I wonder what God thinks about the state of the "local Church"?
This past Sunday I taught about the local church to my high school group.
It wasn't until college that I began to understand the spiritual benefits of coming together to worship as the body of Christ. Before then I went to church for 3 very good reasons (according to my immature brain) friends, girls and tradition (I'd been going since before I was born).
We have the privilege of reading about the first church through Luke's account in the book of Acts. I wonder what that group really looked like?
It is incredible how often this happens without any coordination but the sermon in "big church" Sunday also took a look at the first church and compared it with the church we are a part of now.
I really think that the separation between then and now comes from the individuals that make up the church not being willing to lay aside petty differences and unite to follow Christ and the purpose that He called His followers to!
The key word above is petty. There are some issues that we must take a stand against and so some division will probably always be a part of Christianity, unfortunately.
But, even within my local church there is division. Why?
We are not willing to be sold out followers of Christ. Our ego is more important. Our reputation is more important. Our friends are more important. Our habits are more important. We allow all that crap to keep us from being the force that we could be cause someone looks, dresses or acts different.
I hate Satan! He can take a beautiful thing and through the fall distort it into an ugly mess.
Diversity. A God authored/ordained fact about humanity that is there for a purpose. To make the body more efficient and effective. Satan can distort and use it to cause division in the body of Christ. I know I just opened up a can of worms with that subject but not even getting into the race or cultural differences, even things as petty as style of clothes or gifting or body size and worse divide us.
Since I made the statement that I believe the separation comes from each of us as individuals...the question must be asked...am I laying aside petty differences for the greater purpose of carrying out the great commission as a part of my local church?
Are you?
Monday, March 15, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Lament for Haiti by Ben Homan
I LOVED this message that Ben posted and wanted to share it with you...Ben is the President of Food for the Hungry and has recently returned (as you will read) from a trip to Haiti.
More than 220,000 people perished.
More than 700,000 people displaced from their homes.
70% of the schools destroyed.
Life disrupted – and changed forever – for millions more.
The Haiti earthquake staggers the mind – and breaks the heart.
I felt torn as I went to Haiti, a tragedy that evoked hard memories of past emergencies. Still, having walked through what I can only call an “open graveyard” in post-tsunami zones and seen terror in the bullet-ridden hospitals of Baghdad, Haiti’s lament summoned. Yet I also knew such calls included searching for elusive words to say in unspeakable situations.
Haiti was no different.
My first morning in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, I glanced at the schedule. To my surprise, my name was listed next to “Staff devotions.” I winced. What would I say? What could I say? All around us was indescribable loss, the crush of debris and even the stench of bodies trapped in the rubble. In the dim morning light, I muttered a simple prayer: “God help me.”
The day before, I saw many of the 337 makeshift camps that contain an estimated 550,000 displaced people. Children roved by themselves. Bed sheets hung loosely as roofs and walls. Desperate stares. Pancaked buildings. Twisted rebar. Rescue crews. And the vacant eyes of survivors. I donned a face mask to fight the terrible odor. A staff member recounted pulling 15 bodies from his collapsed apartment building. “I was 5 minutes from death,” he said, reflecting on how far away he was from his home at the time of the quake. “I arrived home to find the bodies of six sisters huddled in one place; they died together.”
I fumbled through my Bible, hoping for God’s Spirit to speak to my soul and arrived at the Old Testament book of Lamentations – written, scholars believe, by the “weeping prophet,” Jeremiah. “A book about lamenting,” I thought. “That should do.” From my bedside, I devoured all five very hard, grief-filled chapters of Israel’s defeat, devastation, captivity and exile.Questions streamed through my head. How do you process the intensity of Haiti’s tragedy? How does one understand the huge loss of so many, many people? I read the prophets words, “Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” (Lamentations 2:13). Exactly, I thought.
As I tried to grasp the pain and suffering around me, I clung to three big ideas that gave comfort and hope – notions that I needed for my own sustenance – and that I shared with our staff on that morning. Below I have recorded an updated version of those rough ideas:Through Lamentations, God invites us to into 1) honesty, 2) relationships and 3) humility.
1. God invites us into HONESTY.
As I read the pages of Lamentations, I was struck with the raw emotions and stark descriptions.
“My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city,” Lamentations 2:11·
“…your children…faint from hunger at the head of every street…. Whom have you ever treated like this?” Lamentations 2:19, 20·
“This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.” Lamentations 1:16·
“You, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation. Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” Lamentations 5:19-20
As I read these rugged verses in Lamentations along with Psalms of lament, such as Psalm 10, I was struck at the emotional range and space that God’s prophet uses to lead others into lament. Is God really that big and expansive to invite His people to wail, to weep, to complain – and even to, at times, lodge charges of abandonment on heaven’s doorstep? The answer is “yes.”
God invites our honesty. He will meet us on the “holy ground” of our expressed sorrow, our lament, and He is doing this in Haiti. Yet I am convinced, as I read Scripture and understand more of God’s amazing emotional depth, that the path of healing for Haiti must first route itself through grief. Lament cannot be healthily by-passed. God can deal with our brutal emotional expression – and beckons us to come close with all of our hurts. He wants to touch us and heal us at that level.
2. God invites us into RELATIONSHIPS.
Lamentations was not written as a private journal or secret diary. It was inspired and preserved for a collective purpose in the life of God’s people. Indeed, it was written as a community document, in poetic form, that would facilitate a shared historical experience. It builds a lexicon of suffering, a model of how to communicate about epic loss. Yet while the Book of Lamentations at its most basic structural level strings together five poems that key off of Hebrew acrostics, the book trail blazes vulnerability with others and a group sharing of hard emotions. But the prophet does not stop at the transparent exposure of feelings. He also goes down the brave path of confession. ·
“My sins have been bound to a yoke….” Lamentations 1:14·
“The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command,” Lamentations 1:18·
“The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our hearts are faint, because of these things our eyes grow dim.” Lamentations 5:16-17
After I shared my thoughts about Lamentations with our staff in Port-au-Prince, I was with one of Food for the Hungry’s trained trauma counselors inside the wreckage of a neighborhood Haitian church. With holes in the ceiling above and crumbling walls, he distributed blank sheets of paper, pencils and crayons to each of these precious Haitian quake survivors. At a crude table, he invited the group to draw pictures of their earthquake experience. Where were they? What do they remember? The group quietly drew – and then they spoke, wept and discussed. The community of quake survivors found a common voice in their drawings – and it allowed them to take an early step toward processing their pain and receiving God’s comfort – in the context of relationships.
My own natural tendency when I return from disaster zones is to shrink away into private reflection. “Leave me alone,” I sometimes think. Yet withdrawing from relationships is no path for restoration or depth of healing from trauma. God grants relationships as a means of recovery from wounds. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” (Romans 12:15). We are invited in the community of faith to meet each other across our vast spectrum of both easy and difficult emotions. Of course, this has implications not only for folks who experience suffering, but also those in close proximity. Sometimes, the bystanders of pain must go in pursuit of a friend or loved one who is hurt. No one who is injured should bear the burden alone. “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ,” Galatians 6:2.
As I emerged from post-earthquake Haiti, I dedicated the better part of a day to talk with a friend who is also a pastor and trained counselor. I shared what I saw and experienced in Haiti. I grieved for the man with mangled legs who dragged himself everywhere with his arms. I told of a restless, almost mob-like situation surrounding our distribution of health and hygiene boxes – and I felt graced with the restorative impact that flows from close relationships. One of my prayers for Haiti is that it will become a nation of “wounded healers” who bless and restore each other, in part, through the ability to express loss. In the context of relationships, we can remind people in pain that what Jesus said is true, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” Matthew 11:28.
3. God invites us into HUMILITY.
The prophet in the Book of Lamentations, viewing the tragic events for the Hebrews, offers no pat answers or definitive answers as to the “why” question of suffering. He offers no explicit, one-size-fits-all philosophical statements on the problem of pain. To be blunt, the book affirms that suffering perplexes and that we lack God’s full perspective. The Hebrew reader at the time of the book’s writing would likely have been instructed in the Law of Moses and be familiar with Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” There are realities hidden from view. There are answers we do not have.
In the life of my own family, we have no clear understanding of why my wife has the disease Multiple Sclerosis. My father and my wife’s father both died from the same form of cancer. One lived to age 86; the other did not reach 70 years. Why such different courses for the same diagnosis? We do not know. The complexities of not knowing can be frustrating – yet we are allowed and even invited to struggle, wrestle and dispute. At the end of the day, mysteries and secrets remain – and starkly remind us of human limits. In short, the secret things of this world humble us. I am finite; God is not. And it is perhaps in this recognition of my shortcomings and limited view of reality that I can gain a larger view of the greatness of God. As we learn in Lamentations 3:22-23, “Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” God is great; I am not great. It is a humbling truth to which pain and suffering can bring us.
CONCLUSION
A reflection on lament cannot be complete without acknowledging Jesus’ lament. Recall that desperate moment on the cross as Jesus completed His selfless act of redemption and sacrifice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Jesus’ lament, which marks an amazing moment in redemptive history in which He bore the penalty of sin, was likely not in clear view of the writer of the Book of Lamentations or its initial audience. Think of it. The Creator God becomes human, bears our burdens and cries out in lament. Though the prophet Isaiah predicted the Messiah to be a “Man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3), the notion then of a suffering Savior was not fully grasped. Yet being a reader of the Book of Lamentations on this side of the cross, I can only stand in greater amazement and worship of God for entering our world of lament, suffering on the cross and truly becoming a “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6) who meets us in our pain and binds up our wounds.
As we pray for Haiti and as we connect with each other through our own lamenting, be reminded that lament also represents an invitation. Lament can be a part of our journey into honesty, relationships and humility. God meets us there in hard, but intimate communion.
by Benjamin Homan
Food for the Hungry
February 2010
The original post of this can be found at the address below on the Food for the Hungry facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/food-for-the-hungry/lament-for-haiti/336742167776
More than 220,000 people perished.
More than 700,000 people displaced from their homes.
70% of the schools destroyed.
Life disrupted – and changed forever – for millions more.
The Haiti earthquake staggers the mind – and breaks the heart.
I felt torn as I went to Haiti, a tragedy that evoked hard memories of past emergencies. Still, having walked through what I can only call an “open graveyard” in post-tsunami zones and seen terror in the bullet-ridden hospitals of Baghdad, Haiti’s lament summoned. Yet I also knew such calls included searching for elusive words to say in unspeakable situations.
Haiti was no different.
My first morning in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, I glanced at the schedule. To my surprise, my name was listed next to “Staff devotions.” I winced. What would I say? What could I say? All around us was indescribable loss, the crush of debris and even the stench of bodies trapped in the rubble. In the dim morning light, I muttered a simple prayer: “God help me.”
The day before, I saw many of the 337 makeshift camps that contain an estimated 550,000 displaced people. Children roved by themselves. Bed sheets hung loosely as roofs and walls. Desperate stares. Pancaked buildings. Twisted rebar. Rescue crews. And the vacant eyes of survivors. I donned a face mask to fight the terrible odor. A staff member recounted pulling 15 bodies from his collapsed apartment building. “I was 5 minutes from death,” he said, reflecting on how far away he was from his home at the time of the quake. “I arrived home to find the bodies of six sisters huddled in one place; they died together.”
I fumbled through my Bible, hoping for God’s Spirit to speak to my soul and arrived at the Old Testament book of Lamentations – written, scholars believe, by the “weeping prophet,” Jeremiah. “A book about lamenting,” I thought. “That should do.” From my bedside, I devoured all five very hard, grief-filled chapters of Israel’s defeat, devastation, captivity and exile.Questions streamed through my head. How do you process the intensity of Haiti’s tragedy? How does one understand the huge loss of so many, many people? I read the prophets words, “Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” (Lamentations 2:13). Exactly, I thought.
As I tried to grasp the pain and suffering around me, I clung to three big ideas that gave comfort and hope – notions that I needed for my own sustenance – and that I shared with our staff on that morning. Below I have recorded an updated version of those rough ideas:Through Lamentations, God invites us to into 1) honesty, 2) relationships and 3) humility.
1. God invites us into HONESTY.
As I read the pages of Lamentations, I was struck with the raw emotions and stark descriptions.
“My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city,” Lamentations 2:11·
“…your children…faint from hunger at the head of every street…. Whom have you ever treated like this?” Lamentations 2:19, 20·
“This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.” Lamentations 1:16·
“You, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation. Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” Lamentations 5:19-20
As I read these rugged verses in Lamentations along with Psalms of lament, such as Psalm 10, I was struck at the emotional range and space that God’s prophet uses to lead others into lament. Is God really that big and expansive to invite His people to wail, to weep, to complain – and even to, at times, lodge charges of abandonment on heaven’s doorstep? The answer is “yes.”
God invites our honesty. He will meet us on the “holy ground” of our expressed sorrow, our lament, and He is doing this in Haiti. Yet I am convinced, as I read Scripture and understand more of God’s amazing emotional depth, that the path of healing for Haiti must first route itself through grief. Lament cannot be healthily by-passed. God can deal with our brutal emotional expression – and beckons us to come close with all of our hurts. He wants to touch us and heal us at that level.
2. God invites us into RELATIONSHIPS.
Lamentations was not written as a private journal or secret diary. It was inspired and preserved for a collective purpose in the life of God’s people. Indeed, it was written as a community document, in poetic form, that would facilitate a shared historical experience. It builds a lexicon of suffering, a model of how to communicate about epic loss. Yet while the Book of Lamentations at its most basic structural level strings together five poems that key off of Hebrew acrostics, the book trail blazes vulnerability with others and a group sharing of hard emotions. But the prophet does not stop at the transparent exposure of feelings. He also goes down the brave path of confession. ·
“My sins have been bound to a yoke….” Lamentations 1:14·
“The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command,” Lamentations 1:18·
“The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our hearts are faint, because of these things our eyes grow dim.” Lamentations 5:16-17
After I shared my thoughts about Lamentations with our staff in Port-au-Prince, I was with one of Food for the Hungry’s trained trauma counselors inside the wreckage of a neighborhood Haitian church. With holes in the ceiling above and crumbling walls, he distributed blank sheets of paper, pencils and crayons to each of these precious Haitian quake survivors. At a crude table, he invited the group to draw pictures of their earthquake experience. Where were they? What do they remember? The group quietly drew – and then they spoke, wept and discussed. The community of quake survivors found a common voice in their drawings – and it allowed them to take an early step toward processing their pain and receiving God’s comfort – in the context of relationships.
My own natural tendency when I return from disaster zones is to shrink away into private reflection. “Leave me alone,” I sometimes think. Yet withdrawing from relationships is no path for restoration or depth of healing from trauma. God grants relationships as a means of recovery from wounds. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” (Romans 12:15). We are invited in the community of faith to meet each other across our vast spectrum of both easy and difficult emotions. Of course, this has implications not only for folks who experience suffering, but also those in close proximity. Sometimes, the bystanders of pain must go in pursuit of a friend or loved one who is hurt. No one who is injured should bear the burden alone. “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ,” Galatians 6:2.
As I emerged from post-earthquake Haiti, I dedicated the better part of a day to talk with a friend who is also a pastor and trained counselor. I shared what I saw and experienced in Haiti. I grieved for the man with mangled legs who dragged himself everywhere with his arms. I told of a restless, almost mob-like situation surrounding our distribution of health and hygiene boxes – and I felt graced with the restorative impact that flows from close relationships. One of my prayers for Haiti is that it will become a nation of “wounded healers” who bless and restore each other, in part, through the ability to express loss. In the context of relationships, we can remind people in pain that what Jesus said is true, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” Matthew 11:28.
3. God invites us into HUMILITY.
The prophet in the Book of Lamentations, viewing the tragic events for the Hebrews, offers no pat answers or definitive answers as to the “why” question of suffering. He offers no explicit, one-size-fits-all philosophical statements on the problem of pain. To be blunt, the book affirms that suffering perplexes and that we lack God’s full perspective. The Hebrew reader at the time of the book’s writing would likely have been instructed in the Law of Moses and be familiar with Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” There are realities hidden from view. There are answers we do not have.
In the life of my own family, we have no clear understanding of why my wife has the disease Multiple Sclerosis. My father and my wife’s father both died from the same form of cancer. One lived to age 86; the other did not reach 70 years. Why such different courses for the same diagnosis? We do not know. The complexities of not knowing can be frustrating – yet we are allowed and even invited to struggle, wrestle and dispute. At the end of the day, mysteries and secrets remain – and starkly remind us of human limits. In short, the secret things of this world humble us. I am finite; God is not. And it is perhaps in this recognition of my shortcomings and limited view of reality that I can gain a larger view of the greatness of God. As we learn in Lamentations 3:22-23, “Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” God is great; I am not great. It is a humbling truth to which pain and suffering can bring us.
CONCLUSION
A reflection on lament cannot be complete without acknowledging Jesus’ lament. Recall that desperate moment on the cross as Jesus completed His selfless act of redemption and sacrifice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Jesus’ lament, which marks an amazing moment in redemptive history in which He bore the penalty of sin, was likely not in clear view of the writer of the Book of Lamentations or its initial audience. Think of it. The Creator God becomes human, bears our burdens and cries out in lament. Though the prophet Isaiah predicted the Messiah to be a “Man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3), the notion then of a suffering Savior was not fully grasped. Yet being a reader of the Book of Lamentations on this side of the cross, I can only stand in greater amazement and worship of God for entering our world of lament, suffering on the cross and truly becoming a “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6) who meets us in our pain and binds up our wounds.
As we pray for Haiti and as we connect with each other through our own lamenting, be reminded that lament also represents an invitation. Lament can be a part of our journey into honesty, relationships and humility. God meets us there in hard, but intimate communion.
by Benjamin Homan
Food for the Hungry
February 2010
The original post of this can be found at the address below on the Food for the Hungry facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/food-for-the-hungry/lament-for-haiti/336742167776
Monday, January 25, 2010
God's Provision
It became undeniably obvious last week that while I have been "milking" the tires on my wife's Honda Pilot for over 70,000 miles now, for the safety of the MOST important people in my life it is time to put them to rest.
I took a little bit of time this past weekend to look at reviews of some of the most widely used tires for her vehicle and determined a couple of good options.
I went into Discount Tire this morning with a heavy heart though knowing that we don't have the $ to buy a set of cheap tires let alone a set of tires I feel comfortable that my family is riding on.
I got there shortly after they opened and talked with the guy at the desk. "yup, you need knew tires" he says to me. No surprise! Not to sound too cynical but He prob would have told me that even if I didn't (thankful that I have a dear friend that is honest with me and just so happens to have a "shop").
I had him price me a set of "middle of the road" tire. $700!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I almost fell over. I tried to keep from crying in the middle of a tire shop and asked about other options. Here is where it starts to get good!
Turns out that he didn't have that tire in stock but he could upgrade me for "no additional cost" to a Yokohama (better than Goodyear Intergrity) tire. Come to find out that there was an inventory issue and they didn't have the Yokohama tire in stock either so that manager decided to give a free upgrade (again) to a Goodyear Fortera silent armor (better than the Yokohama) tire.
I made the purchase with a heavy heart but praying the whole time that God would in some way provide the $ to cover this purchase.
After I get the tires I have to head directly to my seminary class. After class lets out I check my e-mail via my phone (which I rarely do). There is an e-mail from the chairman of our Shepherd Board (elder board) stating that the board had decided to give a one time gift to the salaried staff (we did not receive raises or bonuses this past year out of prudence for the economic situation).
The amount of the one time gift combined with a refund of our escrow acct from the home that we bought this past year completely covers the tires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll stop there but there aren't enough exclamation points that I could include at the end of that statement.
In Philippians Paul is talking to the Philippian church and is commending them for their faithful giving to him and to his work and his encourgaement to them is "And my God, will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen." Phil 4:19-20
AMEN.
I took a little bit of time this past weekend to look at reviews of some of the most widely used tires for her vehicle and determined a couple of good options.
I went into Discount Tire this morning with a heavy heart though knowing that we don't have the $ to buy a set of cheap tires let alone a set of tires I feel comfortable that my family is riding on.
I got there shortly after they opened and talked with the guy at the desk. "yup, you need knew tires" he says to me. No surprise! Not to sound too cynical but He prob would have told me that even if I didn't (thankful that I have a dear friend that is honest with me and just so happens to have a "shop").
I had him price me a set of "middle of the road" tire. $700!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I almost fell over. I tried to keep from crying in the middle of a tire shop and asked about other options. Here is where it starts to get good!
Turns out that he didn't have that tire in stock but he could upgrade me for "no additional cost" to a Yokohama (better than Goodyear Intergrity) tire. Come to find out that there was an inventory issue and they didn't have the Yokohama tire in stock either so that manager decided to give a free upgrade (again) to a Goodyear Fortera silent armor (better than the Yokohama) tire.
I made the purchase with a heavy heart but praying the whole time that God would in some way provide the $ to cover this purchase.
After I get the tires I have to head directly to my seminary class. After class lets out I check my e-mail via my phone (which I rarely do). There is an e-mail from the chairman of our Shepherd Board (elder board) stating that the board had decided to give a one time gift to the salaried staff (we did not receive raises or bonuses this past year out of prudence for the economic situation).
The amount of the one time gift combined with a refund of our escrow acct from the home that we bought this past year completely covers the tires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll stop there but there aren't enough exclamation points that I could include at the end of that statement.
In Philippians Paul is talking to the Philippian church and is commending them for their faithful giving to him and to his work and his encourgaement to them is "And my God, will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen." Phil 4:19-20
AMEN.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Am I a leader? I want to be a leader!
As I meet regularly with mentors of mine we seem to get on "themes" for a couple weeks at a time...and sometimes for longer.
Lately, the theme has been leadership. Specifically, my leadership of the 18 volunter leaders and 1 intern that are under my "leadership".
This past week one of my mentors provided two word pictures for me. His words were: a manager is the guy trying to push his team up the hill.
A leader is the guy out in front leading the way up the hill.
As I have spent some time thinking and praying introspectively about this here is what I came up with...short version :)
One was a picture of a manager that kinda looked like this...
Everyone is there and ready to be told what to do but they are sitting around while the "manager" is trying to get them on board and push them to the finish line (read: goal).
The other was a picture of a leader that looked more like this ...
A person knowing where they are going and how to get there. He has built relationship with them and poured into their lives so they trust him and he trusts them.
They are on board with him & the strategy so now he is stepping out and leading the way knowing that the eager and willing people will follow his example and direction to achieve their goal.
As I meditate on these two word pictures in my mind and look at these two pictures that I found I am able to see that I have put on the hat of a manager which is NOT my natural approach. Nor is it the most effective (my opinion) in this ministy setting.
Part of it is me trying to adopt things that other people are that just aren't me and part of it is a forced action because I feel pressure to accomplish goals, etc.
As I was talking with him (my mentor) I realized that actually my more natural approach is the "leadership" style not the "manager" one.
I am a more relational person and love connecting with people that way.
I hope this realization will make me more of a leader.
I want to be a great leader!
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