Disclaimer:
Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording including sermon title, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these words. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copies and quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
LEADERSHIP TRAINING:
LESSON #2: ACROSTIC OF THE WORD “LEADERSHIP”.
Introduction:
“Leadership is all about ethics and morality,” says Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.
We have all made mistakes of bad investments of our time, money and energy. All of us have bought things that we should not have, said things we shouldn’t have or done some things that we aren’t proud of.
When the failure is ethical or moral the effects are more long lasting and destructive. Ask any minister who has had unethical dealings in finances or any divorced couples whose lives have been permanently damaged by moral failures and they will tell you how serious these failures are.
If you are to become the best you can be, then you must strive to grow in your leadership skills and ability to work with other people.
10 STEPS TO BUILDING LEADERSHIP
L – Love – Passion for what you are doing. There has to be an inward fire and a longing to do the work. If you don’t love what you are doing it soon becomes drudgery.
The greatest joy anyone can have is to work in a profession that they love.
If we look back at Sir Edmund Hillary who conquered Mount Everest in the Himalayas, we can see what I mean by passion.
While attempting to climb the mountain, the exploring party had almost reached the top when one of the climbers was found frozen to death in the ice and snow. Sir Edmund
Spent a lot of time alone on the way down the mountain to bury his friend.
When he reached the bottom, his climbers thought that surely Mr. Hillary would never attempt to climb the mountain again.
Instead, he looked back at the mountain and said these words, “You are as big as you will ever be but I am growing wiser and stronger and I will conquer you.”
Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant of the Dallas Cowboy Football Team made the statement, “If I ever quit coaching football, I’ll be dead in 6 months.” He retired from coaching and died 6 weeks later.
If you don’t have something to do that you have a passion for, your life is empty.
As Christians, we must have a passion for the ministry that God has called us to do. God won’t put you in a place of ministry that you won’t love doing. Not that it will always be fun and exciting, but it will always be satisfying and in the end very rewarding.
Satan will try to stop you and He often succeeds in winning a battle and we become discouraged or experience “burn out”.
It’s at that lowest point in our ministry that we must stop running from our fears and frustrations, turn and face the devil and use the power of the Holy Spirit within us to speak victory over Him.
1 John 4:4, "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world."
Look the devil in the eye and put your faith in God and say, “Devil, you may have won this battle. You are stronger than I am, wiser than I am and you have convinced me of my weakness through your lying deceitfulness, but you are a defeated foe. You can’t win in the end and I have all the power of heaven and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ on my side and nothing, nothing, nothing can stop me. Not you, not your demons, not anything can defeat me if I don’t allow it to happen and put my faith in God and His word.
It can be said that all of us are involved in sales. We sell ourselves to employers. We sell our church by telling others about it. We sell People on Jesus by talking to them about His great provision.
If we are passionate about Jesus and believe in what we are doing, it won’t be hard to tell others and convince them that they need the Lord.
Leadership requires Love, or Passion for serving God.
E – Enthusiasm – comes from the Greek words “en” meaning “in, or a part of” and “theos” which means “a study of God”.
We must be enthusiastic about our calling from the Lord.
Enthusiasm doesn’t mean that you are always fired up or turned on. Someone who is “on” all the time is usually “on something”.
Enthusiasm means that you are convinced and committed to something and that is a choice that you must make to be a leader.
You must choose to be up. You must choose to be enthusiastic. Choose how you will feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Enthusiasm will create motion. We cannot be enthusiastic about anything and not begin to do something or build something to make that which we love to come to pass.
A – Attitude – and not just an attitude but a positive attitude and one that looks for the silver lining of every dark cloud.
There is a saying that goes like this,
It’s not your Aptitude but your Attitude that determines your Altitude!
Your attitude is more important than your education, your skin color, your I.Q., your age, height or weight.
According to studies done, 90% of all people who are fired lose their position because of a bad attitude.
It is so easy to come to church or to go to work and allow ourselves to forget about having a good attitude.
Have you ever heard the saying, “When mom is not happy, ain’t nobody happy?” It’s so true. One person with a bad attitude can totally destroy the unity and power of any organization, especially a church.
If I were to walk in here next Sunday morning with a frown on my face, looking like a sour pickle, and be hard and gruff and unresponsive to people, or with a down trodden face, what kind of effect would that have on service that morning?
Your environment determines your attitude!
Hang around negative, disgruntled, griping, foul-mouthed people and you will develop that same attitude after a while.
Hang around positive, upbeat, happy people who love the Lord and you will find your life to be so much more pleasant.
Illustration:
Both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do.
Under any circumstances, our attitude can and often does determine the way that we react.
One of my favorite examples of having the right attitude is that of Dave Roever.
Dave was nearly killed and horribly disfigured by the explosion of a phosphorus hand grenade that blew up just inches from his face. He could have developed the attitude of feeling self-pity and anger at God for his injuries. Instead, Dave uses his story to reach thousands of kids in high schools and churches across America.
He lived by the saying, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!”
Attitude is a choice we make. We choose to be happy and positive or we choose to be sad and negative. Your whole life is then affected by this choice.
Abraham Lincoln said it this way, “A man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be”.
Proverbs 23:7, "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee."
D – Dedication – constant striving and working toward a vision, goal or dream.
Smoking Joe Frazier became heavyweight champion of the world with a left hook to the jaw of Muhammad Ali. When Joe was a beginning boxer he was an overweight kid and very much out of shape. Most didn’t give him much chance to be a good fighter but one man saw potential in Joe.
He noticed how determined Joe was to become a fighter and how powerful his left arm was. When he asked Joe why was he so strong in his left arm Joe answered him this way:
When I was very young my father lost his left arm in a farming accident. I had to quit school and then stood at his left side and became his left arm. Whatever he needed to do with his left hand, I did it. Over time, my left arm became super strong because of that.
There is no substitute for hard work and dedication.
If we are really dedicated, and we love the work that we are doing and we are enthusiastic about it, then we won’t even notice the pain involved in the work process.
Matthew 5:40-41, "And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."
Jesus was telling us that we should be willing to do more than everyone else. Those who become leaders in the Kingdom of God must learn to work harder, stay longer and be dedicated to their calling.
Everyone goes the first mile because it is required for existence. Only leaders will go the second mile to give their best.
Why settle for mediocrity when you can have God’s best?
E – Expectation – expect the best, look for those around you to give their best, give your best in return.
Learn to have high expectations of other people and tell them what you expect from them. Expect only the absolute best from yourself and force yourself to give only the best.
We must be careful of the words that come from our lips because they have the power to create or to destroy.
There is the story of Jim Sundberg who became a major league baseball player.
When he was very young, Jim would be in his back yard with his dad playing baseball. At first he wasn’t very good at all. He would swing time and again and miss time and again. He expected his dad to get angry because he missed so much but, instead, his dad said, “Son, anybody who can swing like that should be in the major leagues.”
As time went on, Jim learned to pitch and catch. Sometimes the ball would go wild and go over his dad’s head. Jim thought that his dad would get angry for having to chase the ball so much but, instead, Dad would say, “Son anyone who can throw like that is going to be in the major leagues.”
Jim’s batting skills were weak too. He would miss the ball altogether, or barely hit it until one day he really connected and it flew over the fence and knocked out a neighbor’s upstairs window. He expected a scolding but dad said, “Anyone who can hit like that has to be in the major leagues.”
Sure enough, Jim became a major league player.
Then, one day, He was in a prison sharing his faith in Jesus with the prisoners. When he was done, one young prisoner walked up and said, “You and I have a lot in common. When I was a boy my dad kept telling me that, One day you will wind up in jail and I did.”
There is power in your words so expect the best and speak with positive faith.
Numbers 18:12, "All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the first fruits of them which they shall offer unto the LORD, them have I given thee."
1 Corinthians 12:31, "But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way."
God expects our very best and nothing else will do.
R – Responsibility – Become a responsible person, taking responsibility for your own actions
Have you ever had to paint some roof trim, high up? You get halfway up that 36-foot extension ladder and you start wondering about the ladder, its footing and your body weight. You stop and hug the ladder, looking neither up nor down. Your left leg begins a ridiculous but uncontrollable shuddering. At length you conquer that particular rung and inch your way to the next, then the next. Finally you’re at the top, clinging for your life. How can you take one hand off the ladder to use the paintbrush? But you do. Tight as a fiddle you begin. The sky is clear. The sun is nice. The thirsty wood soaks up the paint. You whistle and think positive thoughts and do a good job and forget about the height.
You’ve learned an important lesson of life from this. No matter what higher responsibility you take on, its scary, very scary, until you start working.
Responsibility means that you have a job to do, a calling to answer and you, and only you, can fulfill that call and get the job done.
Responsibility means that I won’t sit back and let someone else carry a load that God meant for me. I will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until the job is done.
Responsibility also means that I will stay in my assigned place, take care of the business that I must do and learn to be faithful where God has placed me and allow Him time to prepare me for greater things.
Toomey’s Rule: It is easy to make decisions on matters for which you have no responsibility.
I heard a statement that said this; Shoulders that carry responsibility have no room for carrying chips.
Too many people hold on to a grudge or have their feelings on their sleeve and get upset over nothing.
If you are going to be effective as a witness and a leader in God’s Kingdom, you must develop a thick skin that doesn’t feel offenses easily, quit worrying about the small things that won’t matter in a few days and learn to accept people as they are.
Remember that people don’t usually say things and do things specifically aimed at hurting you. They are too concerned about themselves to worry about you.
We can’t walk around with a chip on our shoulder and expecting other people to make us happy.
God has given us a work to do, a church to build, a family to raise and that is our responsibility. Only if we all do our part can these things prosper.
Be thankful for bad luck. Without it, you’d have to blame yourself. That’s what most people look for – something or someone else to blame for their own failures.
There was a well-known psychiatrist who made this statement: “Mental Illness is nothing more or less than varying degrees of irresponsibility.” Every one of his patients could be examined and he could pinpoint when they began to make irresponsible decisions that led to their present condition.
A homeless man doesn’t get that way overnight. He becomes homeless through a series of bad decisions.
Poverty, weight problems, and wasted lives are also the results of bad decisions. We decide our future one step at a time, one decision at a time.
S – Servant – we must develop the heart of a servant.
7 out of every 10 people who want to become leaders will never achieve their dream. Why? Because they don’t like being a servant.
No one can become a leader before they have given themselves in service to other people. The more you serve, the more people will look to you for leadership.
Matthew 23:11-12, "But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."
I love the story of the Canadian Geese.
They fly in a V formation. In this formation, the wings of the birds in front provide a greater lift for those behind and increase the distance that they are able to cover by 71%.
The lesson for us to learn from this is that when people who share a common goal and work together will get more accomplished if they stay in place and keep working.
If one goose falls out of formation, he will immediately feel the drag and resistance and will get back into place.
Have you ever felt like you were pulling the load all alone? Perhaps it was because you were where you shouldn’t be or that you let yourself slip away from God just a little. Get back in your right place with God and keep flying.
When the lead goose gets tired, he will fall back in the formation and allow the next goose in line to take the point while he rests a while.
No one can carry the whole load by himself. We must learn to delegate work and share in those tasks that are the hardest to do.
The geese in the back keep honking to encourage those out front to keep going.
Is our honking encouraging to those who lead, or do our words only add to the load they bear? Be an encourager. Build people up and urge them onward.
When a goose is sick or injured, 2 other geese will drop out of formation and stay with it until it is well or dies. They will then join another formation and fly to their destination.
If we were as smart as the geese, we would care for one another more. The church is notorious for killing its wounded. Too many times people are driven from the house of God because they make a mistake. It is our job to heal wounds, not make them worse.
We should be like the Good Samaritan who helped his fellowman instead of ignoring him and leaving him alone.
When the geese are flying in a V formation, there is always one side that is longer than the other, Why is it so?
Very simple, there are more geese on that side.
H – Honesty – a leader must be honest. Honest in his words, in his dealings with people, in business, and in everything he does. Never a manipulator.
Have you ever gotten extra change at a cash register when you check out? What do you do about it?
Do you say, Jehovah Jireh God my provider, thanks for the gift?
In the late 1980’s in Columbus, Ohio, an armored car spilled $2,000,000 on the freeway. Only $400,000 was ever recovered, the rest disappeared with the throngs of people who stopped and scooped up the cash. Some folks were honest enough to return what wasn’t theirs: Melvin Kaiser gave back $57,000. Those who have studied human personality say that if we know the people who lost the money, we’ll generally give it back. However, if we don’t know them, 75% of the time we’ll keep the cash.
God brings tests to build our character and Satan brings temptation to destroy us, and sometimes, it is hard to tell the difference.
Doing the right thing all the time shows our true character and real leadership honesty.
Your character is what you will do when no one is watching; your personality is what you do when people are around.
A USA Today poll found that only 56% of American teach honesty to their children. And a Louis Harris poll turned up the distressing fact that 65% of high school students would cheat on an important exam. Recently a noted physician appeared on a network news-and-talk show and proclaimed, "Lying is an important part of social life, and children who are unable to do it are children who may have developmental problems."
It is no wonder that our nation is in trouble.
Even in our churches, there is a tendency to be dishonest, to tell half truths or to cover up wrong doing.
God’s Word still says, Thou Shalt not Lie.
I – Integrity – we must have integrity to do the right thing under all circumstances.
When we don’t know what to do next, the next thing to do is the right thing to do.
If you don’t know what to do to make your ministry grow, what should you do? The next thing and right thing to do is to pray and seek God’s face for guidance.
In order to maintain Integrity, it helps to have a mentor. A mentor is someone who will help you be accountable for your actions. They will help to stretch your abilities, stimulate your actions and measure your accomplishments by God’s standards.
A soldier in the thick of the battle doesn’t know if he is winning or losing. He must step back and get a full picture to understand what is really happening.
Here is a good example of how much integrity exists in America.
What are you willing to do for $10,000,000?
Two-thirds of Americans polled would agree to at least one, some to several of the following:
Would abandon their entire family (25%)
Would abandon their church (25%)
Would become prostitutes for a week or more (23%)
Would give up their American citizenships (16%)
Would leave their spouses (16%)
Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free (10%)
Would kill a stranger (7%)
Would put their children up for adoption (3%)
Real integrity will not be swayed by personal gain if you have to compromise your beliefs and convictions to get it.
The pulpits of our nation and the message of the Gospel have been compromised far too much already, to the point that it is almost ineffective in the lives of the people.
We must be people of Integrity who can be predictable to stand for what we know is truth, to stand for what is right in the face of opposition, and never to waver from obeying God’s Word under every circumstance.
One failure in maintaining your honesty and integrity will result in the loss of trust that you have spent a lifetime building and is very hard, if not impossible, to regain.
P – Persuasion – We must become a great Persuader. We do this by being persuaded ourselves. Persuaded that we are doing the right thing, at the right place, for the right people, for the right purpose at the right time.
If you are convinced that what you are doing is right in every way, it won’t be hard to persuade others to follow you.
A leader must be able to guide truths around people’s mental roadblocks.
This isn’t an easy task. Everyone has their own set of beliefs and often those beliefs are based on error. We have to learn to guide people into making the right decision on their own by gentle persuasion and not confrontation.
Coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers faced this type of situation one day.
It was the last game of the season and the Packers had already won their Division title and were going to the playoffs whether they won this game or not.
Each player was wondering how Lombardi was going to motivate them to give their best in a game that didn’t seem to matter very much.
The coach walked in and didn’t say anything for 5 minutes. Then he began to speak very softly.
“If I could go back and have a younger body and have just one day to play football again, I think that today would be the perfect day. Today, I would not be playing for the Green Bay owners, or the fans, or the media. Today I would be playing for me, for my family, and for my commitments and to show my true love for football.”
One player said, “If they hadn’t opened the gate to the field, we would have knocked it down to get out on the field. It was the greatest game of my life.”
The power and ability to persuade people to overcome their own mediocrity and fears, to overcome their own apathy and to do their best in any situation is the mark of a true leader.
CONCLUSION:
Every child of God is a leader.
You may not think that you are but its true nonetheless.
Every day you are faced with the fact that Jesus loves you and that He loves sinners too.
It is our responsibility, as Christians, to spread the gospel, to help our fellowman and to serve one another.
Every day we are selling ourselves, and more importantly, we are selling Jesus to other people.
Even if you don’t consider yourself as a leader, or have no desire to become a leader in the church, you must never forget that your are a leader in your family.
Improve your life in the areas that we have talked about:
Love or Passion for the Call of God and the work you have to do
Enthusiasm and excitement over being chosen and having the opportunity to make a difference
A positive mental and spiritual Attitude that can affect the lives of those around you and create that same attitude in them
Dedication to your calling and your ministry, whatever it may be
Expectation of the best, looking for and having the faith that God is a BIG GOD, and that He will bring to pass that which He has birthed in your heart if you remain faithful
Responsibility to do what is right and what is necessary to fulfill your duty
Developing the heart of a Servant and perform your duties with humility
Keeping your heart Honest toward man and God
Maintaining Integrity in all that you do, being the same under all circumstances and upholding that which is right in the side of God at all times
By hard work and an exemplary life, your life and your words will Persuade others that what you stand for and believe in, and the reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in your life will bring them to be persuaded to seek what you have.
May God bless your efforts as you work to improve your leadership abilities. The souls of many people are depending upon your dedication, commitment and actions.
One final statement that I heard that to me sums up in a single sentence just what leadership is all about:
LEADERSHIP DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU JUMP ABOVE OR AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE AND SEE WHO IS WILLING TO FOLLOW YOU; LEADERSHIP IS LOOKING UP AND AHEAD AND KNOWING WHO YOU ARE FOLLOWING AND LETTING OTHERS DO THE SAME!
