Growing as Leaders to Grow the Ministry

Effective leaders think differently than unsuccessful ones.  Most of us come into the work of God not knowing that much about it. We come in like everybody else.  One way effective leaders differ from ineffective ones is that they are steadily reading and growing, wanting to learn how to be better. Ineffective ones see no need for all that. 

What are you filling your heart with? Who are you hanging out with? Someone said that the person you’re going to be in five years will be determined by the books you read, and the people you associate with. What kinds of books do leaders read who are growing in the ministry? The Bible, of course. Devotional books, yes. And they also read heavily in the area of people skills, personal relations, management, public relations and leadership. They know that the best way to think like an effective person is to be with effective people or to at least READ what effective people are writing.  

Ineffective leaders read things that don’t help them in the ministry. They read novels, magazines, cereal boxes, and they mess around on the Internet spending countless hours on jokes pages and trivia – and some fill their spirits with pornography. 

If you associate with negative people, even those in the ministry, you’ll be negative and critical. If you associate with positive faith-filled people, whether in the ministry or not, you’ll be positive and full faith. You will become like who you associate with. No exceptions.  

Effective leaders know they can’t promise the people anything -  but they can give people the opportunity to come in, get right with the Lord, to be consistent, to get involved and grow. Effective leaders aren’t  put in the ministry because they are any smarter or more gifted than other people, but because they are faithful and consistent. They work hard at serving God. They put their whole hearts in it at the beginning and still do. That’s all they have to offer, just like it’s all you to offer – but it’s what God wants.  

Effective Pastors do the things they don’t want to do, from the very beginning.  People think Christian leaders love being available day and night, birthdays, anniversaries and have family gatherings interrupted by someone who is fighting with their spouse and needing help immediately.

People think that leaders love staying up until three or four in the with someone who once again got drunk or high and landed in trouble. Sure, it’s our calling and our life, but we like to have family gatherings and good nights sleep just like everybody else. Do we like being interrupted and woke up by the phone? No! We do it because we HAVE to, not because we feel like it.

We do it because we have to, in order to be faithful to the commitment we made to God.

As a leader, you have to face your challenges. You can run away from them, but you end up avoiding the blessings are hiding behind the challenges. Only when we face the challenges do we discover the hidden blessings. It’s the trials, the challenges, the negative people, the financial shortages that turn us from frustrated men into men of passion, men of prayer and men of God. Would you rather be a Pastor in a small but loving church or be just a businessman? Let me guess.  A pastor in a small but loving church. A ministry that’s loving and learning won’t stay small, no matter where it is.

Copyright Steven L. Davis  www.SteveDavis.org