Leadership.

What does it take to make a great leader?

I just want to start this post off by telling you that I know there are a lot of amazing church’s out there. I listen online daily to dozens of different pastors and really am blessed by what I hear. There are a lot of great leaders out there!

This past year, the Lord led us  to a new church. And I love our church and pastor. I believe in our church and pastor. And I can’t wait until the weekend…every day. [smile]

But, I’ve struggled fitting in our new church. I’ve been a little more cautious to jump in and I’ve proceeded slowly. I think I needed a good bit of time just to renew my spirit.

Over the past three months the Lord has been gently nudging me to get involved, to serve, and even to teach again. And so tiny step after tiny step has led me to beginning an egroup and volunteering on the VIP team. [BTW -VIP is for our first time guests…not the big-dogs coming to visit the church…ahem, I may or may not have thought that the first time I saw their shirts.]

Yesterday, I had the amazing opportunity to have a small group leadership question and answer time with our Pastor -who is in fact an incredible leader. There were twelve of us, very unique and all serving in different ways. And for over an hour Pastor Furtick answered our questions about what great leadership looks like.

So why am I writing a blog about this?

Well, I don’t believe that this information was just for me. And I think when the Lord brings us great insights like this -we need to pass it on. There is no secret formula to the Kingdom of God. We are all in this together. If you’ve got something I need to know about…then let me know about it. I will do the same for you. Starting….now. [smile]

From that session, I want to pass on three nuggets that I think will tremendously help you in wherever you are at  in leadership right now. And I even mean if your acts of service right now include diaper duty, mother to a small army, chef, homeschool teacher or…CEO of some ginormous company. [although…I seriously doubt any CEO’s read my blog]  My point is, everyone has someone that they lead.

So these three things apply to everyone.

Number one:

The greatest gift you can give someone is to make them believe that you believe in them more than they do.

I really believe within ministry there is so much competitiveness. But what if we all believed in each other as much as we believed in ourselves? When we empower people to go out and be better and do greater for God -that is a beautiful picture of what God designed for the church.

Number two:

We need to operate out of a place of calling rather than sex appeal.

The question I asked was, “What are some of the greatest mistakes young leaders make?” Pastor Furtick said that there is a lot of young leaders that think ministry is dressing cool, or having the coolest website or logo or whatever. And it’s true. While, I believe we do need to be up-to-date with technology and maybe wearing your grandma’s polo dress is a little bit of a turn off to some people…we still need to keep the main thing…the main thing: the calling.

Pastor Furtick also mentioned the need to remember that greatness doesn’t just happen. It’s radical, it’s audacious but it’s also very serious. We should never take what we do lightly.

And number three:

Every idea that God presents to us is an asset.

Pastor Furtick mentioned that most people do not see ideas as assets and therefore we lose it before it even has a chance to come to be. This is so true because we are so quick to just toss aside everything and say, “nah…that’s dumb”.

I like to think about this blog as a place for ideas to brew. I try to write as often as I can and I know many of you write as much as you can too. Sometimes my posts are not so great. Sometimes…they are. But we can’t dwell on that to much. We  just have to keep working at it. But allow your ideas to process and see if there is anything to it.

Leadership is not always fun, it’s not always easy but the investment is great. Press on!