The effectiveness of our life hinges on the extent of our relationships. God the Father has a relationship with the Son, Jesus Christ. God the Father sent the Son to this earth for us to have a relationship with God the Father through the Son. The two greatest commandments are relationship based:
29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12, NIV)
A large part of the relationship building, maintaining and sustaining process deals with our own personal self-awareness of our gifts, talents, strengths and natural capacities. We cannot love our neighbor as ourselves until we can come to know and accept ourselves. That concept is very difficult when we are taught to think of others over ourselves even though the Lord says to love others as yourself. Self love, obviously is natural, so servant leadership becomes even more of a challenge. Implementing leadership empowerment in ministry is not something that can be enforced or mandated through promotions and titles. I just finished Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great. Chapter 7 is entitled The Technology Accelerator as he states that, “disciplined people, who engage in disciplined thought, and who then take disciplined action” can work together through a leadership model. This section in his book, he was discussing the Hedgehog Concept and addressing three intersecting circles:
#1 Circle: what is our team deeply passionate about?
#2 Circle: understanding what you can be the best in the world in a literal sense?
#3 Circle: what drives our economic engine?
He is basically saying that we need to find the intersection of profit per acts. The hedgehog concept brings up very challenging questions when dealing with any kind of ministry. I do believe that every ministry needs to honestly ask and answer these questions before moving forward with leadership development. Can God and does He raise up teams to do a powerful work without all 3 circles since God is not dependent on the ways of man? Absolutely. But I do believe that many ministries and churches spring up and can be successful for a season, but have difficulty maintaining a long term presence without addressing these questions.
Christianity is not a company. Christianity is about others, community, discipleship and even growth. However, blind faith without objectives, vision and goals cause stress and conflict. We need healthy, wise leadership to prioritize team building as we work together as a family of believers and as a body in Christ for the long term good of the people. Matter of fact, God’s definition of “long term” is eternity; He asks us to think of the eternal over the temporal (1 Corinthians 4). So, in order to be sustainable, we need all circles answered to make it on this earth in ministry. Is it strange that God uses the principles of man to confirm what He first began with creation? On earth, Jesus was a leader who died on a Roman cross. We are now called to be leaders to lead others to the cross of Christ. That is the first step of any ministry. Can we lead people to Christ? We need to ask ourselves if we are really leaders if we do not have a conviction to lead others to Jesus.
