ISSUE 30 / JULY_ AUG 2020
A UATLHT OE RR / H AAURTVHEOYR // JA EURT RH YO RM . I R E L A N D / K A Y L A P I E R C E W
The COVID-19 crisis that has engulfed the world in recent months temporarily closed church doors and upended the way we meet, worship, give and serve. In the midst of that, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis resulted in widespread protests across the nation against racism and injustice. As pastors lead their congregations through these difficult times, many have asked anew an important question: What, precisely, is the mission of the Church? In the end, this may prove to be one of the positive outcomes of the struggles that have come to define 2020 — a Church that has thought more deeply and more critically about the nature of its calling. We have become accustomed to defining “church” by programs, facilities and leaders. People may choose a home church because it has a good children’s ministry or because the pastor preaches in an engaging way. Or perhaps they feel connected to a particular small group experience that makes them feel valued and encouraged. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things — except they have the potential to make us think about the church in terms of our own needs and desires. This can cause us to ground our understanding of the church not in Scripture, but in cultural norms and personal preferences, or in individuals with dynamic personalities. In short, the things we value in a church can easily become more about us than about God’s plans and purposes. In their book, Good Faith, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons put it this way: There is a tremendous amount of individualism in today’s society, and that’s reflected in the church too. Millions of Christians have grafted New Age dogma onto their spiritual person. When we peel back the layers, we find that many Christians are using the way of Jesus to pursue the way of self. … While we wring our hands about secularism spreading through culture, a majority of churchgoing Christians have embraced corrupt, me-centered theology. In virtually every area of life, our culture encourages us to consider what’s in it for us. However, we should think of the Church primarily in terms of what we have to offer
Christ Community Crisis the world. The Church exists for the world, but this truth often gets left behind in our
hyper-individualized church approaches. Remember, it was for the sake of the world that Jesus came (John 3:16), and it is for the sake of the world that He calls us together
and sends us out. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, not coddle the already found.
Perhaps this current crisis will push us toward realizing a less selfish version of our-
selves. If danger lurks in understanding the Church primarily in terms of our own likes and dislikes, how do we avoid this pitfall? Some seek to define the Church by what
it does — especially preaching, service and community. Scholars refer to these as the kerygmatic, diaconic and koinoniac functions of the Church, respectively. However, a church that defines itself by its activities can easily become engulfed in busyness while still not having a clear understanding of why it does all those things. Activity does not equal effectiveness. Furthermore, churches can place too much emphasis on doing and not enough on being. We can be deeply engaged in compassionate projects all around the world but unable to get along with the person who sits next to us every Sunday, or with co-workers whose politics and values differ from our own. We can become masters of long-distance forms of compassion while remaining compassionless toward
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MAGAZINE
THE SHAPE OF LEADERSHIP INFLUENCE MAGAZINE
S U B S C R I P T I O N S :
1445 N. Boonville Avenue Springfield, MO 65802-1894
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Influence magazine is published by the Assemblies of God Publisher: Douglas E. Clay Executive Editor: George P. Wood Managing Editor: Rick Knoth Senior Editor: John Davidson Assistant Editor: Christina Quick Designer: Steve Lopez and Prixel Creative Advertising Coordinator: Ron Kopczick
CONTRIBUTORS Hanfere Aligaz, Stephen Blandino, Kay Burnett, Will Ceaser, Jeannie Clarkson, Ed Crenshaw, John Davidson, Mark Entzminger, Darrell Geddes, Walter Harvey, Jerry M. Ireland, Rob Ketterling, Gregory M. Mundis Jr., Kayla Pierce, Jeffery Portmann, Christina Quick, Gerard Ruff, Darnell K. Williams Sr., George P. Wood
SPECIAL THANKS Donna L. Barrett, Malcolm Burleigh, Douglas E. Clay, Wilfredo De Jesús, Rick DuBose, Greg Mundis
Copyright © 2020 by The General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1445 N. Boonville Ave., Springfield, MO 65802-1894. Permission required for reprints. All rights reserved. All materials published herein including, but not limited to articles, photographs, images, and illustrations are protected by copyright and owned or controlled by Influence magazine of The General Council of the Assemblies of God. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan (www.zondervan.com). All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
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Influence magazine (ISSN: 2470-6795) is published six times a year in January, March, May, July, September and November by Influence Resources (1445 N. Boonville Avenue, Springfield, MO 65802-1894). Periodicals postage paid at Springfield, Missouri, and at other mailing offices. Printed in the U.S.A.
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CONTENTS
ISSUE_30/ JULY_AUG 2020
8 From the Editor Through the Valley George P. Wood
10 Get Set LEADERS IMPACTING THE CHURCH AND CULTURE What About Jesus?
A conversation with Hanfere Aligaz
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12 Leadership TOOLS FOR PERSONAL AND CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH
• Self: What Makes You Tick, and What Ticks You Off? Jeannie Clarkson • Marriage & Family: How to Influence Your Children for Lifetime Faith Mark Entzminger • Practice: Leadership in a Time of Economic Uncertainty Ed Crenshaw
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• Ethics: The Entitled Leader John Davidson
22 Christ, Community, Crisis
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Reflections on the nature of the Church’s calling. Jerry M. Ireland
32 Where We Stand Shapes What We See Perspectives on current events from National Black Fellowship leaders.
38 Developing Leaders From Within The apprenticeship model of Jesus includes these 6 steps. Jeffery Portmann
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46 Keeping the Beat 8 habits that will unify a team. Rob Ketterling
52 Church Ministry
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STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE MINISTRY
• Children Why We Underestimate Kids and What We Can Do About It Kayla Pierce • Youth In the Middle Will Ceaser • Adult Why Women’s Ministries Need to Go Deeper Kay Burnett
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60 Reviews
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The Church’s Kairos Moment on Race Plus Recommended Reading for Leaders George P. Wood
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64 Make It Count AN EIGHT-WEEK STUDY FOR LEADERSHIP TEAMS
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders Stephen Blandino
80 This Is My Story
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God’s Hand in All Things Gregory M. Mundis Jr.
JULY-AUG 2020
Influence | 5
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JULY-AUG 2020
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FROM THE EDITOR
Reflections on Leadership
Through the Valley G E O R G E P. W O O D
Our nation has walked — in fact, still is walking — through the valley of the shadow of death.
George P. Wood is the executive editor of Influence magazine.
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n Psalm 23, David prays about walking “through the valley of the shadow of death” (KJV). Contemporary translators believe “shadow of death” is a Hebrew idiom. The NIV and NET translate it as “darkest.” Even the ESV offers the alternate translation “deep darkness” in a footnote. I recognize the value of these translators’ arguments, but I still prefer the good old King James Version in this instance. It is more poetic, for one thing. And its poetry captures an important truth: Sometimes, death casts its shadow over the journey of life. Darkness becomes visible, and we shiver at its cold. The first six months of 2020 felt like that. Our nation has walked — in fact, still is walking — through the valley of the shadow of death. As I write, approximately 125,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. Their journey stopped in the valley. But millions more are in transit, worried about the disease and the economic disruption that follows in its wake. Then there is the killing of George Floyd. His death, captured on cell phone video and shared through social media, ignited protests throughout the United States, driven by anger at persisting racism and injustice. These two evils are residents of death’s valley, and they cast a long shadow over our nation, even our churches. And yet, as David walks through the valley of the shadow of death, he continues to pray, “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” A shepherd uses a rod to protect the sheep from predators, the staff to keep unruly sheep in line. By using these metaphors, David reminds us that God both protects us from evils without and purifies us from evils within.
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So, as we continue to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in the second half of 2020, let us pray to God for His presence among us, giving us faith and hope to conquer fear, and love to overcome death. Chris Railey penned the opening editorials for the first 29 issues of Influence. More than that, he collaborated with me in founding the magazine and guiding its brand, editorial content and design. Chris recently transitioned out of his roles as executive director of the Church Multiplication Network and Influence Resources into the role of lead pastor at Oaks Church (Assemblies of God) in Red Oak, Texas. We on the editorial team will miss Chris, but we wish him well in the new ministry God has given him, his wife, Cara, and their three boys. We are excited about the cover and feature stories in this issue. Jerry M. Ireland’s cover piece — “Christ, Community, Crisis” — uses our current crises to reflect on how churches can better perform the mission God has given them. “Where We Stand Shapes What We See” by the executive officers of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God, offers perspective on how AG churches can respond to the racial unrest that resulted from George Floyd’s killing. Jeffery Portmann’s “Developing Leaders From Within” outlines a model for doing precisely what the title says. And Rob Ketterling’s “Keeping the Beat” identifies practices that will unify your church’s leadership team. Finally, you will notice changes to the columns in this issue. Our Leadership columns focus on three aspects of ministry that need constant attention: self-leadership, family matters, and best practices. Our Ministry columns focus on age-and-stage issues for kids, youth, and adults. I pray these articles, and others in this issue, will bless you personally as you lead the ministry God has given you!
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GET SET
Leaders Impacting the Church and Culture
What About Jesus? A CONVERSATION WITH HANFERE ALIGAZ CHRISTINA QUICK n 1982, Hanfere Aligaz arrived in the U.S. with his wife, Yeti, and three children, $140 in cash, and a calling from God. Today, he leads a vibrant Assemblies of God congregation of 3,000 in Washington, D.C. Aligaz also serves as president and general presbyter of
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the Ethiopian Ethnic Fellowship of the Assemblies of God, one of 24 ethnic fellowships representing nearly 2,000 churches in the AG. The 7,236-mile journey from Aligaz’s native Ethiopia started with a simple question: What about Jesus?
Growing up with a Muslim mother and Orthodox Christian father, Aligaz didn’t know what to believe. Immediately after reciting the Islamic conversion prayer as a young man, he heard a voice ask, “What about Jesus?” This question continued to echo in his heart. Though Aligaz had wealth and a successful career as an airline pilot, he wrestled with a growing sense of emptiness. One night, Aligaz looked up at the African sky and proclaimed, “I know there is a power who created the moon and stars, but I don’t know who He is. If You will show yourself to me, I will follow and serve You. I will have no religion until You reveal yourself to me.” Several years passed before Aligaz heard a simple gospel presentation from a friend. The message resonated deeply, and he accepted Christ as Savior. “I knew I was changed,” Aligaz says. “All my questions were answered. I heard God say, ‘This is what you’ve been looking for.’” Not long after becoming a Christian, Aligaz was in the cockpit during a flight when he heard the voice of the Lord again — this time, telling him to go to America’s capital city and start a church. Washington, D.C., has the largest population of Ethiopian-born immigrants in the U.S., with more than 30,000 living in the metropolitan area. Many work as taxi and Uber drivers. Others own businesses, such as restaurants and grocery stores. Aligaz and his family defected to the U.S. from their then-communist nation. They left behind their careers, a bakery business, their new home, their possessions, their bank accounts, and their friends. Aligaz landed a job as part of the night crew at a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. During the day, he worked to launch his fledgling church for Ethiopian natives. Starting with five members meeting in a studio apartment, the congregation quickly grew to 50 and moved into the chapel of another local church. When attendance swelled to 300, Aligaz knew International Ethiopian Evangelical
Church needed a permanent location with room to grow. He had his eye on a former synagogue that seated 1,300, but the $2.5 million price tag was out of range. During their regular all-night Friday prayer service, the congregation sought God for a miracle, asking Him to reduce the price by $1 million and provide the funds to purchase it. A year later, the price dropped to $1.5 million, but the congregation had only managed to save $50,000. Aligaz sensed the Lord prompting him to sell the car he had paid off two months earlier and give the money to the building fund. Though it was the only vehicle his family had, he obeyed God’s prompting. This act of faith inspired others to give sacrificially. Women offered their gold jewelry. Children brought in money they had been saving for college. In one night, the church collected $217,000 in offerings and pledges — enough to make a down payment and secure a bank loan. The church now offers two services in Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia) with English translations, drawing a weekly attendance of 3,000. About 99% of the congregants are Ethiopian and Eritrean, and most come from a Muslim or Orthodox Christian background. Plans are in the works to build a new facility in nearby Fairfax, Virginia, with a sanctuary that will seat 7,000. The church has also planted eight other campuses in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and New York. Aligaz’s son and daughter-in-law, Paul and Christina Hanfere, lead one of those plants, Overflow City Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. “Everyone is involved in evangelism,” Aligaz says. “But we still have a lot to do.” The church has a program that offers free legal advice on immigration issues. Another ministry helps people with health problems navigate the medical system. “They come for those reasons, and then they hear the gospel,” Aligaz says. Aligaz is always looking for ways to confront people with the question that changed his life: What about Jesus?
“I know there is a power who created the moon and stars, but I don’t know who He is. If You will show yourself to me, I will follow and serve You.” — Hanfere Aligaz
Christina Quick is assistant editor of Influence magazine.
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LEADERSHIP SELF
What Makes You Tick, and What Ticks You Off? The benefits of growing in emotional intelligence. 12 | Influence
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JEANNIE CLARKSON eaders often make one of two mistakes in their interactions with people. The first is an error of commission: people pleasing. The other is one of omission: failing to develop as a people person. People pleasers experience high stress in conflicts and situations where someone might be
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displeased. Characteristics of people pleasers include the following: • They strive to please others and avoid conflict at all cost. • They spend too much time worrying about what others think. • They become distressed when others voice opposing views or complaints. • They may abdicate what they view as best just to keep someone happy. A people person is not necessarily an extroverted back slapper. A people person is someone who has mastered interpersonal communication skills and genuinely cares for others. Here are some other traits: • They hurt when criticized but maintain an objective view of the criticism. • They work hard to resolve conflicts in a collaborative fashion rather than just avoiding conflict. • They practice self-acceptance while also showing others acceptance, love and patience. • They work collaboratively on a corporate vision while staying true to personal values and goals. Whether you tend toward people pleasing or go too far in the other direction and haven’t developed as a people person, you can benefit by cultivating the skills known as emotional intelligence (EI). You can find any number of academic definitions, but I prefer to think of emotional intelligence as relational and emotional wisdom. It means understanding myself and my own emotions, then applying that insight to my interactions with others. God created us in His image, with the ability to experience emotions. He commands us to tend to our emotions — to control anger and speak wisely, for example. God also offers to help us with our emotions (Psalm 147:3).
The Benefits of EI
In 2013, as part of my Ph.D. work, I surveyed 263 pastors leading churches of various sizes on the topic of clergy burnout. Pastors with higher emotional intelligence
scores experienced a greater sense of personal accomplishment. Pastors who tended to base their identity and worth on perceptions of success or failure in ministry reported higher rates of emotional exhaustion. In other words, pastors who tie their value to their ministry performance are more likely to struggle with burnout. Emotional intelligence seems to decrease frustration and increase satisfaction and success in ministry — significantly reducing the risk of burnout. These findings convinced me that emotional intelligence is crucial to transformational leadership — and ministry longevity.
Emotional intelligence means understanding myself and my own emotions, then applying that insight to my interactions with others.
Three Ways to Grow EI
Emotional intelligence requires a foundation of self-understanding, a deep awareness of what makes you tick — and what ticks you off. Most of us don’t understand ourselves well. I often hear people say things like, “I don’t know why I keep doing that!” Self-understanding requires self-reflection. The Psalmist cried out, “Search me, O God!” The Lord can and does give us insight, but we also have to be willing to search ourselves. Here are three ways to do that: Listen to feedback. Pay attention to what others say — not only the good things, but also the less flattering observations and criticisms. Practice journaling. This is a helpful way to process negative emotions. The point is to reflect on what you’re feeling and why. Analyze self-talk. The things you say to yourself reveal how you see yourself. Your behaviors and moods will eventually conform to your self-talk. Identify negative self-talk patterns, and replace them with healthier ways of thinking. Pastor, your congregation deserves the best leadership you can provide. People-pleasing serves no one. Yet pastors must be people persons. Emotional intelligence skills will help you find that happy medium, stress less, and lead well. It starts with a better understanding of what makes you tick, and what ticks you off.
Jeannie Clarkson, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and professional counselor and founder of Christian Care Connection, a professional counseling center in the greater Toledo, Ohio, area. She is author of The Emotionally Intelligent Pastor.
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LEADERSHIP MARRIAGE & FAMILY
How to Influence Your Children for Lifetime Faith MA R K E N TZ MI N GE R
Biblical insights to help parents create an environment for faith to grow deep.
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grew up in the shadows of the church. We lived within walking distance of the church property and were there just about every time the doors opened. No, I was not a preacher’s kid. We were just very involved. The church was the centerpiece of my life, so it’s no surprise I’m serving in ministry today. Of course, raising kids in church is no guarantee they will grow up to serve Jesus. As a father, I am keenly aware of this reality. I want to do everything I can to pass on my faith to my sons.
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Fact is, raising children in today’s world is hard. Raising them to love Jesus is even more difficult. Ministry leaders often face additional pressures that place stresses on families or, worse, drive children away from Jesus and the Church. Are ministers at a disadvantage when it comes to perpetuating faith? I’m convinced they are not. Although there is no silver bullet to lifetime faith, I believe ministry parents have a great opportunity as they raise their children to know Jesus.
Live It
The children of ministers hear a lot of Bible teaching. They also have an opportunity to see faith in action as we live it out at home. We can show them what kindness, forgiveness and generosity look like on a daily basis. When we model those spiritual disciplines for our children, it makes a significant impact. It shows them we actually believe what the Bible teaches. However, when there is incongruence
where to begin with answering a child’s spiritual question. As ministers, we can engage in that teachable moment and make an eternal difference in the lives of our kids. One of the best gifts we can give a child is the confidence that they have what it takes to become a godly man or a godly woman. When we welcome and respond to their questions, we are helping them develop that confidence.
Strengthen It
between the faith we preach and the faith we demonstrate, our kids may become confused and disillusioned. Living out faith principles every day matters.
Discuss It
Down the road, the lessons we teach will continue to echo in the ears of our children. Even when we are not there to guide them, they will hear our words as loudly as when they were kids. One-sided conversations don’t build lasting influence, though. Kids will listen to what we have to say when we also take the time to listen to them. We don’t need to have all the answers. Sometimes the best thing we can do is hear their questions and help them discover God’s answer. The Bible teaches that questions can become opportunities for passing on our faith (Exodus 12:26–27; Deuteronomy 6:20–21). We can search the Scriptures together and connect with our kids in these moments. Many people today wouldn’t even know
As Christ followers, we interpret the world through the lens of Scripture. We must help our children learn to do the same. It’s not enough to teach the stories from the Bible. We need to point our children to the God of the Bible. Our job is to help them build a solid faith foundation, grounded in the truth of God’s Word. Deuteronomy 6:6–8 puts it this way: These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. The Word of God is the lens through which we interpret what is happening in the world. This is about more than just knowing the Bible; we must know the God of the Bible. When reading Scripture, we can help our children see the grand story of redemption — God’s power and unending love, demonstrated in Jesus. This is the understanding our children need to navigate life successfully. Our children’s faith will be tested. If the Word of God is their foundation, they are more likely to stand firm. The first and most important mission field is our own home. Our children must ultimately decide for themselves whether they will serve the Lord. But as we live out our faith, engage in spiritual conversations, and help children build their lives on the foundation of God’s truth, we are equipping them for a lifetime of faith.
When there is incongruence between the faith we preach and the faith we demonstrate, our kids may become confused and disillusioned.
Mark Entzminger is national director of Children’s Ministries and Church Ministries administrator for the General Council of the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri.
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LEADERSHIP PRACTICE
Leadership in a Time of Economic Uncertainty The Great Recession taught me four important lessons. 16 | Influence
E D CR E N SHAW ast March, our congregation was ready to begin overdue building renovations. The full amount needed was already in the bank. Then came the pandemic, bringing new economic uncertainty.
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Since that time, we have stepped up our outreach ministries but held off on the renovations. Thankfully, we’re somewhat ready for a recession. This season of national economic uncertainty is not unfamiliar territory. In my 28 years at Victory Church in suburban Philadelphia, we’ve faced a few financial challenges. In fact, we were in a similar situation during the Great Recession of 2007–09. Victory Church had outgrown our facility and was meeting temporarily in a school auditorium. We were progressing toward building on our property when the Great Recession hit. By mid-2008, we should have been breaking ground. But financing
tightened, affecting church building projects across the nation. The church architectural firm we hired eventually folded. As we considered what to do next, a friend who had pastored a nearby Assemblies of God congregation said God gave him a picture of our church in a rented facility next to an expressway. I dismissed the idea because we were still hoping to build. However, a few weeks later, a local businessman who owned a building next to the expressway talked to me about leasing. Interestingly, we could not obtain the financing to build on our hidden away property, but by November 2008, we had a contract to lease 40,000 square feet of space in the highly visible location. Our landlord even invested $2 million to provide us a high-quality ministry space. This was a strategic move, but it was also frightening. We knew if we didn’t double our attendance and offerings within a certain period of time, we wouldn’t survive. Eleven years later, we are still here. This experience and the years of operating under financial stress taught me four important lessons: 1. Listen to God. Make plans, but keep listening to God. Hear from God, and then act on what you hear. We were emboldened for our risky move because we had a word from God. Listening to God kept us from abandoning our vision when things began looking down during the Great Recession. Listening to God led us to pivot when we needed to pivot. God may speak directly or through wise counsel. When I was second-guessing myself, a respected missionary shared with me how his son’s church had invested heavily in a leased building. “You’re not crazy,” he assured me. 2. Encourage giving. Lean on God, but take responsibility. In a financial crisis, the first response is usually to cut back. A church can’t spend money that’s not available and should budget accordingly. However, cutting back is only half the
financial equation; the other half is securing resources for your church’s mission. Don’t shrink back from leading your congregation into generosity. When the time is right, consider conducting a generosity campaign. Victory Church would not have been ready for either the Great Recession or the pandemic without successful giving campaigns. Cast vision for your church, and encourage generosity. The Macedonian church gave in adverse conditions, out of deep poverty (2 Corinthians 8:2). 3. Reexamine staffing. You may need to put off filling empty positions, or even lay off staff. This is often the most painful part of leading through a financial crisis. God can redeem this difficult time by helping the church establish a stronger volunteer culture. A financial challenge may become the impetus to identifying and raising up the leaders and servants who are already in your congregation. 4. Keep the mission in focus. Mere survival as a church is not likely to motivate people toward generosity. Make a difference in the community. Partner with existing organizations to help people in need. You can do lots of ministry with few financial resources if you mobilize volunteers. In addition to ongoing outreach, our church sponsors days of service when we send volunteers — representing up to two-thirds of our average attendance — throughout the community. As a result, our community and local leaders see our church as caring and engaged. We have also been able to assist other local churches in sending out their members as volunteer servants. Avoid a mindset that automatically says “no” to ministry because of a tight budget. Find creative ways to share the love and message of Christ. God will provide the resources we need to fulfill His plan. Even in the midst of crises, God has work for us to do. Historically, difficult times have been opportunities for the Church to arise for the glory of God. May the present season open such doors of opportunity for your church.
Avoid a mindset that automatically says “no” to ministry because of a tight budget.
Ed Crenshaw, D.Min., is pastor of Victory Church (AG) in Audubon, Pennsylvania, since 1992.
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LEADERSHIP ETHICS
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The Entitled Leader J OHN DAVI DSON
Practical ways ministers can break the cycle of entitlement and live in humility. 18 | Influence
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ou’ve answered God’s call to lead in His kingdom. You’ve worked hard, studied hard, prayed hard and served hard in pursuit of that calling. And now you’ve arrived. You’re leading. People look up to you and respect you. Whether you lead a youth group, pastor a church, or serve
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as a missionary, you wield a certain amount of influence over people’s lives. Chances are good your motive for using that influence is honorable. But everyone who has power is at some point tempted to believe he or she deserves special treatment. In Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday says, “With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia.” Ministry leaders are not immune from these delusions.
Your position of spiritual leadership does not entitle you to special treatment.
John Davidson, Ph.D., is director of leadership development and the Alliance for AG Higher Education for the General Council of the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri.
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Entitlement is one of the destructive ways the enemy wreaks havoc in a leader’s life. Entitlement is a belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges. In other words, a soft-hearted individual who starts out in ministry saying, “Here I am; send me,” can turn into a hard-hearted minister saying, “Here I am; look at me,” or, “Here I am; do this for me,” or, “Here I am; give to me.” Jesus’ call is about sending us out for the benefit of the world. Entitlement is all about me getting what I’m due. It comes from a faulty assumption that because of your position, influence, calling or experience, you deserve certain things. It plays out in some of the following ways: • You anticipate sitting in a place of honor, such as the head table at events or the front row of an important meeting. • You expect invitations to serve on important committees or boards. • You assume people will seek your input before making decisions, even about things outside your purview. • You presume other leaders should ask you to speak at services or events. • You expect others to do it your way, because your way is the best way. • You believe those under your leadership should never do or say anything that challenges you. A further telltale sign of entitlement is feeling slighted, insulted or offended when the things above don’t happen. Don’t they know who I am? If you’ve ever thought or said that in response to a slight, that’s a clear sign you’re feeling a sense of entitlement. Luke records two statements from Jesus that directly address this. First, in Luke 17:7– 10, Jesus says, “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what
he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” Even the best, most qualified, most talented minister doesn’t deserve any special treatment. He or she is only an unworthy servant doing what God has asked. Second, in Luke 20:46–47, Jesus said, “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.” Jesus’ message is clear. Don’t be like the Pharisees. Your position of spiritual leadership does not entitle you to special treatment. Here are three practical ways a minister can break the cycle of entitlement and live in humility: Serve others. Intentionally do some things you don’t have to do, or things others would normally do for you, to remind yourself and others you’re not above serving. Elevate others. Use your position and influence to shine the spotlight on others and give them an opportunity to succeed. Sharing power and success will never diminish your own. Submit to others. Surround yourself with some people who know you and are not impressed by you. Have a group of friends and mentors whom you give the right to tell you when you’re wrong, behaving inappropriately or acting entitled. And then listen to them. Leaders in Christ’s church must resist the entitlement that often accompanies ministry influence. The one person in history who had a right to be entitled, wasn’t. Just as “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28), Kingdom leaders represent Jesus’ best when they give themselves away in a spirit of humility and service.
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Christ Community Crisis Reflections on the nature of the Church’s calling. JERRY M. IRELAND 22 | Influence
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he COVID-19 crisis that has engulfed the world in recent months temporarily closed church doors and upended the way we meet, worship, give and serve. In the midst of that, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis resulted in widespread protests across the nation against racism and injustice. As pastors lead their congregations through these difficult times, many have asked anew an important question: What, precisely, is the mission of the Church? In the end, this may prove to be one of the positive outcomes of the struggles that have come to define 2020 — a Church thinking more deeply and more critically about the nature of its calling. We have become accustomed to defining “church” by programs, facilities and leaders. People may choose a home church because it has a good children’s ministry or because the pastor preaches in an engaging way. Or perhaps they feel connected to a particular small group experience that makes them feel valued and encouraged. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things — except they have the potential to make us think about a church in terms of our own needs and desires. This can cause us to ground our understanding of the
Church not in Scripture, but in cultural norms and personal preferences, or in individuals with dynamic personalities. In short, the things we value in a church can easily become more about us than about God’s plans and purposes. In their book, Good Faith, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons put it this way: There is a tremendous amount of individualism in today’s society, and that’s reflected in the church too. Millions of Christians have grafted New Age dogma onto their spiritual person. When we peel back the layers, we find that many Christians are using the way of Jesus to pursue the way of self. … While we wring our hands about secularism spreading through culture, a majority of churchgoing Christians have embraced corrupt, me-centered theology. In virtually every area of life, our culture encourages us to consider what’s in it for us. However, we should think of the Church primarily in terms of what we have to offer the world. The Church exists for the world, but this truth often gets left behind in our hyper-individualized church approaches. Remember, it was for the sake of the world that Jesus
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came (John 3:16), and it is for the sake of the world He calls us together and sends us out. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, not coddle the already found. Perhaps this current crisis will push us toward realizing a less selfish version of ourselves.
The Mission
If danger lurks in understanding the Church primarily in terms of our own likes and dislikes, how do we avoid this
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pitfall? Some seek to define the Church by what it does — especially preaching, service and community. Scholars refer to these as the kerygmatic, diaconic and koinoniac functions of the Church, respectively. However, a church that defines itself by its activities can easily become engulfed in busyness while still not having a clear understanding of why it does all those things. Activity does not equal effectiveness. Furthermore, churches can place too much emphasis on doing and not enough on being. We can be deeply engaged in compassionate projects all around the world but unable to get along with the person who sits next to us every Sunday, or with co-workers whose politics and values differ from our own. We can become masters of long-distance forms of compassion while remaining compassionless toward those we see and interact with every day. I have witnessed this firsthand in missions. We had an American congregation visit us in Zambia who wanted to
serve by helping paint a church. When they arrived, the team members were constantly fighting and arguing over who was in charge and how the project should be done. The whole thing was such a disaster I couldn’t wait for them to get back on the plane to go home. They were a burden to the people they came to serve and an embarrassment to the missionaries. This often happens when a church focuses on external activities and neglects transforming and discipling its members. Often, this results from a focus on doing rather than being. In other words, when it comes to defining the Church, character matters. A biblical paradigm for church ministry involves surrender, solidarity and being sent. This perspective moves the emphasis from what we do (like painting churches that may or may not need painting) to our own moral and spiritual growth as prerequisites for effective mission both at home and abroad
Surrender
Nineteenth-century pastor and author Andrew Murray wrote that “faith is simply surrender.” The notion of surrender as it relates to the mission of the Church reminds us that our calling is one of submission. Because God is sovereign and holy, we bow to Him in submission in all we are and do. We surrender our rights as individuals and give ourselves over to God and His purposes.
A surrendered Church is one that acts not on its own initiative but that locates its identity in the revealed will of God. Jesus supremely modeled this, seeking “not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the unsurrendered Christian life was marked by cheap grace. He described it this way in Discipleship: Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs. How do we overcome our aversion to surrender and addiction to cheap grace? In practice, surrender is always a corollary to our concept of power. To the extent we value worldly power, we will never be fully surrendered to God. Consider how some Christians in Bonhoeffer’s day viewed what was happening. One German pastor declared, “It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us.” This pastor was not alone. Many others made similar and equally disturbing statements. We read this and ask, How could a people become so seduced by power as to equate Hitler with the work of Christ? How could the Church betray its true calling for such a temporal thing as national power? But the truth is, this happens far more often than we would care to admit. Today’s churches lose sight of their biblical mandate when they exchange spiritual power for political or social power and align their purpose too closely with a candidate or party. The film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings vividly depicts the corrupting influence of power. As the story goes, Hobbits Sméagol and Déagol go fishing to celebrate Sméagol’s birthday. When a large fish pulls Déagol out of the boat and into the lake, he discovers a ring of power. Sméagol’s immediate desire leads him to demand that Déagol give him the ring as a birthday present. When Déagol refuses, Sméagol kills him, and thus begins Sméagol’s awful devolving into Gollum, a grotesque,
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True surrender is about the willingness to forgo power that would come by any means other than God’s Spirit. schizophrenic creature who skulks about the Misty Mountains for the next 400 years. Gollum is ultimately cast out by his community and forced to live among the rocks and crags, feasting on raw fish. Gollum comes to torment and taunt Sméagol in an intensifying internal struggle between innocence and the lust for power. It is a potent picture of the way in which the love of power corrupts and destroys one’s true identity and better nature. Gollum depicts the decay that sets in when power becomes ultimate. Christians and churches who pursue power at all costs will inevitably find themselves on a journey from beauty to desolation, from community to isolation, from peace to chaos, and from life to death. Jesus understood and taught that worldly power is an illusion. When Satan tried to tempt Him with the “authority and splendor” of “the kingdoms of the world,” Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only’” (Luke 4:5–8). Immediately after His temptation in the wilderness, Jesus returned to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke
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4:14). It was the Spirit’s power that governed Jesus’ ministry, and it was in the Spirit’s power that the Church is sent forth (Acts 1:8). True surrender is about precisely this exchange — the willingness to forgo power that would come by any means other than God’s Spirit. In A.D. 202, the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus outlawed conversion to Christianity. Among the first arrested in North Africa was a young woman in Carthage named Perpetua. Shortly after she was imprisoned, her father, who was not a Christian, came to Perpetua and tried to persuade her to recant her Christian beliefs and bow to the emperor. Pointing to a vase, Perpetua asked her father, “Do you see that vase? Can it be called by another name other than what it is?” When her father answered that it could not, Perpetua said, “In the same way, I am unable to call myself anything other than what I am, a Christian.” Later, as her father again pleaded with Perpetua to abandon her faith, she declared, “Know that we are no longer in our own power, but in God’s.”
Not long after, Perpetua was martyred in a Roman colosseum. Her journal was passed on to other prisoners, and her writings became a source of inspiration for centuries to come. The story of Perpetua encapsulates the notion of surrender. Surrender happens as we place our identity in Christ alone and increasingly trust in the Spirit’s power to help us in everything. When Paul prayed for an end to his thorn in the flesh, the Lord replied, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” This led to Paul’s declaration of surrender: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Surrender is the byproduct of finding our truest identity in Christ and trusting in the sufficiency of His power for all He calls us to do and be. If we want to see the power of God at work in our churches, the way we get there is through surrender.
Solidarity
Not only are we “one in Christ Jesus,” as Paul says in Galatians 3:28, but we are also radically united with each other in a community of difference and diversity. In many contemporary churches, the concept of fellowship has come to mean little more than a potluck supper. Yet the biblical notion of koinōnia runs much deeper. Biblical fellowship refers to deep, sacrificial service to one another and includes suffering with one another — especially with those who suffer for the sake of the gospel — as an extension of every believer’s participation in the sufferings of Christ, and in His joy (Philippians 2:1–8). Koinōnia means our lives are inseparably woven together through Christ. It means we care about others in the faith community so deeply their suffering becomes our suffering in a real way. By being reconciled to those of other races, tribes, nationalities, political parties and social classes, believers testify to the reconciling power of the gospel. Because we have been forgiven much, we should be willing to forgive much. At a practical level, this means something as simple as holding a grudge can have a detrimental effect on the Church’s ability to reach the lost. It further means we must be willing to go to great lengths to
forgive others and show them grace, just as Christ went to great lengths to forgive and show us grace. There is no room in Christianity for those who cling to tribalism or promote racism. To be “in Christ” is to belong to a diverse family of people from every race, tribe and nationality. Catenary curves have been used in architecture for centuries. They provide a solution to the problem of creating the perfect arch (an inverted catenary) that requires no additional support. They allow the weight of the structure to be spread along the curve at equal tension points so no one point bears all the weight. Examples can be seen at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Catenary curves allowed architects to do away with the external buttresses used in buildings like the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The oneness we have in Christ works in a similar fashion. When the Church works intentionally to build up each member, the weight of one person’s burden becomes shared by all (Galatians 6:2). This is important because we tend to think community works best in the absence of tension or pressure, when everything is going well. But it is the ability to function as
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one, sharing one another’s burdens, that creates the real strength of a community. Rather than fleeing churches because of problems, we should work together to alleviate the pressure those problems create. When we are united through hardships, we can all rise to be our best selves. Solidarity, though, is costly. I recently spoke with Estrelda Alexander, a leading expert and scholar on race and African American Pentecostalism. She shared with me that most Black people live in constant fear because of the onslaught of injustices their communities suffer. When I asked what it would take to bring about change, she pointed out that justice always comes at a price. If we are going to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Black community, as we should, it will almost certainly cost us something. Some will probably think we are being too political. We might lose church members — and perhaps even our jobs. But we must remember that suffering with others, and for others, lies at the center of the gospel. Following the example of Christ requires a willingness to lay down our lives for our friends, upholding the truth that all people bear the image of God, no matter their race, social status, nationality or gender. What does costly solidarity look like? It looks like Jesus
approaching a Samaritan woman who had an unsavory reputation because He cared more about her future than her past. It looks like Martin Luther King Jr. leading clergy members from across the denominational spectrum over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, despite knowing the violent attacks that awaited them on the other side. And it looks like, as Alexander suggested, white pastors inviting Black clergy into their pulpits to talk about race and faith. Mostly, true solidarity demands paying the price of holiness so we can hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Being Sent
One of the most ancient descriptions of the Church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” In other words, the Church is united, Christlike, universal, and committed to the gospel. Though “apostolic” relates to the Church being grounded in the apostolic teachings of the New Testament, it also suggests being sent into the world. As theologian Thomas Oden wrote, “The very purpose of the coming together of the community is in order that they may be sent.” We can begin to overcome an overly individualized approach to the Church’s mission and purpose by revisiting our Assemblies of God history and doctrine.
Suffering with others, and for others, lies at the center of the gospel.
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People will care most about the crisis in front of them. The Assemblies of God was born out of the Azusa Street revival that began in Los Angeles in 1906. As these early Pentecostal believers hungered for more of God’s manifest presence and experienced the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, they interpreted the signs and wonders that followed to mean one thing: Jesus was coming back, and He was coming very soon. One task took precedence over all others: Taking the gospel to the lost among the nations. This quote from a 1906 issue of The Apostolic Faith, an early Pentecostal publication led by William Seymour, was typical of the day: Many are the prophecies spoken in unknown tongues and many the visions that God is giving concerning His soon coming. The heathen must first receive the gospel. One prophecy in an unknown tongue was interpreted, “the time is short, and I am going to send out a large number in the Spirit of God to preach the full gospel in the power of the Spirit.” Missions giving in the early years of the Assemblies of God more than doubled every year from 1917 to 1919, even with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and World War I, which ended that same year. In 1917, AG churches gave $10,234 to missions. In 1918, they nearly tripled that number, giving $29,631. And in 1919, giving rose to $63,549. This surely reflected a strategy missions secretary Stanley H. Frodsham instituted in 1918, when, at the meeting of the General Council in Springfield, Missouri, he
“recommended that missions prayer meetings be started in connection with all our assemblies to bear before the Lord the immediate needs of our missionaries.” In addition, he called for a “publicity campaign” for the purpose of “laying before the Pentecostal brethren everywhere their obligations to their representatives in the regions beyond.” People will care most about the crisis in front of them. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot log on to any media site, whether it’s the home page of Best Buy or the website for the county or city in which we live, without being immediately confronted with information and updates about that organization’s response to COVID-19. News outlets constantly update us on the latest statistics, including death tolls and infection rates. And they should. This information is both helpful and necessary. But so are statistics and information about the lost among the nations. Early Pentecostal publications like Seymour’s The Apostolic Faith were started for precisely this purpose. We cannot expect people to remain concerned about evangelizing the world if we do not consistently set before them the harsh realities of those who have no access to the gospel. The urgency of reaching the lost and the expectation of Christ’s imminent return drove the apostle Paul to work tirelessly to take the gospel to the nations, and it has driven thousands of missionaries in our Fellowship’s history to
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The Church today desperately needs to rediscover the perspective of following Christ above all else, at any cost. cross oceans and continents to preach Jesus to those who have never heard. Now more than ever, pastors and churches must prioritize the work of setting before the Church the needs of our missionaries abroad and the ongoing crisis of those entering eternity apart from the saving knowledge of Jesus.
Conclusion
What does it mean to be surrendered to God, in solidarity with Jesus and others, and sent into the world in a time of pandemic? It means being a people whose character is shaped by the nature of the Triune God we serve. It means our lives are not our own. Jesus said anyone who wants to follow Him must take up their cross first (Matthew 16:24). We often interpret this to mean we all have our own struggles, like difficulty losing weight or a sibling who is hard to get along with. But to those in the first century who heard this, it meant following Jesus would cost everything. It would be incredibly rewarding, but those rewards would come at a high price. The Church today desperately needs to rediscover the perspective of following Christ above all else, at any cost. Does our praying, giving and longing reflect a Kingdom vision or a worldly one? Are we in solidarity, or are we needlessly creating divisions? When in public, do we demand our rights and make a public spectacle of ourselves, or do we reflect the love of God in sacrificial ways as those who have surrendered their rights for the cause of Christ?
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Do we see all people as the subjects of God’s love or only those who share our views and values? Do we spend more effort and energy promoting conspiracy theories than we do promoting the gospel? Does the world look at us and say we demonstrate radical love for the suffering and oppressed, or do they see us as ambivalent and aloof ? These are the questions we need to be asking of ourselves, even as the Church undergoes radical changes in how and when we can gather. These are the questions that should guide a Church characterized by surrender, solidarity and being sent to reach the lost. These are the things that should define a Church that longs for the Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
Jerry M. Ireland is department chair of ministry, leadership and theology, and intercultural studies at the University of Valley Forge in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
Where We Stand Shapes What We See Perspectives on current events from National Black Fellowship leaders.
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people of other races poorly.” y 6-year-old daughter, Allie, is tiny. • Seventy percent of BPC are motivated to She is in the third percentile for address racial injustice in U.S. society, height and weight in her age group. When we compared to 35% of WPC. are standing in a large crowd, Allie will say to These results come from a 2019 study and me, “Pick me up, Daddy! I can’t see.” may have shifted I always do. Allie’s somewhat in perspective teaches response to the an important life killing of George lesson: Where you Floyd, which stand shapes what has touched off you see. a national conRecently, Barna versation about published an artiracism. Nevercle about the stark The National Guard blocks access theless, the huge divides on the topic to Minneapolis streets. divide between of racism between the opinions of white and Black practicing white and Black practicing Christians. ConChristians seems to confirm that where you sider the following four data points: stand shapes what you see. • Nearly 8 in 10 (78%) Black practicing For this edition of Influence, I’ve asked the Christians (BPC) definitely agree the executive officers of the National Black FelU.S. has a race problem, compared to 38% lowship of the Assemblies of God (NBFAG) of white practicing Christians (WPC). to “pick us up” and show us their perspec• Three-quarters (75%) of BPC, but only tives on current events. 42% of WPC, strongly agree the U.S. I trust that our brothers’ words, filled as has historically been oppressive to they are with both pain and hope, will help minorities. our ethnically and racially diverse Fellow• Asked which is the bigger problem in ship stand in the same place, see the same the U.S., 66% of BPC say, “Racial disthings, and move forward together. crimination that is historically built into our society and institutions,” while 61% of WPC say, “Individuals’ own beliefs George P. Wood is executive editor of Influand prejudices that cause them to treat ence magazine.
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lynching of thousands of Black men and women. or nearly 400 years, Black people have been crying, The Church again was inaudible during segregation, “I can’t breathe!” reticent in the face of police brutality and the mass incarWhen the first slave ship made the transatlantic jourceration of Black men, and speechless at the demonizaney to American shores, enslaved Africans, stacked as tion of Black skin in mass media. cargo below deck, cried out in their native tongues, “I The silence continued as the creation of separate and can’t breathe.” unequal education and qualities of life were established When thousands of Black men and women were through the institutionalization of this horrific sin. lynched in America, they cried with their dying breaths, We were even tongue-tied when it came to calling out “I can’t breathe!” racism and discrimination in the Church and calling for The horrific and broadcasted deaths of Eric Garner, positive action. Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless other Black men and women have amplified Enough is enough! We have been stuck in this rut our familiar cry and released a global cry of, “Enough is of racism ever since Christopher Columbus landed on enough!” America’s shores. We have wandered in this wilderness ENOUGH is the theme of 2020 for the National Black of sin long enough. It is time to move. Fellowship of the Assemblies of God. We prayerfully Whenever we go into unfamiliar territory, we natuselected this theme in 2019 as a commemoration of the rally feel anxious and disoriented. White people will espe40th anniversary of cially feel these emotions our ethnic fellowas they begin to navigate ship. I believe it through the historic was also a proroots and vines of racism. phetic mandate for Some white people will Walter Harvey the National Black get tired of the current Fellowship, the Assemblies of God, and the global conversation, marches, and attention focused Church as a whole to continue to move in a on racism and want to go back to the place of familnew direction for Kingdom effectiveness. iarity. But remember Black people have to navigate feelings of exhaustion, fear and insecurity every day, wondering whether they will survive or become a victim of driving while Black, jogging while Black, bird watching while Black, shopping while Black, or even sleeping while Black. As a Black man, father, husband and leader, it Israel had been moving is still difficult for me to around the wilderness for breathe the free air pro40 years until God said, claimed by Lady Liberty “Enough. Cross the Jordan.” as she stands in New York Racism is our nation’s harbor holding her torch original sin. The Church was and script that reads … silent when Black people Give me your tired, were deemed 3/5 human by your poor, law and constitution, mute Your huddled masses during slavery, hushed yearning to breathe free, as Jim Crow terrorized, The wretched refuse of and noiseless during the your teeming shore.
I Can’t Breathe
We have wandered in this wilderness of sin long enough. It is time to move.
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Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! I am ready to move together in unity to be the generation who completes the Great Commission. Are you?
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y wife and I sat in horror as we heard the news of George Floyd dying in police custody. We turned to each other and tearfully said, “Again!” Another life lost, another name joined to this seeming unending list of people — Black people — who have died. Our emotions were still raw as we were processing the senseless losses of both Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. We were battling through that all-too-familiar feeling of numbness mingled with frustration. As we watched the horrific video of Floyd’s life slowly draining from his body, hearing his words, “I can’t breathe,” and watching a restrained and helpless man cry out for his mother, we cried together. We pondered that painful, aching question Black people in America have asked again Darnell K. and again: Will there finally be justice? Sadly, this emotional space is well traveled. The space where I have to role play with my son how to respond if he is ever stopped by the police. The space where I hear his mother weeping before the Lord, begging for His protection. The space where we have to convince our white brothers and sisters that this is something real. We are not like the proverbial scared child hearing noises and seeing ghosts in the night. The monsters of evil and
Walter Harvey is the former senior pastor and now
the apostolic leader of Parklawn Assembly of God in Milwaukee and president of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God.
racism are real! Now, with George Floyd, it feels like we are finally being believed, finally being heard. One white friend called me and asked, “What can I do to help?” Here’s my response: 1. Listen. The dangers of building anything homogeneously, whether our personal lives or organizations, is that we can miss necessary and needed paradigm shifts. The call to listen means inviting someone into your life who can help you understand and gain a different vantage point. Keep in mind Black people are working through the grief cycle: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. So, at any given moment, we may be emoting any of those feelings. 2. Learn. Recently, I was educated about learning. I was Williams Sr. in a staff meeting, and I mentioned a female minister and declared, “She can preach as good as any man.”
Will There Finally Be Justice?
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As long as these issues remain Black issues, they will continue to be viewed marginally. One of my female staff members replied, “Being a man is not the gold standard of being a great preacher! If she’s a good preacher, Pastor, just say that.”
Finally, as long as these issues remain Black issues, they will continue to be viewed marginally. What will give them wings to rise is the voice of white America declaring, “Enough.” As Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
I learned! Learning is about having the relational vulnerability to be called out and corrected. As we are dealing with issues of racism and inequality, part of good leadership is becoming a learner. 3. Lament. Grieve with us. Shed tears with us. Practice compassion, empathy and pastoral presence. Let your voice be heard. It is not a time for the status quo to remain in place. Joel 2 highlights the power of lament. The prophet uses phrases like “fasting and weeping and mourning” (verse 12). What if the body of Christ came together to fast, weep and mourn before the Lord?
Darnell K. Williams Sr., D.Min., is senior pastor of
New Life Church (AG) in Lima, Ohio; vice president of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God; and a nonresident executive presbyter for the AG.
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he George Floyd incident happened in the backyard of our church community. The site of his death while in the custody of four police officers is less than a mile from where we worship and conduct ministry. When my wife and I first saw a recording of this incident on the evening news, we were both in shock and disbelief. As they played the video repeatedly on different news outlets, my shock and unbelief grew into anger and rage. I knew before I could effectively lead my congregation through Darrell this difficult time, I had to release my anger and allow the Spirit of the living God to heal my offended psyche and fill my heart with love and compassion. Our church, Christ Church International (AG), is located in the heart of the area where protests disintegrated into rioting, looting, and the destruction of property. We quickly realized the community would be facing food insecurity because the grocers, gas stations, and mom
and pop shops had been completely destroyed. We decided we would become a hub for food distribution within our community. Through partnerships with suburban Minneapolis churches, such as Emmanuel Christian Center (AG) and
A Kairos Moment Geddes
We must exercise our prophetic voice and address the inequities that continue to exist within our society.
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that continue to exist within our society. We must begin the process of open and honest dialogue between urban and suburban churches and urban and suburban pastors, exploring how partnerships can have an impact on the greater metroplexes across our nation. Frank Bartleman, who observed the leadership of William Seymour, the oneeyed, African American Darrell Geddes (masked) and area leaders leader of the great Azusa partnering for the good of the community. Street Revival, stated that “the color line was washed away in the blood.” When the Azusa Street Revival faded, the Church missed an opportunity to continue demonstrating the equality of all people. This situation presents another opportunity for the body of Christ to lock arms and demonstrate that the inhumane treatment of people of color by those in positions of power is an affront to the creation narrative. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the I firmly believe this a kairos moment, a special moment in time, and that we must take full advantage of what has ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; presented itself. This is the Church’s opportunity to be and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, KJV). the Church. This is our opportunity to join with diverse communiDarrell Geddes is senior pastor of Christ Church ties and speak truth to power. We cannot afford to turn International (AG) in south Minneapolis, and executive our backs or stick our heads in the sand, but we must secretary of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemexercise our prophetic voice and address the inequities blies of God. Grace Church (independent), we have quickly become a part of the solution to those who live in the areas devastated by rioting. Our congregation rose to the occasion, distributing 581 boxes and 483 bags of food, and ministering to more than 400 families in south Minneapolis since the death of George Floyd on May 25.
This is the Church’s opportunity to be the Church.
Being Black in America Gerard Ruff
B
eing Black in America is a journey filled with amazing highs and many agonizing lows, with a history that includes both slavery and the first Black president.
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However, being Black in America today still means living with some of the same realities our predecessors faced. Typically, what changes is how America categorizes
and defines Black people, often with new but equally demeaning and devaluing terms — terms that stand in stark contrast to the way others are viewed. While others are poor, down on their luck, rowdy or dealing with a sickness, Black people facing the same issues are called lazy, dependent, savages, addicts and dealers. The disparities are great. George Floyd’s death is another reminder that we live in a country with too many inequalities to change overnight, and a future being held hostage by a past that refuses to let go. “Succeeding while Black” is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying we are often profiled and presumed guilty for no other reason than the color of our skin. I remember one occasion when I was traveling by car to an engagement two hours from my home. There was
My appeal to the Church is to remember that before our cultures, customs or class, our politics, pedigree or privilege, we are the Church. heightened tension in the Black community because of another officer-involved murder in the news. While I was on the road, my wife called and said our daughters, then 23 and 24, were nervous. They insisted she call to caution me about getting stopped by police — not because I often do, but because of their fears for my safety. I cried. I drove the rest of the way thinking of how my doctorate, clean
record, and alcohol- and drug-free lifestyle meant nothing. If the wrong cop stopped me, anything could happen. This is why Black parents have “the talk” with our kids: “Do not dress like that, talk like that, wear your hair like that. If you’re pulled over by police … .” It’s sad but still true in 2020. My oldest daughter, who has a master’s degree in family and child psychology, often says the physiological and psychological impact of racism and discrimination on African Americans is stressing us to death. Guiding my family and ministry through this maze of emotional, psychological and physical challenges is a burdensome experience. We can see the history of inequality in America not only in events like the Black Wall Street Massacre (1921) and the false convictions of the Central Park Five (1989), but also in the daily news. My appeal to the Church is to remember that before our cultures, customs or class, our politics, pedigree or privilege, we are the Church. I pray the Assemblies of God would be courageous, disruptive, and innovative in our pursuit to eradicate racism and injustice. I believe we’re on the right course. Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Let’s stand in love and work tirelessly — with boldness, courage and faith — until we truly are one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Gerard Ruff, D.Min., is senior pastor of Cornerstone Assembly of God in Hampton, Virginia, and treasurer of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God.
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Robert Mauri and lead pastor Jeffery Portmann
Glenn Glover, mechanic
Pastors Jeffery and Joanne Portmann
Facilities director Tracy Ahrens and daughter Sam
Emily Smith, marketing director
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Youth intern Riley Baird (center) with youth pastors Sal Labarbera and Justus Portmann
Developing Leaders
Brandi Patrick, nursery director, and husband Nathan, adviser
From
Jessica Garcia, greeter
Within Jeffery Portmann
Whitney Lynd, nursery volunteer
The
apprenticeship model of Jesus
6
includes these
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steps.
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The one person in the history of the world who could have done ministry alone didn’t.
A
fter 20 years in the same city, 16 in the same church, and 12 at the same job, we packed up and moved to a place where we knew no one — to start a multiplying church. The Puget Sound region of Washington state is one of the leastreached corners of America. While many parts of the U.S. may be called post-Christian, a better description for this area is pre-Christian. Most people here have not rejected the gospel as much as they’ve not encountered it. Their parents, grandparents and friends stopped going to church long ago or never have. But what others saw as a problem, we saw as a place primed for hope. To fulfill our vision of planting five churches in five years, we would have to become exceptionally proficient at developing leaders from within. It wouldn’t be easy, but we knew God had called us to shine the light of the gospel into this dark setting. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matthew 9:37–38). The harvest remains plentiful today. But pastors can’t bring in the harvest alone. We need to raise up workers. Most of our early staff meetings were in bustling coffee shops. At times, we’d have to wait for another group to get up so we could settle in to our “office space.” The humming and grinding of machines formed the backdrop of our strategizing and training sessions. The hours we logged there made the $5 cups of coffee seem like a great deal. Matt Boots was a logistics specialist for Seattle-based Starbucks, which was what brought him and his family to Puyallup. Our church plant, newhope, was at its original launch location, the Regal Theater, when they arrived. Matt and his wife, Lisa, are warm, generous, others-focused people. They had been part of another church plant in Nebraska and started attending our church as interested spectators. We invited them to participate in our volunteer development process and a community group, where it became obvious their love for Jesus and others made them prime candidates to take greater steps into leadership. Matt would go on to serve one of our campuses as community groups director. Though he managed millions of dollars and dozens of people in his day job, he humbly submitted to our training process. The couple’s faithfulness and commitment to our church only increased as Matt and Lisa stepped into volunteering. With tears in his eyes, Matt recently told us they are planning a return to Nebraska to join the staff of the church they previously attended. Our sadness at seeing them leave is dwarfed by our excitement at seeing them lead. We believe in keeping our volunteers close enough to pour into their lives, while holding them loosely enough to let God take them where He wants them to go. Our churches share three values: 1) Jesus is Lord. 2) The lead pastor is a mentor. 3) We train volunteers for the work of ministry. Our strategy is to develop volunteers from within.
team. Jesus built a
The one person in the history of the world who could have done ministry alone didn’t. Jesus built a team. He didn’t say, “Stand back and let me do my thing.” Jesus said, “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people” (Matthew 4:19.) The apostle Paul emulated this team approach. In fact, he said a pastor’s role is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the Church (Ephesians 4:12). That’s no less true today. Every member of the Body is a potential harvest worker. Our job is to get the right tools into their hands. Here are six ways we’re doing that at newhope:
Easy On-Ramps
I’ve talked with a number of pastors who are struggling to increase their volunteer teams. In most cases, their churches have irregular or nonexistent development opportunities. We can’t grow people we don’t have. We must create easy on-ramps for recruiting and training. Offering a time, place and process brings clarity. That clarity will give your team confidence, and confident volunteers will become magnets for drawing in other volunteers. At newhope, we gather once a month (currently online) for an All Leadership Team (ALT) night with pastors, directors, and any volunteers and new recruits who are available. This involves leadership development, vision casting, theological training, ministry team connection moments, and a closing time of worship and prayer. These regular volunteer development opportunities paint a clear picture of newhope culture, remind each campus we’re one church in multiple locations, and clarify that we’re part of something far greater than our individual campuses.
Intentionality
Pastor Kirstie Weeks, preaching team
.
Charlie Goodman, elder, workday volunteer
Pastor Jeffery Portmann and worship team member Jesus Diaz
If we don’t go somewhere on purpose, we end up going somewhere on accident. A culture that multiplies volunteers won’t create itself. Neither people nor churches drift into intentionality, depth or health. But they often drift from it. The writer of Hebrews 2:1 says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” We have to help our volunteers end up somewhere on purpose. Identify clear and specific next steps for their
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Lehua Tandal, production lead
Café director Clara Riggle and husband Derek Pastor Josh Sperry and wife Lacey
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development. This establishes a framework from which to start. Work together to establish goals for volunteers, adapting them as needed while you move forward. Few people end up developing exactly the way we might have envisioned. Some progress quickly, while others require more time and ministry engagement before they become fruitful contributors. At newhope, we apply what we call the “flexture” principle. In a nutshell, it’s structured flexibility. We set growth and development goals a year in advance, then check in on their progress every three months. This provides the right amount of space for communication, feedback and adjustments. Monthly or weekly assessment would be too much, while checking in only one or two times a year doesn’t allow enough time for mentoring. One of the benefits of developing leaders from within is that they’ve already chosen to make your church home, have started to speak the language, and are catching your culture. Going somewhere on purpose means clarifying whose job is it to recruit new volunteers. The answer is simple: everyone’s. Creating a culture that invites everyone to recruit new team members greatly expands your reach. The expectation of pastors building teams becomes one of churches building teams. There are always more church members than pastors. We encourage every team member at newhope to ask these questions regularly: • Who is not on our team that should be? We pray for God to give us eyes to see people the way He sees them, including recognizing their gifts and potential. • Who is going to ask them? Someone has to take the lead and make the ask. • When are you going to ask them? Setting a date heightens accountability. • What did they say? Reporting back allows leaders to know who has been approached and what the response was. • When do they start? If they say “yes,” they are invited to attend an ALT event and shadow a leader. If they say “no,” we go back to Step 1 and look for others. When we do not have a clear process for developing volunteers from within, we are essentially
. ve
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deciding for them they cannot be part of God’s mission through our church. Don’t say “no” for someone by failing to ask. Jesus came to seek and save people, not programs. People were His mission, and they’re our mission as well. Our goal should be developing people as the Church, not just at church. Navigating the pandemic gave us a front row seat to people stepping up as the Church, outside the church building. This in no way minimizes the value of gathering at church. There are expressions of Christianity that are best experienced while in corporate settings. But when we develop people to go and make disciples inside and outside the church, the work of the Kingdom can continue even when we can’t gather in person.
Clear and Compelling Vision
A critical question to ask as we’re developing volunteers from within is this: Is our vision clear and compelling? We can have a clear vision that’s not compelling and a compelling vision that’s not clear. A clear vision is simple and memorable. Simple does not mean simplistic. A compelling vision reminds your people every prayer they utter, every dollar they give, every hour they volunteer, every church they launch throws a life preserver to a drowning world. Joining Jesus on His mission to seek and to save the lost is both clear and compelling and turns our volunteers’ focus outward. Is your vision for your volunteers clear? Is it in writing and regularly highlighted?
Ray Jennings, pastor to the pastor and adviser, and wife Sandy
Whitney Lynd, Emily Smith, and Annie Roberts, Community Groups pastor
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Volunteers don’t fa
ll ou
to
f the sky.
developing You must do the work of
them.
It may seem obvious to you, but is it clear and compelling to volunteers and potential volunteers? Does it inspire them to join in the work of the Kingdom?
Celebration
Celebrate winning moments — large and small. Don’t just cheer for the home runs; celebrate the base hits. People want to know their contributions are making a difference. And what we celebrate, people replicate. Highlight what you want, not what you don’t want. Are people regularly late? Rather than offering another lecture on punctuality, celebrate the person who gets there early. For instance, you could say, “Sheila, I want to thank you for how you model the culture we’re trying to create here.”
Serving Opportunities
We don’t lose influence by sharing it; we gain more. A few years ago, I was part of a pastors’ panel when someone asked, “What do you regret about your early years of ministry?” After rolling through a lengthy list in my mind, I landed on this: I should have shared the mic and my influence more. I don’t know whether it was insecurity, immaturity or a lack of know-how, but I had this false idea that my voice would be diminished if I let other people take the mic or the lead. My view of leadership was narrow and needed expansion. I knew a quarterback couldn’t call the play, block
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for himself, throw and catch the ball, but I was acting like I didn’t need a team around me. As I began to create space for others and noticed how much lighter the load became, I wondered what had taken me so long. Rather than under-challenging our people, I invite and empower them to do things slightly beyond their current capacity. They will grow into assignments. Many will want continued development, especially as they discover leading people is not as easy as they might have thought. Exposing our high-capacity volunteers to next-level ministry development opportunities expands them — and ultimately expands the kingdom of God. Our Fellowship has access to excellent training platforms and development settings, from the Church Multiplication Network to our Assemblies of God universities. I recently talked with a pastor who received tremendous support from his district network while navigating an especially tough ministry challenge. It reminded me we often don’t recognize our need for a shield until the arrows start to fly. Further, a shield does not protect you unless you stay behind it. The benefits of Assemblies of God credentialing — with its rich theological underpinning, cultural contextualization of the gospel, and supportive structure — give me great reason for hope. We have a place to point people who show interest in taking steps toward ministry development. These are some reasons pastors may fail to develop volunteers:
Adam Roberts, worship pastor
Debbie Rester, volunteer
• They are impatient. It takes time, and people grow slowly. • They lack margin. The weight of prepping for weekend ministry consumes their time. • They are insecure. The idea of other people winning threatens them. • They have given up. They have already tried to develop volunteers, and something went wrong. They don’t know whether they have the emotional energy to try again. • They feel overwhelmed. They simply don’t know where or how to start. These issues are real, and they can feel paralyzing. Yet they are not insurmountable. Find someone who can mentor you as you mentor and develop others. Mentoring can happen up close or from afar. You can learn from a leader in another city, or even from the teaching in a book or podcast. If you don’t have a personal relationship with your mentor, find a friend who can keep you accountable to follow through on what you are learning. The key is to take the first step — and then keep moving forward. Volunteers don’t fall out of the sky. You must do the work of developing them.
Learning Experiences
God has created every person at your church with some shared yet unique learning styles. What works well for one may be less effective for others. Ultimately, though, the objective is
for people to move from theory to practice. Many of the best learning platforms are active and experienced in real time. When our experience moves from theory to practice, learning becomes sticky. The aha moments begin to inspire confidence and faith. People who once questioned their capabilities gradually shift toward confidence. Imagine teaching two groups how to catch a fish. The first group gathered in a classroom where they heard about the gear, casting techniques and feelings they’d have when they finally hooked a fish. The second group went on a guided fishing trip, where they learned the same information while catching fish. Which group would learn more? Obviously, the group who had the active, hands-on experience. When we provide a framework for theological training, offer ongoing leadership development, and actively engage volunteers in real-time ministry experiences, we will make disciples who make disciples. This is the apprenticeship model of Jesus, who said: “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people.”
Dr. Jeffery Portmann, D.Min., is lead pastor of newhope Church (Assemblies of God) in Puyallup, Washington. With five campuses across the Puget Sound region, newhope exists to present hope and develop people.
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8 h ab its t h at w i l l u n i f y a te a m .
ROB KETTERLING
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T
he two most important instruments in a rock band are the bass guitar and the drums. If the keyboard or lead guitar is off, listeners will assume the performer is being creative. But if the bass and the drums aren’t right, people will want to stick their fingers in their ears. The band will be out of sync, and everyone will know it. The bass player and drummer hold everything together. The rhythm and unity of the band depend on them. Similarly, a ministry team looks to the leader to keep everyone in tune with one another. If you’re the leader of a team on any level, from the executive team or board to a volunteer team, you are responsible to be in alignment with the vision and values of the organization. If you’re out of rhythm, your team will be out of rhythm. You set the pace and establish the beat through your attitude and actions.
If you’re out of rhythm, your team will be out of rhythm. Your team members are looking to you to keep them unified in their purpose and processes. You do that by continually reminding people of the values, reinforcing the direction, reiterating the vision, affirming those who are with you, and correcting those who are out of sync — preferably before anyone else follows their lead. Leaders usually have to listen closely to hear the first notes that aren’t in rhythm. However, sometimes it’s like a cannon going off in the middle of a symphony. Several years ago, two guys on our team — I’ll call them Rick and Scott — had gotten under each other’s skin. They privately griped to me about each other,
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and they tried to get team members to take sides. In our staff meetings, they rolled their eyes or made obnoxious sounds at any comment the other made. They were trying to destroy each other in front of their peers. I ended one of these meetings by saying, “OK, that’s it for today. You can leave, except for Rick and Scott. I want to talk to the two of you.” After everybody left, I looked them in the eyes and said, “This is Tuesday. I’m giving you until Friday to sort things out, forgive each other, and find a way to love each other — not tolerate each other, but love each other. And if you don’t, both of you will be fired.”
Unity is precious but fragile. Each immediately tried to argue his case by blaming the other. I held up my hand and said, “Stop! You don’t have a problem with me. You have a problem with each other. You need to talk to each other to make this right. I want both of you in my office at 9 on Friday morning. If you don’t love each other by then, you’re gone.” At that hour on Friday, the two of them strolled into my office smiling and patting each other on the back. They had become best friends. It was obvious they weren’t faking it. I didn’t have to ask a single question. Scott blurted out, “We got together Tuesday afternoon to talk about our differences, and we realized we’d made a lot of unfair assumptions. Every little thing became a big thing, but we’ve worked through it now. We really do care about each other.” Rick joined in, “Pastor Rob, we’re so sorry for causing such headaches for you and everybody on the team. The next time we’re together, we want a few minutes to apologize and tell everybody we’ve buried the hatchet.” I wish all such confrontations turned out like this.
Unity of the Spirit
In the early years of Christianity, the people involved in the Church were a varied bunch: Jewish leaders and former prostitutes who had come to faith in Christ, rich people and slaves, those who had always tried to
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obey God and those who had lived in rebellion, insiders and outsiders, the high and the low of their society. In fact, many of the letters in the New Testament are about healing broken relationships among believers. Paul spent three years in the metropolitan city of Ephesus, so he knew the flash points of disagreement and conflict among the Christians there. Later, when Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he explained that a genuine experience of God’s love and grace is the only sure way for love to flow from us to others. Paul gave them this instruction: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:2–3, emphasis added). Unity is precious but fragile. Paul knew unity doesn’t come naturally. It is a work of the Spirit. We have to experience God’s love so we can express it, and we have to experience the security of His grace so we can create a dynamically positive culture. If you’re a leader, it’s your responsibility to keep the unity of the Spirit for your team.
Roots and Wings
One day a number of years ago, before my conversations with Rick and Scott, I prayed for our team and sensed God telling me, “Pastor like you parent.” I understood exactly what this meant. In my relationships with my sons, I do my best to give them what some experts call “roots and wings,” a deep sense of security in my love and the encouragement to fly, to take risks without the fear of being ridiculed for failure. I’m always willing to wade in when I sense one of my kids is out of alignment with our family values because my goal is for them to flourish. Yet I had been avoiding hard conversations with our staff members because my goal was to avoid the messiness of conflict. I sensed God saying to me, “Do you want the people on your team to feel so secure they’re eager to do anything and everything to fulfill My vision, or do you just want to steer clear of conversations that make you feel uncomfortable?” Ouch. That was a turning point for me and my leadership. I told God, “OK, I’ll do it. Whenever I see one of our people out of alignment, I’ll speak the truth in love because I care more about the opportunities in their future than avoiding uncomfortable conversations in the present.” As our unity has grown on our team, we’ve experienced
more friction, but it’s good and productive friction. People now feel more comfortable disagreeing with one another because disagreement isn’t a threat to their sense of personal value or their place on the team. When we had less unity, we were polite but guarded — and insincere. Now we feel more comfortable being honest with one another. Has that produced tension? Yes, but it’s creative tension — which is a world away from the destructive, passive-aggressive behavior that plagues many teams.
You set the pace and establish the beat through your attitude and actions. Unifying Habits
Unity isn’t something we can just conjure up when we need it. It’s something we must build over time, through the habits we practice every day. Here are eight habits that can help bring a team together: 1. Ask better questions. I don’t make as many assumptions as I once did. When I sense a problem, I’m much quicker to say, “Hey, tell me what’s going on here.” And as the conversation develops, I’ve learned to ask better questions to get to the heart of the issue. Instead of letting people get away with shifting blame, I often ask, “So, what’s your responsibility in all this? What are you going to do to make it right even if nobody else takes a step?” 2. Give honor in all directions. In many organizations, the boss or pastor gets the lion’s share of accolades. This
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One person’s success should be everyone’s success. — Rob Ketterling
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feeds the leader’s ego, but it has detrimental effects on other people. They may be driven to succeed so they can receive applause, they may try to sabotage those who are climbing higher than them, or they may give up and become passive. In equal measure, we need to honor people at all levels — those who are peers and those who report to us. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that unity is created and protected most powerfully when I honor people at the bottom of the organizational chart. Their contribution may go unnoticed by most, but their faithfulness and skills are the foundation of our growth. We couldn’t do what we do without them, and I want them — and everybody else — to know it. 3. Forgive quickly and thoroughly. Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, and it’s at the heart of unity. We can create an environment in which forgiveness isn’t rare or awkward but normal and freeing. Forgiveness requires us to be honest about the pain we’ve experienced. But it also means letting go of resentment. When we apologize to one another, we stay together, and when we forgive one another, we stay healthy. 4. Follow the Spirit. When you feel an internal nudge to affirm someone, apologize to someone you’ve offended, forgive someone who has offended you, or give honor to someone publicly, do it. Don’t wait. Don’t come up with excuses for why you shouldn’t. Just do it. 5. Celebrate one another. One person’s success should be everyone’s success. Jealousy causes damage and division. The solution isn’t to grit our teeth and try hard to avoid being snarky. The solution is to value each person’s talents and contributions as much as our own, and celebrate when others excel. 6. Discourage side talks. We’ve all seen it. A team member isn’t happy about a decision or a direction, but instead of sharing these concerns in the group, he or she waits until later to meet privately with someone who might be an ally. Though this is a common behavior, it’s a threat to unity. 7. Pray for each person. Jesus prayed for unity among His followers. Shouldn’t we seek God for unity as well? It takes time to pray meaningfully for each team member, but it is a worthwhile investment. 8. Be present. We’re busy. I’m not saying we have to be there every minute of every day. But it’s important to be fully present in the time we do have together.
The Investment
Years ago, FRAM had a television commercial with a mechanic standing next to a car with the hood up. He held up an oil filter and said with a smile, “You can pay me now.” Then he picked up a piston and growled, “Or you can pay me later.”
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, and it’s at the heart of unity. Obviously he was talking about the difference between the price of an oil filter and the cost of an engine overhaul. It’s the same calculation for leaders: We can pay a relatively small price of time and energy to build unity, or we can spend far more leadership capital trying to keep things running while dealing with conflict, misalignment, hurt feelings and wasted effort. Unity is well worth the investments you make today.
Rob Ketterling is founder and lead pastor of River Valley Church (AG) in Apple Valley, Minnesota. This article is adapted from his book, The Speed of Unity (River Valley Publishing, 2020). For more information, visit Robketterling.com.
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CHURCH MINISTRY CHILDREN
Why We Underestimate Kids and What We Can Do About It KAYLA P I E R CE
How to equip our most curious and cognitively absorbent people.
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ocietal expectations of children are highly fluid and vary both within and across cultures. The lens through which we see our children affects how we treat them, how they behave, and ultimately how they grow spiritually. Many kids sit during our worship services and play during prayer — not because they are incapable of engaging, but because we often don’t expect them to. This cultural lens sharply contrasts the biblical one. Think about how God treated children throughout Scripture. God spoke to Samuel as a young boy because He knew Samuel could learn to recognize His voice (1 Samuel 3).
S
Jesus blessed little children and even pointed to them as an example of how the kingdom of God should be received (Mark 10:13–16). If we replace our cultural lens with a biblical one, we will see positive changes in the spiritual trajectories of our kids. Here are three ways we can equip our most curious and cognitively absorbent people — our children:
Include Them
Most churches invest a lot in kid-centered ministry, which is great, but don’t stop there. Make an effort to include children in other areas of church life as well. If children attend a prayer service or small group, invite them to join in with the adults.
It is easy to separate adult ministry from kids’ ministry, but kick down those boundaries. Even if kids decline your invitation, it sets a precedent and welcomes involvement. I find informal invitations go a long way. I was praying before people arrived one Sunday morning when a 9year-old girl slipped in. Instead of simply greeting her, I invited her to pray with me, and she jumped right in. Kids love to be included. Talk with children and parents, and make participation the norm. I encourage boys and girls to always give God 100%. Kids know I expect them to bring their Bibles and participate during worship, even in adult gatherings. I remind them they are leaders, despite their ages, and their participation can inspire others. It is our responsibility to train kids to succeed in their Christian walk, and that means socializing them to participate during church.
Equip Them
Age-appropriate ministry doesn’t have to be shallow ministry. The enemy doesn’t wait to target children, so we can’t wait to equip them with biblical knowledge. While we should communicate God’s Word in ways kids understand, we don’t have to dumb it down. Instead, let’s help them become Bible masters. Despite the short attention spans of children, research suggests they can acquire a breadth and depth of biblical knowledge. Recently, I read a book called How People Learn, written by experts in cognitive science and psychology. The authors suggest mastery
of a topic requires not only learning facts but also organizing those facts in a coherent knowledge structure. One way to help kids do this is by providing the cultural contexts of Bible stories. I like to show present-day pictures of biblical locations. A visual of where the action took place helps anchor the story in young minds. Another way to develop knowledge structures is to connect new knowledge to existing knowledge. For example, ask kids what this week’s Bible hero had in common with heroes from previous weeks. Learning how people in the Bible are similar or different will help children remember the stories. Teaching the overarching themes of Scripture will help kids build coherent knowledge structures from otherwise isolated biblical facts. Knowledge structures make facts more memorable, and we want God’s Word to be easily accessible in the minds of children.
Age-appropriate ministry doesn’t have to be shallow ministry.
Challenge Them
Research in cognitive science points to another secret to mastery — metacognition, which involves assessing and monitoring your own learning process. We can prompt kids to use metacognition by challenging them to set spiritual goals that are actionable and achievable. For example, if a child has a goal of reading the Bible more, you can work together to locate a Bible character to focus on or identify the best times in his or her day to spend with Jesus. Then, follow up on the child’s progress. Goal setting makes children active participators in their spiritual development instead of passive consumers, which will help them go the distance. Let’s replace our cultural lens of children with a biblical one, and see our kids the way God sees them — movers and shakers for His kingdom. Luke 2:52 says, “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” Like Jesus, our children can become full of wisdom and influence. We can help them by setting the bar high.
Kayla Pierce is the kids’ ministry director at SouthGate Church (AG) in South Bend, Indiana. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where she studies group processes, emotions and identity. Learn more about her research at kayladrpierce.com.
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Influence | 53
CHURCH MINISTRY YOUTH
In the Middle W I LL CEASE R
Three ways leaders can begin the dialogue with students about racial issues.
a 30-year-old biracial man who was born and raised in the South, which is infamous for its history of racial tension. I’ve experienced racism, prejudice and feelings of inadequacy. I’ve encountered people who couldn’t hear me over the tone of my skin. I grew up believing I was never white enough nor Black enough. I hated what I looked like because my life represented what some people are still afraid of: unity. This inner battle created tension I didn’t realize I would still have to navigate as a man. As a kid I remember being asked which side I would choose if a race riot occurred. I said, “Neither. I’ll stand in the middle.” In many respects, I still find myself in the middle. And as a youth leader, I believe many young people feel like they’re in the middle as well. They are between childhood and adulthood, passion and restraint, idealism and lived experience. They are also in the middle when it comes to racial issues, with peers of every race, ethnicity, and religious tradition. Generation Z (those born after 1996) is the most diverse generation America has ever seen, with racial and ethnic minorities comprising nearly half the demographic, according to Pew Research Center. The middle isn’t always a comfortable place to be. I can’t imagine what it’s like growing up in today’s culture, amid the current pressures, conflicts, crises, and division. Which is why I think it’s time we have a serious conversation with our youth about race. Here are three ways leaders can begin the dialogue:
I’m
Listen
Unfortunately, most people listen to reply rather than listening to understand. Now is the time to listen with an open mind and
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willingness to learn. Do not judge those who are hurting because they don’t always know how to communicate their pain. Hear them out, empathize and pray. Create an environment where those who are hurting feel safe opening up about what they’re experiencing.
Talk
Racism is real. Prejudice is real. It’s not just a part of America’s dark history. It is a reality today’s young people see and experience. They have real questions. They want to be a part of the conversation and the solution. And they should be, so talk about it. The worst conversation we could have about race with young people is no conversation at all. Dialogue needs to happen early, often and honestly. Offer a biblical perspective on unity. Talk about these issues in small groups and Bible studies. Host a forum. Survey
The worst conversation we could have about race with young people is no conversation at all. students to find out what questions they are asking. Interview people of color as part of a sermon series on racial reconciliation. Provide resources to educate students and parents on how to further those conversations at home. Use technology. With today’s digital communication, we are more connected than ever. We are also set up like never before to mobilize and partake in the greatest advancement of the gospel the world has ever seen, and faith leaders should empower young people to lead that charge.
Live
If all our friends look like us, talk like us, and think like us, we will have a very limited perspective. Unity is not uniformity. God hasn’t called us to be just alike. The way we live and interact with others can help our students realize the value of diversity. We can model the truth that, as Christ
followers, the Lord who unites us is greater than the differences that seek to divide us. Encourage young people not to avoid those who are different from them, but to engage with them. It’s in relationships that people begin to see all the things they have in common, rather than just the differences. As church leaders, we are called to be in the middle — not taking sides, but pointing people to Christ. This isn’t a Black or white issue. It’s not a skin problem; it’s a sin problem. This isn’t a political matter. It’s a moral problem and a biblical literacy issue. The government can’t fix it, and schools can’t turn it around. Only Jesus can change hearts. Now is the time for real leadership, strategy and continued conversation. We are one generation away from abolishing racism. It begins with our young people, because they are in the middle.
Will Ceaser is nextgen pastor at Magnolia Springs Assembly of God in Hurley, Mississippi, and assistant youth director for the Mississippi District Council of the Assemblies of God.
JULY-AUG 2020
Influence | 55
CHURCH MINISTRY ADULT
Women’s ministries in the local church cannot afford to offer only entertaining but shallow events.
Why Women’s Ministries Need to Go Deeper KAY BU R N ET T
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young professional stepped through the doors of the church, looking for a place to heal and grow spiritually.
No one would have guessed this impeccably dressed, self-assured woman’s broken past. Growing up in an alcoholic home, she endured physical, emotional and mental abuse. As a teen, she experienced horrific sexual abuse, sending her into a tailspin of depression and drug abuse before she finally committed her life to Jesus. After settling into her new church, she took every opportunity to connect with other women who could help her grow in her faith. Women’s ministries in the local church cannot afford to offer only entertaining but shallow
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events. Women in need of healing and spiritual development sit in our pews every week. Women’s ministries need to go deeper. Here are three essential reasons why: 1. The Church is called to make disciples. Organized social gatherings and church service projects can be beneficial, but these are not enough to meet women’s deepest spiritual needs. True discipleship requires more than merely gathering. Women need a spiritually dynamic life in Christ that informs everything from their day-to-day living to their worldview. They need spiritual depth to manage their many roles in a way that honors God. Women’s ministries can help them develop a faithful, consistent relationship with Jesus, rooted in the Word of God. Women teaching women to follow Jesus happens best in community. This is true for new Christians and lifelong believers, single and married women, young and old. All women need vibrant, life-giving discipleship that builds a foundation for every season of life. 2. Women need spiritual discernment and a robust theology to navigate cultural landmines. A plethora of Christian living books for women line the shelves of bookstores and populate the pages of Amazon. Not all adhere to an orthodox biblical theology, however. In recent years, a few high-profile bloggers and authors writing books in this genre have taken a weak stance on the veracity and authority of Scripture. Several have promoted a culturally driven worldview, influencing readers to abandon belief in the authority of the Bible. Eastern religions, New Age thinking and liberal worldviews have quietly permeated marketplace discussions, muddying Christian theology. To discern the truth, Christian women need a biblical foundation. One woman quickly accepted her co-worker’s invitation to attend church. Well into her 60s, she brought with her a liturgical background mixed with years of involvement in crystals and New Age philosophy. The
woman’s live-in boyfriend accompanied her to services, and both became regular attendees. Before long, the woman committed her life to Jesus, asked her boyfriend to move out, and began earnestly studying the Bible. She needed a rock-solid biblical theology to dispel religious confusion and stand strong when tested by friends and culture. A spiritually mature woman began mentoring her, taking her through Scripture, and providing a safe place for her to ask hard questions. Fluffy activities and lightweight events aren’t enough to empower women today to recognize and replace counter-biblical views with God’s truth. 3. Women need spiritual transformation and healing for brokenness. Though wounds to our souls happen in myriad ways, many women experience brokenness specific to their gender and societal roles. Brokenness for women can come through miscarriage, infertility, addictions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, past abortions, anxiety, life-controlling issues with body image, and more. Women’s ministries within the local church need to offer a safe space where women can work through brokenness, talk with other women about sensitive issues, and hear testimonies of God’s faithfulness. Author Carolyn Tennant said, “Lost souls are about a condition, not just a destination. The soul can become a junk drawer.” Christian women, no matter their background, can find their souls cluttered. They need healing, transformation and freedom from brokenness. Women’s ministries that go deep in healing these areas bring wholeness and life to women in a safe and trusted environment. Through vibrant, Spirit-empowered, biblically-based ministry, women can experience healing and transformation from every form of brokenness and grow in their theology and understanding of Scripture. We cannot afford to stay in the shallows. Ministry to women needs to go deeper.
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REVIEWS
Selected Book Reviews
The Church’s Kairos Moment on Race Brenda Salter McNeil identifies five landmarks on the road to reconciliation he Bible begins with a family and ends with a multitude. Its narrative arc thus includes unity and diversity. Because of creation, all who bear the image of God are also children of Adam and Eve. Because of the new creation, the “great multitude” gathered before God’s throne in adoration encompasses “every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9).
T
Books reviewed by
George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine.
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We do not live at either the beginning or end of the biblical story, however. We live in the middle, in a world divided by sin from God and from one another. The reason Jesus Christ entered the world was to overcome both divisions. The apostle Paul makes this clear in Ephesians 2:15–16, where he writes: “[Christ’s] purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” The Cross, in other words, is the place where Christ reconciles us both to God and to one another. The Church’s mission, following in Christ’s steps, is to advance the work of this twofold reconciliation in both word (the gospel we proclaim) and deed (the gospel we practice). In my opinion, American Christians are better at the former than the latter. We have well-developed systems of evangelism but underdeveloped systems of racial reconciliation. Brenda Salter McNeil’s Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0 helps rectify that problem by outlining how Christians can pursue racial reconciliation personally, in their churches, and in their communities. Salter McNeil defines racial reconciliation as “an ongoing spiritual process involving forgiveness, repentance and justice that restores broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish.” She then outlines “five primary landmarks as signs that will produce lasting personal and cultural change in people and groups” committed to such reconciliation: 1. Catalytic events: “painful but necessary experiences that happen to individuals and organizations that serve to jumpstart the reconciliation process.” 2. Realization: “a state of awareness that requires a response because it literally (continued on page 62)
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RECOMMENDED READING FOR LEADERS By Influence Magazine
STRANGE RITES Tara Isabella Burton (Public Affairs) American religiosity is not declining, but it is changing, argues Tara Isabella Burton in this book. Institutional religion is giving way to intuitional religion. The former is “organized faith in a higher power.” In the latter, Americans — especially millennials — “envision themselves as creators of their own bespoke religions, mixing and matching spiritual and aesthetic and experiential and philosophical traditions.” Burton traces the history and offers a taxonomy of these new religions, whose metaphysics and morals are often explicitly, even vulgarly, anti-Christian.
TELLING A BETTER STORY Joshua D. Chatraw (Zondervan) Story telling is the primary way God reveals himself in Scripture. He uses stories to shape our imagination, call us to repentance, and show us creation’s future. Unfortunately, apologetics too often relies on arguments instead of narratives. In this book, Joshua D. Chatraw shows how to talk about God in a secular age by telling the better story of the gospel: “When our imaginations have been formed by the gospel story, we retain not only our [apologetic] strategy but something even more powerful than our witness — our very lives.”
A GENTLE ANSWER Scott Sauls (Nelson Books) “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). Unfortunately, American culture prefers the harsh word. In this book, Scott Sauls writes: “Those who yearn to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God advance righteousness by speaking and living a message of love — not a sappy, sentimental love, but one that is undergirded with truth and with the courage and wisdom needed to confront.” That is how Jesus treated us. This is how we ought to treat others.
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(continued from page 60)
changes everything we thought we understood about an experience.” 3. Identification: “where we begin to identify with and relate to other people who are experiencing the same thing.” 4. Preparation: where we move “from the personal and relational to the structural and the transformational, and the gap between the two is huge.” 5. Activation: where we begin “to repair broken systems together.” Throughout the book, Salter McNeil roots her counsel in biblical teaching, insights from social science, historical analysis, and long personal experience doing the work of racial reconciliation. The result is theologically rich, thought-provoking and eminently practical. Salter McNeil argues that efforts at racial reconciliation usually break down in the preparation phase because personal relationships begin to impinge upon powerful structures. “Folks typically tend to gravitate to the first half of the model, engaging in the realization and identification phases with urgency and focus,” she writes. Building personal relationships across lines of race and ethnicity is comparatively easy. Changing powerful structures is really hard. In the end, though, Salter McNeil writes, “Relational connections cannot be sustained without structural intentionality.” America is at an inflection point, and its churches have been given a kairos moment. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, among others, have reopened the wounds of our nation’s longest injury, and the Church has a gospel capable of healing it through a call to repentance, the offer of forgiveness, and a commitment to justice. At this moment, whether the nation hears that gospel may very well turn on whether it sees Christians putting racial reconciliation into practice first. BOOK REVIEWED Brenda Salter McNeil, Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2020).
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MAKE IT COUNT An Eight-Week Study for Leadership Teams
DEVELOPING LEADERS 8 KEYS TO RECRUITING, TRAINING AND EMPOWERING LEADERS STEPHEN BLANDINO
WHAT IS MAKE IT COUNT?
Week after week, you invest time and energy into making every Sunday count. But you also have to think about staff meetings, board meetings, and meetings with key volunteers and other church leaders. Juggling so many meetings can seem overwhelming, especially as you think about developing the leaders around you. Effective leaders are continually looking for great leadership content they can use to develop and mentor other leaders. Make It Count is a powerful, little tool to help you accomplish just that. Each Make It Count lesson is easily adaptable for individual or group discussion, allowing for personal application and reflection among your ministry leaders and
64 | Influence
lead volunteers. The lessons are useful as devotionals in board and staff meetings and in departmental meetings with your lead volunteers. Studying and growing together is an important practice of building strong, healthy relationships with your team members. It is also a necessary component of building healthy, flourishing churches. Blandino These lessons can help you make each moment count as you lead and develop the leaders around you.
JULY-AUG 2020
eveloping leaders is consistently one of the biggest needs churches and organizations face today. And as you read the pages of Scripture, the value on leadership development is clear. Jethro challenged Moses to build a team of leaders who would oversee groups of 10, 50, 100 and 1,000 (Exodus 18:21). Paul challenged Timothy to entrust his teaching to reliable people who would teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). He also challenged Timothy to maintain important qualifications for overseers and deacons in the church (1 Timothy 3:1–13). Leadership development is critical to the Great Commission. Without leaders and leadership development, new churches aren’t planted, existing churches are underserved, people groups are not reached, discipleship gaps widen, growth barriers are never broken, church conflict is managed poorly, and existing leaders experience burnout. This installment of Make It Count addresses leadership development and provides helpful insights and ideas on recruiting, training and empowering leaders. As you review these eight lessons with your team, you’ll learn to do the following: • Identify Leaders: Finding Leadership Potential • Recruit Leaders: Attracting Leaders to Your Team • Orient Leaders: Developing a Quality Onboarding System • Equip Leaders: Providing Ongoing Leadership Development • Entrust Leaders: Giving Opportunities to New Leaders • Empower Leaders: Releasing Authority and Decision Making • Encourage Leaders: Affirming Leaders in the Journey • Elevate Leaders: Providing a Pathway to Promote Leaders As you read and discuss these lessons, you’ll be challenged to develop an intentional plan for leadership development. And with each step you take, you’ll increase the capacity of your church or organization.
D
FREE DOWNLOADABLE DISCUSSION GUIDE HANDOUTS Go to InfluenceMagazine.com Click on “Downloads”
The following eight, easy-to-use lessons on developing leaders are written by Stephen Blandino, lead pastor of 7 City Church (AG) in Fort Worth, Texas (7citychurch.com). He planted 7 City Church in 2012 in a thriving cultural arts district near downtown Fort Worth. Blandino blogs regularly at stephenblandino.com and is the author of several books, including Do Good Works, Creating Your Church’s Culture, and GO! Starting a Personal Growth Revolution.
HOW TO USE MAKE IT COUNT
We are pleased to offer the Make It Count Discussion Guide in a downloadable PDF, available through the “Downloads” button on Influencemagazine.com. Each lesson in the PDF Make It Count Discussion Guide is divided into
a Leader’s page and Team Member’s page. The Leader’s page corresponds directly to the material in this print issue of the magazine. We encourage you to print multiple copies of the PDF Discussion Guide from Influencemagazine.com for all your ministry leaders and the team members they lead in your church or organization. You will notice that key words and concepts are underlined in each lesson on the Leader’s page. These underlined words and concepts correspond to the blank spaces found on the team member lesson pages. Team members can fill in the blanks as you progress through each lesson’s material. We trust these lessons will help you make each moment count as you lead and develop the leaders around you.
JULY-AUG 2020
Influence | 65
MAKE IT COUNT Study
1
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Identify Leaders: Finding Leadership Potential Assess: What do you typically look for in a potential leader? Insights and Ideas
In both the Old and New Testaments, we find a series of qualifications for leadership. Jethro told Moses, “But select capable men from all the people — men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain” (Exodus 18:21). And Paul outlined for Timothy the qualities of an overseer. He included things like: above reproach, faithful in marriage, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, and more (1 Timothy 3:1–7). As we consider how to identify leaders, we can take two helpful approaches. One approach works well with emerging leaders, while the other works well with existing leaders. 1. Identifying emerging leaders. Emerging leaders are those who show signs of leadership potential. They may not be leaders yet, but your gut tells you the potential is there. To identify emerging leaders, ask yourself seven questions: • Are they growing in discipleship? This question reveals spiritual maturity. The more people grow in discipleship, the more ready they are for leadership. • Do they take initiative? This question reveals self-leadership. When people take initiative, it shows their ability to lead themselves first. • Do they connect well with others? This question reveals people skills. Leadership is all about people, and the better they connect, the better they’ll lead. • Do they have influence? This question reveals capacity. If they can attract followers, they likely have natural leadership ability. • Are they problem solvers? This question reveals thinking. Leaders make the world better by using their influence to meet needs and solve problems. • Are they teachable? This question reveals a growth mindset. Leaders are lifelong learners, and teachability reveals their appetite for personal growth. • Are they servants? This question reveals the motive of the heart. Leaders lead by serving and serve by leading. Servanthood shows the spirit in which they’ll lead. You don’t have to answer “yes” to all seven questions for a person to be a leader. However, the more you can answer “yes,” the more leadership potential exists. 2. Identifying existing leaders. If somebody already has some leadership experience, look for the six C’s to identify their level of leadership capacity: • Character. Do they model spiritual passion and integrity? • Competence. Do they have the skills and experience to lead effectively? • Chemistry. Do they resonate with the relational dynamics of the team? • Convictions. Do they fit the beliefs and philosophy of the church or organization? • Calling. Are they called to the role, the team and the church? • Culture. Do they fit the values and DNA of the church or organization? The more alignment you have with the six C’s, the higher the likelihood that you’ve identified a great leader.
Reflect and Discuss
1. What qualities are non-negotiable when looking for a leader? 2. Based on the seven questions above, who in your church or organization might show signs of leadership potential? 3. How can we strategically use the six C’s to identify the right leaders for our organization?
Apply
Map out a plan to incorporate the seven questions for identifying emerging leaders and the six C’s for identifying existing leaders. Then use this decision-making filter to identify the potential leaders in your church or organization right now. 66 | Influence
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MAKE IT COUNT Study
2
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Recruit Leaders: Attracting Leaders to Your Team Team Review: How have you incorporated the seven questions and the six C’s to identify emerging and existing leaders?
Assess: What does your current leadership recruitment process look like? Insights and Ideas
You can identify qualities, develop training and create leadership roles, but the real question is this: Can you recruit? Leaders with no followers are not leaders. The ability to attract and recruit leaders is a real test of your leadership ability. Some people will quickly offer to lead. Paul reminded Timothy, “Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). Then he followed those words with a list of qualifications for leadership. Not everyone who wants to be a leader should be a leader. The strategy Jethro shared with Moses is particularly helpful. Jethro told Moses to “select” leaders (Exodus 18:21). Selecting leaders implies a screening process. It involves a prayerful and purposeful approach to leadership recruitment. Here are five steps: 1. Be a leader worth following. If your personal leadership is lacking, it will impact every attempt you make to recruit other leaders. On a scale from 1 to 10, if your leadership is a 4, you’ll never recruit anyone higher than you. Immediately you’ve reduced the size of your candidate pool for one reason: You’re not the kind of leader people want to follow. The good news is, you don’t have to stay at that level. An aggressive personal growth posture will help you become a better leader. 2. Cast inspiring vision. People aren’t energized by mundane needs; they’re energized by inspiring vision. Be a vision caster, not a need caster. Write out your vision word-forword to help you articulate and communicate clear, compelling and courageous vision. 3. Never do ministry alone. When you include others in ministry, not only do they get to see you model good leadership, but you get to know their stories, potential and capacity. It becomes a method for identifying and attracting new leaders. 4. Make a personal ask. An announcement in the bulletin isn’t the best way to recruit leaders. Grow your leadership team through relationships. Create a list of potential leaders you want to ask to join your team, and then meet with them one-on-one to make a personal ask. 5. Schedule leadership development. If you were to look at your calendar, how much time are you allocating to developing future leaders? Do you meet regularly with a small group of potential leaders to learn and grow? Your schedule reveals your priorities. These five strategies will help you build your team. Each approach will broaden your recruitment net and help you attract potential leaders.
Reflect and Discuss
1. How much time are you allocating each week to recruiting leaders? 2. What are the biggest gaps in your current leadership recruitment process? 3. How can you implement the five strategies for leadership recruitment?
Apply
Do an assessment of how much time you invest each week in recruiting leaders. Then put together a plan to implement the five recruitment strategies to make leadership recruitment a regular part of your schedule.
JULY-AUG 2020
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MAKE IT COUNT Study
3
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Orient Leaders: Developing a Quality Onboarding System Team Review: Which strategies have you included in your leadership recruitment process? Assess: When you recruit a leader, what steps do you take to orient that leader to the role,
team and culture of the organization?
Insights and Ideas
One of the biggest oversights in leadership development is failing to develop a thoughtfully articulated onboarding system. In many cases, leaders are so desperate for team members they never take time to orient them when the members join the team. The unintended consequence of this hasty approach is that the new leader feels forgotten and alone. Even worse, new leaders start to infuse ideas and values into the organization that are not aligned with the vision. In most cases, this happens innocently, but because the leader never took time to communicate the culture and priorities of the organization, the new leader is left to guess what to do. Proverbs 21:5 says, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” When we onboard new team members with haste, it leads to varying dimensions of organizational poverty. A good onboarding system — for both staff and volunteers — will mitigate this sideways energy and create a strong starting point for new team members. Here are four things to include in your onboarding process: 1. The basics. Every new team member needs to understand some basic issues. For new staff, those items might include payroll and benefits, building keys, alarm codes, personnel introductions, training on equipment and more. For volunteers, it might include a background check, a building tour, volunteer introductions and basic departmental information. 2. Role expectations and details. The new team member needs a clearly defined role description that outlines expectations and responsibilities. In addition, you need to share important details about their specific area of responsibility that are crucial to ongoing success. 3. Organizational DNA. New leaders need to understand the most critical aspects of an organization’s DNA. You’ll want to review three main categories: 1) who we are (history, beliefs, core values, and team values), 2) where we’re going (vision, ministry model, next steps, and ministry practices), and 3) how we function (governance, goal setting, staff communication, cultural language and terminology, and staff expectations). This process gives your new team members the opportunity to ask questions, understand culture and see organizational vision clearly. 4. Ongoing training. Onboarding doesn’t end on the day — or week — somebody joins your team. It takes time to acclimate to your culture and values, so it’s helpful to offer ongoing training (books, videos and coaching) over the course of the first six months.
Reflect and Discuss
1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of our current onboarding system for new team members (staff and volunteers)? 2. Which of the four steps is missing or in need of strengthening in our onboarding system, and how can we add it or improve it? 3. How can we maintain consistency across each department to ensure onboarding is done effectively and strategically?
Apply
Put together a thorough onboarding system for volunteers and new staff members. Include the four onboarding steps, and then determine how to integrate this process into your leadership development system.
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MAKE IT COUNT Study
4
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Equip Leaders: Providing Ongoing Leadership Development Team Review: What steps have you taken to implement and improve your onboarding process for new leaders?
Assess: How do we equip leaders in our organization? Insights and Ideas
Equipping people for leadership is not a one-time event. Healthy leadership development is an ongoing process that helps leaders cultivate important character qualities and leadership competencies. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul said, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–13). According to Paul’s teaching, the priority of church leaders is to equip people for ministry and maturity. What does it look like to practically equip leaders? Equipping happens best when we carefully include four ingredients. Each ingredient offers a different approach to developing leaders. 1. Training. Every leader needs training so they can deliver ministry effectively and fully mature into the person God has called them to become. A good training plan will include four primary areas: discipleship (training in spiritual disciplines), direction (training in vision and values), development (training in leadership competencies), and distinct skills (training in role-specific competencies). 2. Resources. There are more leadership resources available today than at any time in history. These resources include books, videos, podcasts, sermons, TED Talks, assessments, webinars, online courses and more. These resources can be distributed to leaders based on their needs, or they can be coupled with other equipping strategies to maximize growth. 3. Coaching. Every leader needs a coach. Good coaches offer three gifts. First, a pattern of healthy behavior. They model what they teach. Second, they provide perspective. They offer fresh insight on whatever you are dealing with. And third, coaches give permission. In other words, they give you a confidence boost when the voice of self-doubt haunts you. Coaching can happen one-on-one or in a small group environment. It pulls the best out of people and offers ideas and insights that result in leadership breakthroughs. 4. Experience. Equipping is not restricted to dispersing information. Equipping also means giving leaders opportunities to learn and grow in hands-on environments. Participation in growth activities will help leaders move beyond classroom theory and actually put principles into practice. Experiences are where the rubber meets the road as leaders see ideas and insights come to life. Each of these four equipping strategies will not only help leaders grow and improve, but they will prepare leaders for greater levels of responsibility.
Reflect and Discuss
1. How do you regularly equip leaders on your team? 2. How strategic and systematic is your equipping process? 3. What would it look like to systematically incorporate the four equipping strategies into your leadership development process?
Apply
Create a purposeful equipping plan to develop leaders to their full potential. Include each of the four equipping strategies in your plan, and then create a calendar or schedule that maximizes the use of each tool.
JULY-AUG 2020
Influence | 69
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5
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Entrust Leaders: Giving Opportunities to New Leaders Team Review: What steps have you taken to improve how you equip leaders? Assess: What responsibilities have you entrusted to other leaders? Insights and Ideas
In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul said, “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:1–2). Paul told Timothy to entrust leaders with the truth he was teaching. But “entrusting” wasn’t simply a matter of teaching; it was also a matter of commissioning. In other words, Timothy was to teach what Paul had taught him, and then he was to commission those he taught to teach others. Simply put, Timothy was responsible to entrust leaders with a message and a mission. The purpose of leadership development isn’t simply to train and resource people. It’s to actually give them opportunity to lead. It’s not what you know that matters. It’s what you do with what you know. Entrusting leaders with opportunity begins with three important steps: 1. Assess leadership resources. Assess each of your leaders to determine what they bring to the table. You’ll want to assess three areas. First, what skills does each leader have? You might use an online assessment tool, or simply ask individuals about their skills. Second, what are they most passionate about? Explore the needs they would like to address, the problems they would love to solve, or the interests that motivate them. Third, how much time do they have to offer? These three areas will help you identify the resources your team is able to contribute to the mission of the organization. 2. Appraise leadership opportunities. Next, evaluate the opportunities and needs in the organization. In other words, what needs exist? What problems need to be solved? What opportunities should you pursue? Take time to understand the opportunities that exist, and then prioritize them. 3. Align leadership resources and opportunities. When you know what your team has to offer, and you clearly understand the opportunities in the organization, you can start aligning those resources to address each opportunity. Simply put, you can entrust the right leader with the right role. Alignment ensures gifts and goals are properly matched. Your entire leadership team should be entrusted with unique responsibilities that will advance the message and mission of your organization. This will require intentionality on your part, but the time investment can deliver long-term impact.
Reflect and Discuss
1. What resources (skills, passions, time) do each of your leaders offer? 2. What opportunities do you have available for leaders to step into? 3. How could you go about aligning your current leadership resources with your current leadership opportunities?
Apply
Do an assessment of your leaders. What skills and passions do they bring to the table? How much time do they have available to serve? Then, identify the opportunities for leaders to serve. Finally, match the right resources with the right opportunities. Who is left out? What opportunities could these leaders be entrusted with?
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6
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Empower Leaders: Releasing Authority and Decision Making Team Review: What resources and opportunities did you discover as you evaluated what to entrust to your leaders?
Assess: What do you think it means to empower leaders? Insights and Ideas
In the Old Testament, we read the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. This monumental task provides multiple leadership lessons we can benefit from today. One lesson we learn is how Nehemiah empowered leaders. After carefully assessing the condition of the city, Nehemiah cast a vision to rebuild the wall so the people would no longer be disgraced. He recruited a team, entrusted the members with responsibility, and then empowered them to start building. As they laid beams and stones, fastened doors and bolts and bars, and stood guard when facing opposition from their enemy, the vision moved forward rapidly. There are two major aspects to empowerment. The two ingredients are important, and when both are given to your team, they will produce forward momentum. 1. Empower with authority. It does you no good to entrust leaders with responsibility without also giving them the authority to exercise that responsibility. For example, if you entrust a team member with the responsibility to lead the church’s youth ministry, they should also have the authority to lead the youth ministry’s volunteers. In other words, the volunteers shouldn’t go over the youth pastor’s head with their preferences and opinions. Those should be taken to the youth pastor, and he or she should have the authority to address them. In no way does this justify an abuse of authority. We are called to lead by serving and serve by leading. 2. Empower with decision-making power. The second way to empower leaders is to give them the power to make decisions. If every decision has to go to you first, you haven’t truly empowered the leader. In the early stages, empowerment is often a process. In other words, it starts with training and equipping to ensure the leader has what he or she needs to make the best decisions. But at some point, you have to let go so the leader can lead. If you can’t let go, you’re either insecure, or you don’t trust the leader. Nehemiah masterfully empowered people to rebuild the wall, and when he did, something extraordinary happened: “So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days” (Nehemiah 6:15). That’s the power of empowerment. Nehemiah couldn’t do it alone, so he entrusted and then empowered people to lead.
Reflect and Discuss
1. Who has empowered you in your personal leadership journey, and what difference did it make in your life? 2. What’s the hardest part of empowering others? Why? 3. What would it look like for you to take a step forward in empowering one of your leaders with authority and decision-making power?
Apply
Often, the reason we don’t empower is because we are insecure, or we don’t trust the people we need to empower. Only you can correct either situation. If you find yourself struggling with insecurity, ask God to help you, and seek counsel from more mature leaders. If you don’t trust the leader you’ve put in charge, identify the leadership gaps, and put together a plan to better equip this person for success.
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JULY-AUG 2020
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7
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Encourage Leaders: Affirming Leaders in the Journey Team Review: What steps have you taken to empower your leaders with greater authority and decision-making power? Assess: How do you encourage the leaders in your ministry or organization? Insights and Ideas
Encouragement is oxygen for the soul. Like everybody else, leaders need encouragement. Yet leaders more often find themselves on the receiving end of complaints, problems and bad news. The apostle Paul practiced encouragement. Acts 20:1–2 says, “When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece.” Paul’s words of encouragement offered hope in the midst of hardship and breathed life into those who joined him in the mission of advancing the gospel. The same should be true for leaders today. Our words carry weight. When we speak encouragement to leaders and team members, the impact is not quickly forgotten. Here are four keys to affirming and championing your leaders: 1. Encourage authentically. Encouragement should not feel forced or fake. There should be a genuine spirit of kindness and concern that accompanies any word of encouragement. Pastor Mark Batterson says, “Authenticity is the new authority in leadership.” Authentic encouragement is one way to express authentic leadership. 2. Encourage specifically. When your encouragement moves beyond generalities to specific compliments and words of affirmation, it suddenly feels personal. Instead of saying, “You’re doing a great job,” describe the specific areas in which a leader is really excelling. Be specific. Specificity is also one way to increase authenticity. 3. Encourage frequently. Like everyone else, leaders need more encouragement. Life is hard, leadership is very hard, and the struggles we face are increasingly complex. We are withering under the weight, and the pace of life often eliminates the very things that give us strength to live — things like encouragement and affirmation. What would it look like for you to increase the regularity of your encouragement to the people you lead? 4. Encourage broadly. Finally, look for ways to broaden your encouragement to include other people connected to your leadership team. For example, what can you do to encourage a leader’s spouse and children? What can you do to encourage those who serve alongside a leader? In addition, how can you broaden your methods of encouragement? A spoken word, written note or text message can deliver encouragement at just the right moment.
Reflect and Discuss
1. What’s one of the most meaningful words of encouragement you’ve ever received? 2. Which of the four methods of encouragement do you need to practice more? 3. Who are three people you can encourage this week?
Apply
Give careful thought to how you can become a more encouraging leader. What would it look like to implement the four encouragement practices? And who in your life, and on your team, needs an extra dose of encouragement today? Why not stop right now and take a few minutes to connect with them? 74 | Influence
JULY-AUG 2020
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8
Developing Leaders: 8 Keys to Recruiting, Training and Empowering Leaders
Elevate Leaders: Providing a Pathway to Promote Leaders Team Review: Whom have you encouraged in the past seven days? Assess: Do you have a specific strategy you use to promote leaders into higher levels of responsibility? If so, describe your strategy. Insights and Ideas
When we read the Parable of the Bags of Gold in the Gospel of Matthew, most of us focus on the importance of faithfulness in the servants. The master entrusts five talents to one servant, two to another servant, and one to a third servant. The first two servants prove faithful as they double the money entrusted to them. The third servant buries his master’s money and is deemed lazy and wicked. The lesson is clear: Faithfulness matters. But there’s another lesson often overlooked in this powerful parable. It’s a lesson from the master on how to lead faithful team members. To each of the first two servants, the master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21,23). What did the master do with these faithful servants? He elevated them. Elevating leaders involves three keys: 1. Commend. The first thing the master said to the faithful servants was, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” He acknowledged the good work of these servants. Their ability to double their master’s wealth didn’t go unnoticed. Team members shouldn’t have to wonder whether they’re doing a good job. As leaders, we must regularly commend their good work. 2. Entrust. After commending each servant’s faithfulness, the master said, “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” This is where leaders often drop the ball. We expect faithfulness, but then we don’t make a way for the faithful to advance. This is demoralizing to team members. They are left to wonder, How much more do I need to do to be entrusted with greater opportunities? Your job as a leader is to make a pathway for emerging leaders to assume greater responsibility and opportunity. Expect faithfulness, but then be prepared to open doors when it’s delivered. 3. Reward. The master did one more thing for the faithful servants. He said, “Come and share your master’s happiness!” In other words, he rewarded their faithfulness. As we lead our teams, there should be time set aside to celebrate wins. It might happen through public praise, a special outing or some other expression of appreciation. The point is, intentionally reward faithfulness. As you lead your team, don’t just expect faithfulness. Learn to elevate leaders by commending, entrusting and rewarding them. As you do, your team will flourish.
Reflect and Discuss
1. How are you challenged by the perspective of the master’s responsibility in this parable? 2. Which of the three keys to elevating leaders is the easiest or the hardest? 3. How can you be more intentional about promoting and elevating leaders in your area of ministry?
Apply
Give careful consideration to each member of your team. Who has proven faithful? Whom should you consider elevating into a greater level of responsibility? Put together a promotion plan, and begin taking steps to honor their faithfulness.
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JULY-AUG 2020
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THIS IS MY STORY
(continued from page 80)
The weekend approached, and it became quite clear to us that my father had COVID19. On Sunday, it was confirmed that colleagues he had spent time with the week prior had tested positive. By the time he was able to get in for testing on Monday, my father was already critically ill. My father’s oxygen levels were dropping below 70%, and his body was showing signs of severe infection, so my mom called for an ambulance. He was admitted to the intensive care unit, where doctors recommended urgent intubation. I was able to speak to my dad by phone moments before this procedure was performed, not knowing it would be 47 days before I would hear his voice again. It was obvious Dad was anxious and his body was starving for oxygen. However, his primary concern was for my mother, who was not yet symptomatic. In this moment, I became aware — aware of every word spoken, aware of all the movements of my body, as if watching from afar. I was also aware of my father’s impermanence and my own mortality. Awakening. Awareness. Sensitization. These define the journey this microscopic organism has sent me on. My father’s daily battle with the virus made thousands around the world aware of the physical devastation it can cause and moved them to pray for his healing. The lens through which I viewed the world changed in a moment’s time. My focus narrowed to my father and his survival. Things became very clear to me in those moments on the phone with my father. Clarity and peace came with focus, even in this time of uncertainty. The following two and a half weeks were the most difficult of my life. My mom was ill, alone, and quarantined at home with no
one to care for her. My father was in the ICU on a ventilator with no visitors allowed. My sister was separated from her husband, who was quarantined in isolation secondary to international travel. My wife and I were separated by 1,600 miles as she was helping our four kids with school at home. But isn’t it just like God to take a mess and work His wonders? I could say God changed my heart, but that is precisely what He didn’t do. God took me on a journey to show me the heart He gave me to begin with, the heart that was “fearfully and wonderfully made” in His own image (Psalm 139:14). Awakening, awareness, sensitization involve stripping away the layers we all put on ourselves. It is our nature to add; it is God’s to subtract. Over the years, I have added unhealthy habits of working too much at the expense of my family, traveling too much in the name of my career, and allowing my schedule to dictate availability for the relationships that matter most. The message of the gospel is so simple. Yet we complicate it. My dad’s illness helped me wake up and shed the unnecessary layers. Fifteen days into his ICU stay, I received a call from the critical care doctor who said they were at a loss as to what to do for my father and asked me to sign a do-not-resuscitate order. I unequivocally knew God’s plan for my father’s life was not to let go. Within hours, we were able to get him airlifted to Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Over the next three weeks, he stabilized and returned to us. My father still has a long way to go with rehabilitation, but his very existence is a daily reminder for me to be aware of God’s calling, to stay awake to those in need around me, and to be sensitized to God’s hand in all things.
Isn’t it just like God to take a mess and work His wonders?
Gregory M. Mundis Jr., M.D., is co-director of San Diego Spine Fellowship. He specializes in pediatric and adult spinal deformity surgery at Scripps Clinic Medical Group Department of Orthopedics in San Diego.
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THIS IS MY STORY
God’s Hand in All Things
I was aware of my father’s impermanence and my own mortality. GREGORY M. MUNDIS JR., M.D.
COVID-19.
These eight characters elicit a host of emotional responses from nearly every person on the planet. The virus has infected millions, but affected billions. My father and mother became infected with the coronavirus within a week of each other in mid-March. My father, Assemblies of God World Missions Executive Director Greg Mundis, fell ill with moderate symptoms on a Thursday. By Friday, he was feeling very ill, and despite our efforts to get him tested, he was denied the opportunity. (continued on page 79)
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