Manifest Leadership 13 Let the Rabbits Run!

Jim Collins says that one of the signs of great leaders is that they are not just interested on getting people on their bus, but interested in helping people find their right seat on the bus.

The analogy Pastor Ray Bevan used to use was of different animals. Don’t try and make owls swim or fish fly. Let the rabbits run! In other words, let people be in the place where they can get the maximum results, make the maximum contribution, for the minimum stress and minimum effort.

  • Don’t be afraid to move people around and try. If you get it wrong, try again. Getting people in the right place is a process and takes time. But it is essential for creating a winning team.
  • Don’t be afraid to set high standards for serving positions, especially if they are in the spotlight. Setting high standards shows people that the role is important. In our Dagenham church, I have recently set some higher standards for leading worship, and that means that people have risen to those standards and the worship is undoubtedly much better because of it. If you set low standards, funnily enough the better people do not volunteer – they like high standards. If you let someone lead worship who is only in church once a month and doesn’t listen online or go to a small group, the people who are on fire for Jesus are the people who don’t want to lead worship because they think you do not value it. Selah.
  • Many people are not personally disciplined. They have far too much to do, so volunteering at church for example is hard for them. You have to help them function in the best place for them for their own sake.

WORSHIP LEADER MEANS WORSHIPPER AND LEADER!

There are two keys to being a worship leader, and the clue is in the name!

Firstly, you have to worship when no one is looking. Just getting up to play your songs and not actually spending time in the week praying, listening to the Word, reading the Word, listening to sermons, giving generously, loving people, being in a small group – that’s not worship, that’s a show. If you are not in the presence of God, how can you lead people into His presence. If you are not a worshipper, how can you lead people into worship? You can play nice songs, but that’s insufficient.

Secondly, you have to be a leader. If you get up, play your songs, then don’t join everyone to listen to the Word after, if you don’t go to conferences that do not platform you, if you do not lead the way in sexual purity, in kindness, in generosity, in passion, in serving without a platform, you are not leading, you are performing.

But if you get this right, you will be able to lead people into the presence of God, people will be healed, set free, inspired and encounter God when you lead worship. That’s the goal – to serve, and to overflow your passion that you have in private and share it in public.

If I was a worship leader in a local church I would:

1. Tithe and give above the tithe to the local church. If you don’t have the faith to do that, you don’t have the faith to lead worship.

2. I would be in a small group every week and I would be engaging with people with my talking voice, not my singing voice, not hiding behind my keyboard, guitar, or tambourine.

3. I would be regularly in meetings, online and offline, in which I am not leading worship, but either worshipping in the congregation, or following another worship leader and helping them lead. Either way I would be in the Word with my notebook.

4. I would be listening to my pastor not just in meetings. I would be on the church’s media listening to him preach two or three times a week.

5. I would be daily praying and daily spending time in the Word.

As a bonus 6 – I would never speak about my pastor behind their back, and I would not misuse my place of honour to build a platform for myself.

All of this is about honour and order, and that is what brings the glory of God into churches and services.

Manifest Leadership 12 Make the Tough Calls

I’ve often offered to my team (and my children as well, but that’s a different arena of leadership) that if there is a tough conversation to be had, that I will happily call the person and have it for them. It’s what my friend Bjorn Lutke calls being the stern grandad. He says that if the grandad is stern, then the father can be the one the person turns to.

For example, let’s say someone in the church is struggling with sexual immorality or involved in gossip, and someone in church leadership has to have a difficult conversation with them. I will nearly always volunteer to do that. Because when it is over, the pastor of that church can still have a stronger relationship with them.

Whenever you see a team that is successful and fruitful, then I can tell you 100% the leaders of that team can make the tough calls. It’s not just conversations, it’s also making difficult decisions.

You see to be fruitful, to have victory – it takes effort and energy. You cannot coast into it. Victory is always uphill of where you are, you have to put energy into getting there. We are on the back on the most successful and fruitful conference I have ever been in. It took a remarkable amount of effort and energy. I have been averaging five hours sleep a night last week. I had to raise money like I have never had to before. We decided to extend the worship and the worship team had to work like never before. We decided to put more into the children’s ministry than we ever had, and the children’s team had to work harder than ever before. But it worked, because we made the tough calls.

Leadership involves making the tough calls. If you cannot make the tough calls – like some politicians recently – you lose the ability to lead. People will not follow someone they do not believe can make the tough calls. Selah!

Manifest Leadership 11 Make Your Team Champions!

Your team – your elders, the people working for you, your volunteers, your staff, whatever form it takes – need to be enabled and empowered to influence others. Part of being a leader is learning how to empower others to lead. Put your team in places where they can solve problems for others, where they are the ones rescuing people from the fire, where they are the ones in the spotlight, where they can actually do things. Enable them to improve systems, enable them to connect to people, enable them to be continually developing and learning.

Do this and you will create a team of champions!

Manifest Leadership 10 Do the Right Thing!

If you are a leader, do the right thing no matter what. Tell the truth, keep confidence, take responsibility for your failures, love people. Do what is right no matter how you feel about it. We should not just be first in preaching, in prophesying, in singing, we should be first in doing the right thing. Leaders should be the most effective, fruitful disciples in the church.

One of the biggest failures of leadership is a failure to do the right thing. If you are a leader in a church, if you don’t tithe to that church you are doing the wrong thing. If when challenged on that, you laugh and smirk and say you want to give to better ministries, you are doing the wrong thing. If you are then asked to step down for a few months to grow a little and learn how to handle what Jesus calls the least level of faithfulness, you then raise your fists at someone and threaten them, you are doing the wrong thing.

If you are a leader, you should be turning up on time, you should be supporting the people who made you a leader, you should not be easily offended, you should be listening to the Word and sermons not just preaching yourself, you should be investing and generous, faithful in little things, honest, kind. You should be a life long learner.

When someone asks you what was the last sermon you listened to, excluding the ones where you had to be in the room, you should say the Wednesday live steam, I watched Guildford or listened to Watford, I am reading a Kenneth Hagin book at the moment, Rodney Howard Browne was in my city so I went there on an evening there wasn’t a church meeting and just got fed.

Leading involves being first. That should be evident, but it isn’t always. You should be first in doing the right thing. First in supporting, first in giving, first in encouraging words, first in loving, first in looking for tbe good in a situation not the negative, first in lifting people up, first in defending your church and pastors, first in joy, first in the Word, first in the amount of praying in tongues you do…

Ask the Lord how you can be a leader in doing the right thing today.

Manifest Leadership 09 Be the Best You!

When you do what you do well, people will want to watch. They will want to bring others to watch. This morning I was in a training course to help learn how to raise up and train church planters. Then I am off to equip leaders and ministers. When I do what I do well, people want to watch.

Part of manifest leadership is making sure you keep sharpening your saw, keep learning, keep honing your skills. There’s something very powerful when you are talking to a pastor, and they say “Well, last week, I was watching Keith Moore, or Kenneth Copeland, or whoever, and I got this revelation, does that help?” – they are still learning, still plugged in.

If you are not a lifelong learner, you are the bottleneck for your team. No one else will grow because you are holding everyone back. If you do not learn how to delegate (and develop the character to enable others to shine), then as you do everything yourself, there is an absolute limit to what you can do. Today, I was listening to Pastor Alan Morton (did you see what I did there?) and he said addition is not enough to achieve the results we need to achieve, we must have multiplication. To do that, you have to inspire people that you are capable, be continually developing yourself, and find ways to release and equip others.

If you are a leader – pastor, elder, dad, mum, worship leader, deacon, businessman, boss, prime minister – then ask yourself the following questions:

  1. When was the last time I listened to a sermon when no one else was around to see me?
  2. What is the name of the book I am in the middle of?
  3. What conferences have I been to this year?
  4. What book of the Bible are you reading right now? Did you read the Bible today?
  5. When was the last time you met someone in your field who is more spiritual than you and learned from them?
  6. Who was the last person you read a biography about (you have to read biographies of heroes of the faith)?
  7. What blogs are you reading about leadership (hint: this one is really good)?

Be honest with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up, but if the answers are none, and I can’t remember, and it was a long time ago – time to do something about it. You cannot be the bottleneck, eventually something will break, and it will probably be you. You don’t want that, I don’t want that, and Jesus doesn’t want that. Go and learn something!

Manifest Leadership 08 Help Others Succeed

One of the true signs of leadership is you help others succeed at what you do. The fruit of a good pastor is not how many sheep he has, but how many shepherds has he produced.

Think about it – the fruit of apple trees is apples, not branches. The fruit of leaders is leaders, not followers. If you are a church leader, you should be able to after a few years point to other church leaders you have raised up. If you are a youth leader, you should be able to after a few years point to other youth leaders you have raised up. If you are a worship leader, you should be able to after a few years point to other worship leaders you have raised up. This is one of the ways your leadership becomes manifest and obvious to others.

If you can be productive, that the productiveness of one. If you can raise up a team, you have the productivity of many! Your leadership will then increase. It is a mark of good leadership that you can raise up a team and make the team fruitful!

It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of humility and a lot of character, but you can build a team of people with a common vision and dream and that is powerful. The alternative is so many other people with no mentors, no direction, no dreams and no one working together to build something with significance.

It’s also for you, stepping into that role of a leader of leaders, one of the most rewarding, exciting, pleasing things you can ever do!

Next week: step one to raising up leaders!

Manifest Leadership 07 Respect People

Leading people can be hard work. People will make mistakes. Sometimes it isn’t a mistake, it’s a deliberate choice to assault your values and character. Some people lie, some people falsely accuse, some people undermine. However, like all endeavours of walking by faith, we must never let circumstances change what we believe in the Word.

When it comes to leading people, you should never let the vile, ungodly, immature, vindictive actions of some people led you to stop believing and standing on the truth that everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, and that we should love and respect people.

  • Believe that anyone can change. Every Paul was once a Saul.
  • Believe that people can step up. Every Peter was once a Simon.
  • Believe that people have potential. Every Timothy was once timid and pushed around.
  • Believe that people are beneficial. Even Paul received John Mark back into ministering for him at the end of his life.

If you can believe the best about people, they will through that faith start to believe the best about themselves, and when they believe it, they will eventually (most of the time) receive it.

Manifest Leadership 06 Start Something!

If there is a team doing something, and there is someone in the team who hasn’t checked in, don’t twiddle your thumbs, reach out to them. If there is a problem in the team, don’t wait for someone else to address it, sort it. If you want want leadership to manifest you are going to have to TAKE THE INITIATIVE.

There has been a passivity that has invaded the church and everyone leaves everything for everyone else to do. Part of the culture I am building at Tree of Life is for all of us to think of ourselves as the owner not the tenant. You know when the boiler stops working, a tenant calls the landlord, an owner either fixes it themselves or finds someone who can. That’s leadership – owning a situation and fixing it.

To take the initiative you will have to break your routine, you will have to do things that are not in your job description, you will have to be a self-motivated learner, you will have to be the one who initiates interaction with others.

Socrates said this: Let him that would move the world first of all move himself. That’s the task of leadership right there – get off the sofa and do something!

Manifest Leadership 05 Make Real Friends!

As organizations grow, there has to be a real push by leaders to make real friends. When I teach on the three steps of leadership, the first step is making friends. People follow people they like. You can actually change an entire office, an entire church, an entire school by the relationships you build.

What I love about the team of leaders at the Tree is they all build authentic relationships with people. All our pastors are friends, all our elders and deacons are in Living Churches in the week in houses, people love and respect each other. Leadership is not a platform, though there are times you have to lead, it is a way to inspire people.

A few times I have had to deal with people who see leadership as their job. They clock in, preach the Word, and then go home. They don’t spend time with people. The idea of going round someone’s house and spending a couple of hours with them is anathema to them! That’s not true, Biblical leadership.

Now building relationships is not always easy, being authentic is not always simple – you have to do things that make you uncomfortable, you have to learn to compromise, you have to handle people, you have to enlarge your heart and genuinely love people. But it is an – if not the – essential step to being an effective leader.

My challenge to all of you today is to take a risk and build some genuine relationships. If you are a leader, stop hiding behind your pulpit or desk or title and go and love people. Some will let you down, every so often one of them will stab you in the back, but the reward always is more than the cost.

If you are friendly, you will be a friend and then you will get friends. That’s what the Bible teaches – to build friendships you always have to make the first move (Proverbs 18.24). If people follow you because you have the title, or you have the position, or you have the pulpit, then that’s not enough, that’s a very shallow level of leadership. You have to develop genuine relationships to be a genuine leader.

Then you don’t just think of procedure, you think of people’s emotions! You don’t just count numbers, you count people. And best of all, you will never reach capacity as others will have more and more potential as you build genuine relationships with them!

People are the power of a church (or business) – learn to be a people person!