never do on your own.
You are not that good to do it alone, you are not the Lone Ranger, you are not capable of fulfilling your destiny with no one raised up. Start investing in brilliant people. Find the right people and work with them!
Choose to invest your time in the brilliant. There are a lot of broken people in your church, people who grew up without a father, people who have been hurt and abused, but running around trying to help them all will not change the maximum number of lives. It will also burn you out. A lot of pastors quit – but if you invest in the brilliant, you will avoid burn out and have a team that supports you.
Jesus had his disciples, they were not perfect, but they were capable and they were always listening, learning and developing. They did not skip out and miss the Sermon on the Mount because they are offended. They got over things and walked forward. They were a team and that ultimately made the ministry a joy not a burden.
Don’t promote too quickly, interview again and again, if in doubt, leave it until another day, do not get conned by fast talkers and nice people. We must have the right people on the bus, and in the right seats. This takes time, and you need to learn this skill.
You cannot plant a church, build a church, build a leadership team, raise up leaders or help people dream big unless you accept the fact that you will have conflict if you do so.
A lot of leaders value a fake harmony over difficult constructive useful conflict that is difficult but essential for growth and progress. Harry Truman was the first to say if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen – but as Christian leaders we are called to be in the kitchen, we are called to be in the place where we are helping people, we are called to speak the truth in love – we are NOT called to be so loving we never speak the truth, or so truthful we never love. We must have both – truth and love.
Sometimes as leaders we want to be more loving than Jesus, more helpful than Jesus and kinder than Jesus! And you can’t, it’s impossible. Without doing things that may create conflict, you cannot be a leader. I am not talking about being pushy and harsh with people, I am talking about not wanting everyone to get along so badly, and be a big happy family so much, we cannot suggest ideas, change things, progress and be fruitful. If you hate conflict so much you never say “no” to anyone, you are in the wrong place in your heart. Move! Learn how to say no!
Leadership can be stressful, it can be hard – to lead people you have to say “no” to them on occasion, it’s not easy, but it is essential. I have met Christian leaders who avoid conflict so much, they even lie to their people to stop them getting upset. That’s not right. I have on occasion instructed a pastor or elder to stop something in their group, and one one occasion, a pastor resigned rather than say no to a false prophet in their church! We cannot let that happen. We cannot replace the peace of the Lord and the leadership of the Spirit with a false harmony based on letting everyone do what they want. You must get used to the heat – to be in leadership there will often be conflict.
Leaders need boldness and courage. I have seen this in the church, I have seen it in business – leaders who could not confront and lost everything. All their plans are based on avoiding conflict. We need a big of toughness, a rough, real, authentic love that chooses truth over artificial and fake peace.
Now, let me confess, I have done this on occasion, I have had a few cowardly moments and they have always cost me dearly. I may have a few more in the future, but my goal is not to confront everyone for everything, but it is to grow myself and the people entrusted to me properly and if that means conflict, it means conflict. I think some people reading this need to make the same commitment – we will deal with conflict authentically, in love, honestly and kindly, sensitively but also strongly. You need what one preacher once called “the courage to collide”. Do not swerve off the right path to avoid someone! Do not back down, be strong when you have to be.
Also, you need to be humble – sometimes you cause conflict, sometimes I do. Own up to it and make it right.
Another quick tip is this – correct in private, praise in public. Never confront in public, never correct on social media – go to the person privately and follow Matthew 18. Do not correct someone in a church service!
Don’t replace difficult conflict with artificial harmony. Remember Luke 6.26, woe to you when all people speak well of you. When someone really likes one of my team, a pastor or elder, and they are ambivalent or antagonistic to me, that is a warning sign to me that my leader is not discipled enough to resemble me enough to also irritate that person. Selah.
Be bold, be strong, be kind – but be authentic and loving enough to confront and deal with issues when necessary. Maybe there is someone in your church or your small group or your department no one has ever confronted and needs to be faced down head on. I heard of a church last week that is both proud and excited that they let everyone in the church speak whenever they want and say whatever they want. I guarantee no-one in that church is growing, because there is no “NO”. We need to be able to say “NO” in love, but confidently and with a gentle strength. Selah.
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 