Spiritual Leaders Role with the Vision

Buying in to the revelation of God is where the vision comes to life. But here is the thing with the revelation of God, it cannot be forced upon another. I cannot be given an edict from someone else and expect to carry it out blindly, that is compliance and not commitment or buying in. As I have written based on my study, the buy in comes from our receiving the revelation of God for ourselves and following the will of Him.

The question asked by Henry and Richard Blackaby is this: “How are you helping others grow in their relationship with God?” Well, how are you and what does that mean to the others? For me it is by discipling. First understanding what discipling is and next sharing that with others so they will understand and then share themselves. This is helping others to find the LORD through study and learning and thereby opening them up to receive the revelations of God for their lives.

So, the role of the spiritual leader with the vision is communication. As a spiritual leader, we are to share the gospel and the revelation that we have received. Not to command others to follow us, but to lead others to follow God. Our role is to bring others into the family of God as witnesses for Him, not to convert them, but to allow for God to reveal to them His glory, His agenda, and His will for them.

“¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” – Matthew 28:18-20 (ESV)

What do you believe your role to be as a spiritual leader? Are you to deliver and expect all to follow your vision? What if you were to bring the people to God for His glory, agenda, and will to be revealed to them by Him?

How do We Buy In to the Vision

I am sure that most have been part of an organization that espouses some vision of the future. I know that the organizations I have been a part of sure have. The thing is, I am only able to remember and follow really only one of them. All of the others I could not see the benefit to me. I was not bought into the vision as there was nothing in it for me.

Now, the one that I can remember and buy into is the vision of our church. The vision of the Bridge Fellowship in Boerne, Texas is this: “We long to see a gospel movement that reaches every person of the Hill Country and is carried to the ends of the earth.” This vision is derived from the words of Jesus as He ascends to Heaven.

“⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” – Acts 1:8 (ESV)

Now, how is it that I get behind something that is taken from somewhere else. Well, because it is inspired by God. It is His vision and we are taking it on as ours. It has been revealed to be the work to expand the kingdom of God. I am bringing the gospel to others so that they will have that which I do. I win when my brothers and sisters are there with me. I benefit therefor I am behind it. I buy in thanks to the reward in heaven for my work.

Visions are a dime a dozen and as I have noted above, I have had my share of them. But the visions fade when there is nothing in it for me. It is the revelation that comes from the LORD that drives the work to get behind. Buy in is easy when the benefit is known and understood.

What is your buy in to vision? Do you even know the vision of the organization you are a part? What if you knew the vision was from God and the benefit to you was clear, wouldn’t that be the revelation you would buy into?

Vision or Revelation Which is it for You

As a Christian, I receive my direction from the LORD. As a spiritual leader, I receive my vision from the LORD. That vision comes in the form of revelation. As I read this morning in my MasterWork study of spiritual leadership, I find that, “Vision is something people produce, revelation is something people receive.”

Each of us has work to perform that comes from God. We may not know exactly what the final result of the work will be, but we do know that it brings glory to God. Our role is to do that which is assigned. Notice my words above that the work “comes from God” and we are “to do that which is assigned”. We I look at the difference in vision and revelation from the Blackabys, I really start to understand those words I wrote. I am to do the work assigned, or revealed to me by God for His glory.

“¹⁸Without revelation people run wild,” — Proverbs 29:18a (CSB)

It is possible for people to create a vision that will produce results in this world, and that is what secular leaders are out to achieve, results in this world. But notice the verse above from Proverbs, that it is revelation that should be sought and not vision. The vision may produce the results in this world, but it is like boating without a rudder. There is just wild movements and not able to achieve the ending that the LORD has planned. A lot of work happening, but no lasting heavenly results to account.

As a spiritual leader, I am to “walk closely with the Father” to be “keenly aware of His revelation and are ready to respond in obedience to His initiatives”. It is in this close walk that the LORD will reveal to me His plan for me and my actions to forward His gospel to His glory.

For me it is revelation that I seek and not vision. I am looking to do the work of the Father and look to Him for that work to be revealed.

Where are you getting your direction? Are you creating a vision to carry you forward? What if instead you sought revelation to carry the LORD’s work forward?

Vision: Needed, But From Where is it Coming

It is pretty widely known and accepted that for an organization to move forward, that organization should have a vision of where to go. But, where does that vision come from? According to Henry and Richard Blackaby, it will come from “Duplicating Success, Vanity, Need, Available Resources, Leader-Driven”. A case can be made for each of them, and even as I contemplate each of them, a place to start with a vision can be had from any of them.

The organization needs a north star, if you will, to guide them. A vision can and will do that, but is it leading to the right place, that is the question. Let’s start with “Duplicating Success”. New organizations, will take the success of previous or even alternate organizations and put in place a vision based on that success and model. Where the vision was effective for that organization, it may not be the right vision for the new. Just because it worked once, does not mean that it will work again.

Next, we have “Vanity”. This vision is driven by the one to gain notoriety for himself as the purveyor of the vision. The attitude that “I put this in place and am driving the organization forward” approach. This is an organization, not a sole-proprietorship. There needs to be mass buy-in as opposed to edict from the one.

What about “Need”? Looking at the constituent landscape and determining the need and driving the organization based on that need. What a noble approach, solving the problem in the area. But what about the long term. Seems to me that the organization that seek to meet a specific need, loses focus as the need gets close to being met.

And then we have the “Available Resources”. This is the approach of looking at your organization and seeing what you have at your disposal and working with what you have to drive what you will do. This is not the same as using the resources you have to accomplish your vision, but rather setting the vision based on what you have available.

And finally, from the Blackabys we have “Leader-Driven”. This one to me is where we should be, but it is not one man as the leader providing the vision. Yes, there is one man at the top of the organization, but is the one man the premier authority? Where the motives of the one man may be sound and wholesome, is this the approach of spiritual leadership as designed by God?

Paul knew of the challenges which faced the leaders of the church. He knew that there would always be a tendency for the one to drive the direction of the many. Now there may be the one who is driving, it is not for the one to decide on the direction to go or path to take. It is this “one” who, unless fully dependent and obedient to God, who will decide on the vision based on the five places noted above.

“²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” – 1 Corinthians 1:20-21 (ESV)

As for spiritual leadership, It is from God where vision should come. We should not be moving on our own accord but should be working toward the goal of the LORD as He provides and directs.

Where is your vision coming from? Are you looking to one of the five places above? What if you were to take your direction from the LORD and allow Him to provide and guide you?

Becoming a Spiritual Leader is a Process

Generally, a newborn does not just get up and start running around as a champion sprinter. First the child must learn to crawl, then walk, and then run. And even in each step, there is time devoted to each to get good at it. Becoming a spiritual leader is similar in that it is a process and one must gain in one and work to get good at it before moving on to the next.

The process starts with our relationship with God. We first accept Him as our Father and work to engage with Him to understand and follow where He would have us go. It is devotion to the LORD that opens our heart and soul to accept Him as our Father and know that whatever He has for us is for our continued development to the achieve the purpose He has for us.

Next, we are put on the path to develop the character needed to take on the role of spiritual leader. It is not an easy path, and it is long. As noted in another of my writings from my study of spiritual leadership, “Spiritual Leadership Takes Time”. There are no shortcuts, and just when you “figure it out” the only thing you figure out is that there is more to learn and the path is even more challenging that originally thought.

Once we have developed the character needed to take on the role of spiritual leader, we will then be entrusted with the role. But, even when we have been entrusted with the role, we are still learning and developing through the experiences we encounter daily. Those experiences will be “both good and bad” as Henry and Richard Blackaby indicate. It takes them both to round us into the spiritual leaders that God has for us to become. Even when mistakes happen, “Wise leaders allow God to make the most of their mistakes.” – Henry and Richard Blakaby.

The thing is, becoming the spiritual leader God has for me to become takes time and experience in the development of my character. Each of those are determined, according to the Blackabys, by my dedication to “trust in God and obedience to God”. Only God can give and grow in me the character He is looking for to take on the role of spiritual leader. I can take comfort in that once He selects me for the role, He will provide all that I will need to accomplish the work that He has set for me to accomplish for His glory.

What is your thoughts on becoming a spiritual leader? Are you of the camp that believes you can just start running with it? What if you knew and understood that becoming a spiritual leader is a process and you were to lean on the LORD to work you through that process?

Spiritual Leadership Takes Time

It is interesting to see people as they are just getting started in a role and how they change over time. Those that learn from experiences, whether those are successes or failures, are those who the greatest movement is witnessed.

As for spiritual leadership, the same is true. Growing in spiritual maturity and into the spiritual leader does not generally come once one is found in the new role. Sure, there is excitement and action taken by the new Christian, but excitement and action should not be confused with maturity and leadership.

Paul’s conversion was a turning point in his life and in the life of the spread of the gospel. It was a dramatic event and had a profound impact on the man, Paul. Yet, as strong a leader he was before his conversion, it would be 10-15 years before he would make his first missionary journey. Again demonstrating that it takes time to grow into spiritual maturity and leadership.

Abraham started his life as a worshiper of the moon, yet was chosen by God to be the father of all nations. It certainly did not happen overnight, for it was 25 years after God told him his wife would give him a son that it actually happened. As Richard and Henry Blackaby write, “Abraham did not being his life as a paragon of faith, but gradually over many years, he developed a mature and deep relationship with God.”

We have to wait and learn from the LORD and devote ourselves fully to Him and He will create in us the spiritual leader we are to become. It is our heart devotion and not just our outward appearances. It is important that we are devoted to the LORD and give all of ourselves to Him and trust that He will provide that which is needed when it is needed.

“⁹For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.” – 2 Chronicles 16:9 (ESV)

Asa reigned in Judah and was by biblical account was good;

“2 And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God.” – 2 Chronicles 14:2 (ESV)

Yet, as Asa did not give himself fully to God, with His heart, he found himself out of the safe favor of the LORD. He was a leader, yes, but he was not the leader that led with the help and guidance of the LORD, and there He found himself missing out.

Spiritual Leadership takes time and is something to be developed over that time with our heart set on God. We may have been given leadership roles, it is likely that we are not the leaders we are meant to be, yet. We have to now ensure that we have given all of ourselves to the LORD and over time He will make us the spiritual leader He intends for us.

What is your view on becoming a leader? Once you have the role have you somehow arrived? What if you look at it as just the beginning of the journey, devote your whole self to the LORD and allow Him to develop you into the spiritual leader He has in store for you?

Spiritual Leadership Not Attained On Our Own

In the secular world, leadership as Henry and Richard Blackaby say, “can be achieved through sheer force of will.” Someone may be able to live out the phrase, “If you want something done right, I have to do it myself.” And where this may feel as though it is true in the secular world, in reality getting something done most of the time requires help. And that help is from the Holy Spirit who was assigned to the task by God and sent by Jesus.

For me to attain spiritual leadership, it needs to be given to me. It is my task assigned by God. I am provided not only the task, but also the means and help to achieve. I am not alone and my will cannot help me.

And how do we know of the assignment and the tasks we are to accomplish for the LORD. We are to be in right step with Him all along the way. I have to commune with the LORD on the regular to know and understand that which He has for me. I have to love Him will all of me and accept that He loves me with all of Himself. Only then will His will be known to me.

“³⁷And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment.’” – Matthew 22:37-38 (ESV)

This love of the LORD shows our commitment to Him and in turn, He reveals Himself to us and assigns the tasks He has for us. And then, the Helper comes to guide us through it all.

“¹⁵If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will beg in you.” – John 14:15-17 (ESV)

I cannot do it alone. I need help. The LORD knows this and provided the Helper I need. I am to do the work of the LORD with the help of the Holy Spirit. I cannot attain spiritual leadership without it being assigned to me by God and without the help of the Holy Spirit. I cannot do it alone.

What is your process for attaining spiritual leadership? Are you out there going it alone, working to do it yourself? What if you worked to love the LORD and know that He will assign your tasks and then, give you the Helper so that you are not alone?

Leadership Growth Through Experience

I believe that we put too much weight of demonstrated leadership through the celebration of the success without reviewing the circumstances that lead to that success. Before we get too far, I want to be clear in that I am not saying we should not celebrate success, as isn’t success the point. What I am saying is that where the success is the result, what lead to that success that can be replicated or avoided to generate more success.

It is the experiences that lead to the success. Think of Thomas Edison and the creation of the lightbulb. It is reported that he said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” Thomas Edison grew, not from the success, but from the experiences of getting to that success. One thousand experiences led to the invention of the lightbulb. We have to look at the experiences that led to the success a bit more.

In my life, I have had many experiences that led to my success. At one point in a company survey of the effectiveness of the leader in your organization, I was deemed by my subordinates as compared to the rest of the organization’s leaders (over 30 of us) to be the least effective. Yes, I was not just at the bottom of the list, I was the bottom. Last, in the list of my peers. What a failure I was at the time. But, I learned from that experience that I had to do and be better. And about 18 months later when the survey was taken again, I had moved up to the top of the bottom third. Yes, I was not considered high on the list of leaders, but I was not the bottom of the list either. I had learned from the experience and improved drastically and noticeably.

Where success is what the goal is, the result is not always the determining factor of the success. The experiences leading to that success make it more likely that success can and will be repeated. Moses failed to reach the promised land based on the experiences in the wilderness. Joseph failed in staying the traditional course of family. Yet, they both were and were considered great leaders based on experiences and life events that are recorded. When we look at the lives of Moses and Joseph, their continued movement forward through the hardship and failures and experiences, should inspire us to take the similar approach. We should not let those experiences get us down or derail us from our continued movement. We should be looking to those experiences as growth opportunities and steps in the process of becoming the leader that God is creating in each of us.

Where are you looking when it comes to growth in your leadership? Are you looking to the successes as the demonstration of your leaders? What if you took in all the experiences that led to the results and used those as steps in the process of your growth in leadership?

Leadership: Learned or Innate

Leadership is long debated to be innate or learned. I am sure that most if not all have an opinion related to one side or the other of that debate. I did at one time as well, and I guess that I still do, although it has changed. You see, I believe that leaders can be made or leadership can be learned, whereas I was of camp innate some time ago.

I have spent a good amount of time learning. And my learning has been in the area of leadership. I have learned that leadership is, or can be, a learned skill. It is just that, a skill, that can be picked up and developed, and mastered, just as others, like dribbling a basketball or playing the flute or drawing a puppy. Over time the skill of leadership can be honed in such a way that someone may be considered an expert or the master of the skill.

But, what about those who are naturally gifted in a skill you may ask, and that is a great question. I also believe there are those who are given talents by God for His glory. There are those who can sit down at the piano and belt out beautiful music without any knowledge. There are those who jump in the pool and can out swim all others without doing a single practice lap. There are those who open a paint tube and create amazing art with their first few strokes of the brush. These are exceptional talents that are given to them by God for His glory and should also be counted as one possibility in the debate of innate or learned when it comes to leadership.

Look at a couple of examples of leaders in God’s Word. Moses was resistant to leadership because he did not feel as though he possessed the skills. And yet God used him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He did as God asked him and even learned along the way how to throw is staff on the ground for it to become a snake. And what about Joseph. He was given the talent to dream and interpret dreams which gave him the chance to become a leader in Egypt in which he accomplished great things, like saving the kingdom from the famine that was coming.

Both of the above men of God were great Spiritual Leaders even as each acquired their skills in different ways. There are other examples on both sides of the debate and I lean on the side of learned, yet isn’t that a quality in and of itself that would be considered innate, the willingness and capacity to learn. In fact, in my reading there was the question of innate qualities that enhance leadership ability, and my eagerness to learn was the one that is part of me.

So, the debate continues, but one thing that I do know to be true, God uses us to do His will. We will either have the skills He needs or He will ensure that we receive the skills needed. Look back to Moses and Joseph to see the LORD work.

What do you fall in the debate of learned or innate leadership skills? Are you of one camp or the other? What if you were to open your mind and heart to the fact that the LORD will use you for His work regardless of what skills you have, as He will ensure that you learn them if that is what is needed?

Spiritual Leaders do God’s Work

Every day I ask for the LORD to lead me with what He would have be learn and understand and today is no different. Generally I try to stay away from defining when I am writing so that the circumstances do not dictate what would be learned. But today the LORD laid on my heart to address one man’s work in the wake of his passing. Charlie Kirk was just a man, a man doing God’s Work.

I did not know Charlie Kirk and only saw his work through the lens of social media from him directly and those who did know him personally. Everything that I saw pointed to a man doing the work God had for him and that man, Charlie Kirk, did so regardless of what others thought of or said about him. He was unapologetic about his faith and openly discussed it with anyone at any time. He let God’s agenda point him the direction he was to go.

Again, I am reading and studying in MasterWork from the fall of 2011 with respect to Spiritual Leadership as written by Henry and Richard Blackaby. These men write in the conclusion to this week’s study, “If Christians around the world were to suddenly renounce their personal agendas, their life goals and their aspirations and begin responding in radical obedience to everything God showed them, the world would be turned upside down.” They also point out, “that’s what first century Christians did, and the world is still talking about it.”

Isn’t it true that when we are doing something radical, it is something to talk about. Others take notice. Followers happen. Take that social media thing. The name of the game is “followers” and that drives more and more radical things to be done to gain followers. Our goal should be to be so radical that others will follow along, but not for our gain, for the LORD’s Glory.

How do we do that, well, following the lead of THE leader Himself, God. We are to do His will and not our own. We are to seek Him and no other. We are press forward with God’s agenda and put aside ours. And work from the words of Jesus as He taught His disciples to pray:

“¹⁰Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.”

— Matthew 6:10 (ESV)

Charlie Kirk did the work of God. He followed God’s agenda and was rewarded for it. Not without challenge, and as is possible with all of us, he lost his life in this world because of it. But, he will be remembered for the work he did to advance God’s agenda as we all should strive to be. And look for the words from God that I know Charlie Kirk heard when he arrived in Heaven:

“²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’” – Matthew 25:21 (ESV)

Who’s work are you doing each and every day? Are you seeking to accomplish your own goals and agenda? What if you looked to the LORD and did His work to accomplish God’s agenda?