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!

Grace and Faith Day 2

No matter what I’m going through, I’m going to keep my eyes on you.

After some remarkable worship from Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, Andrew Wommack wisely asked Ashley Terradez to receive the offering. Ashley said the first thing this morning that hit me so hard and made me think: if a ministry has helped you and changed your life and you are not partnering with it, there is something wrong with you.

Imagine being part of a church and not giving. Imagine a church helping you and not giving. Imagine being blessed by a church and not giving to that church! I cannot imagine that, and I cannot understand people who think like that, but it was very true that many people in the room had been helped by Andrew’s teaching and did not even give to him! What a revelation! Give to where you are fed, people!

Then Pastor Duane took the floor (literally – lying down at one point to illustrate that we are dead in Christ) and he started with a powerful prayer asking God to guide us into truth and mix our faith with the Word. He preached on identity, and how we must look to the rock that we have come from – that our identity comes from Jesus and Jesus alone!

Duane made a very strong Biblical case that we are not dying daily, and that idea is both religious and false – and also unhelpful to us. We are not dying daily, because according to the Word, we are dead in Christ. Duane showed from Romans 6 that if we do not see ourselves as dead, we will never see ourselves as walking in the new life! We have one nature, and our problems are not caused by the old nature as that is dead, it is caused by ignorance! Powerful teaching indeed.

In the afternoon, Mike and Carrie kept going on the same line – showing that the enemy wants to distract us from our identity by looking at other things, such as our critics, or other plans. Mike said something that really got a hold of me – that authority is a synonym for permission. We have the authority to be children of God – we have the permission to be children of God. We have the authority to cast out demons – we have the permission to cast out demons. That reframes a lot and I will be thinking about that for a long time. Then Carrie said that permission leads to privilege – in that the more we know who we are and what we are allowed and permitted to do, the more we will do! What a word!

We have full access to the entire kingdom of God. All of Heaven is inside us – and all we need to do is be led by the Spirit.

Then in the evening, Andrew Wommack continued his powerful teaching on humility. He told us that God resists the proud because the proud do what they want, and God resists that in our lives because His will for our lives is much better. What a truth! That’s powerful. God has a plan for all of our lives, a great plan, but He will never force us into it, so we must yield. That yielding is humility.

Pride of course is thinking you are better than everyone. But just doing what you want to do without listening to the Lord is also pride. I could see this impacting people all around me. Andrew said: never ask God to bless what you are doing, rather do what He is blessing. He clearly knows what he is talking about – Andrew is humble and blessed, so I have decided that’s my approach now. I will never ask God to bless me or bless what I am doing, I will just do what God is blessing.

Andrew said that to live that way you need a spine, most Christians are like water, they fill the shape of whatever environment they are in and they just go with the flow. He also mentioned that there is no humility without submission to others on earth, especially in the context of church. The reason people do not go to church according to Andrew Wommack is pride. I agree.

Andrew finished such a powerful and helpful message by explaining that anxiety is a form of pride. We are trying to solve our own problems rather than casting the care of them onto Jesus! Selah!

All in all a very powerful day! I think I will do it again tomorrow!

Grace and Faith Day 1

Andrew Wommack teaching at Grace and Faith

Last night, I was at the first evening of the Grace and Faith conference in the UK, and it was exceptionally powerful.

The service started with some very powerful worship led by Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and it was so Christ focused.  I love the way they allow all their team to contribute and lead and how they keep the spirit of worship between the songs, leading us deeper into adoration of Jesus.  The worship was beautifully Christ centred, and I found it so refreshing.

Then Andrew Wommack shared what was possibly one of the most challenging messages I have ever heard.  I don’t believe I have ever heard a sermon on Daniel 4 before, about how Nebuchadnezzar turned wild and feral, and how his root problem was idolatry.  Andrew then spoke on pride and the need for us all to be humble.

We need to all reach a place in our lives where we decide God is God and we are not, that we will serve God not matter they say about us and no matter what they do to us.  We will not bow and we will not serve idols.

Andrew addressed the need to have an attitude that if the government tells us to stop serving Jesus we will stand up even if we have to go to jail.   We need a spine!  We need to be strong!

Many make an idol out of the crowd and therefore cannot serve God because they are scared of upsetting others.  Our job is to do what God wants, and serve Him above the crowd.

It was well received by many, but also some clearly did not expect that from the apostle of grace!  Grace is of course not a licence to sin, it is a licence to serve freely, and Andrew shared what he said so clesrly, not simply because of his glorious knowledge of the Word, but because he is authentically humble. I don’t know him well, but in all our personal interactions, he has always come across as totally humble and authentically obsessed with God’s will.  Andrew is an inspiration for everyone, if he isn’t to you he should be.

It was a very challenging message.  I have never heard it phrased that all non-tithers are idolaters, but as soon as Andrew said it, I could see it is true.  Anyone who finds an instruction in the Word or is told something by the Spirit and does not do it, is obeying self as an idol above Jesus.  Everything must come back to what Jesus is saying.

Recently, Amanda and I have been persecuted in ways we would never have expected from sources we would never have expected.   But we have not got down in the mud or compromised the gospel.  We have just kept serving God and putting out the Word, but that doesn’t mean that this kind of pressure doesn’t weary you a little.

We both found last night therapeutic, bringing us to a place of new zeal to go and do what the will of the Lord is no matter the consequences and maintain high standards for the Tree of Life, clinging to our God given vision.  We walked out of there with a deeper passion to just go and do God’s will, God’s way, no matter who or what comes against us.

Last night, I saw Jesus bigger than I ever have.  That is the essence of worship, fellowship, Biblical teaching.  That’s why we do what we do, it’s all about honouring Jesus. We will not bend or bow, we will seek first the kingdom.  I feel like I am having a whole new beginning of a brand new chapter.  I am so excited, so fresh and so ready to change the UK.