Be The Leader

hallelujah let's do that tonight let's give him some honor lord we thank you jesus god we give you honor we give you glory for all the things you've done god all the miracles you performed for all the blessings you've done god for your protection that we didn't even know about god we give you glory tonight we give you glory tonight we thank you jesus that's all right church that's all right jesus we love you jesus you're worthy of this tonight you're worthy lord you're worthy hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah thank you jesus thank you jesus i'm glad i can come and give him glory it was right at a year ago pastor we we were probably at the point in our lives we took some of this for granted come to church on a wednesday night coming to church on sunday anytime just getting together with whoever to come come to church and to give him glory we had to do it from home for a while but i'm thankful that we can come back and give him glory tonight hallelujah you may be seated

i'm going to teach some tonight i just want to warn anybody that hopefully you'll come next wednesday night but about three wednesday nights ago i was telling pastor i played the base then a couple wednesday nights ago i led service then last wednesday night i played the drums and i'm not doing this to brag or anything but sister kirsty about the only thing left is for me to sing or play the piano or something so i don't know if that's going to be next wednesday or not so wish me luck let's hope that doesn't happen when i was first asked to speak tonight i just looked at my calendar and noticed that it was st patrick's day so i didn't ask my father-in-law if we were doing any sort of green communion wafers or anything tonight to uh in honor of st patrick's day but he said no i'm going to try to tap into um the the theme of the church this year of be the let's be the church i'm going to talk about be the leader and to lead like christ um i'm passionate about leadership principles about learning about leadership styles about servant leadership to be particular it's a hobby of mine i like to read i like to study about them brother card and i try to read as many books i read a couple in the last two weeks on leadership and i don't know if it's a good thing or not but i've i've read enough that i can get about two or three pages in a our chapters in a book on leadership and say i've i've pretty much i know where you're going i've read all this and i i have a bad habit about putting those down but it is a hobby that i like to to do to study on it um

there's several books written on leadership and servant leadership style that i'm going to talk about tonight for a little bit in 1970 a man named robert greenleaf he wrote the book the servant as leader he was known as the modern day advocate for certain servant leadership and just in in discussing with him and looking at his lifestyle he said he he took a lot of that from his father he used his father as a role model for for the servant leadership that he talked about

you may ask why do i like to talk about leadership why do i like to study it one of the reasons is i think it's lacking in our culture some formal leadership training whether it's just reading studying going to school i think it is lacking unlike some people i really didn't have growing up even in first several years of my professional life didn't have good leaders just to look up to to say man i just want to model that person and to be fair pastor i didn't grow up here so if i was here i would i could have looked at pastor and said i want to be like him but no i i'm i just want to say you know i growing up i just didn't really have that my first few jobs i had a few people that i could look up to but i had a lot of of leaders that were lacking in grad school actually went to grad school to study leadership and i learned a lot or i was able to identify a lot with what not to do as a matter of fact um and many times i don't even know how many times in my textbooks i would be reading something and i would take a picture of a paragraph and text it to my co-workers at that time because we could all identify with how not to be a leader unfortunately but that made me become passionate on my own to not be that person i didn't want anybody that you know reported to me or anything like that to to be able to say you know what i don't want to be like him and so that's my has been my goal in my professional life to to not be that person there's entire degrees on this subject as i said there's uh tons and tons of research out there so tonight i'm not going to keep you too long it's just kind of an overview and i will do my best to make it applicable to everyone here when i was asked to speak on this my or speak tonight my mind went directly to this topic was it because i feel comfortable with it because i enjoy it maybe but was it because i felt led to do it yes i started as

as most speakers do you kind of get a thought in your head you pray about it you start writing down some notes i just take my notebook here and there and just write down jot a few notes trying to put some thoughts together in that last week or so is kind of when i go and compile all those into you know an outline and so i was in that process and a little over a week ago i had to attend a virtual meeting at work and to be 100 honest i don't even know really what the meeting was about or why i was there if you work in the corporate world and you have an outlook calendar and people just have access to those calendars and they like to throw meetings on your sister martin you worked in the hospital system and you understand they just throw meetings on your calendars and you have to go my boss actually this was some kind of midwest region meeting i i don't know my boss even said why are we going to this so being the good employee that i was i was going to log into this meeting think thankfully almost everything is virtual right now so we can kind of do it on the go on that day we had a little bit of short staff so i was helping out we had to move some ambulances around at the hospital so it was time for that meeting so i logged in on my phone and i was just listening to it logged in a little bit late and there was this man and i don't even know who he is or what he's over but i liked what he had to say he was a new leader in our organization and he was talking about his background kind of his biography and he he started right away talking about how he likes servant leadership and you know how he practices that and he wants this to be a wholesome environment and there's things that i really agree with i'm like okay this is nice and then he mentioned a book and maybe you've heard of it before but it's called the way of the shepherd and he started talking about the book being a modern day parable about being a shepherd and teaching leadership principles but teaching godly leadership principles and as soon as i could i pulled over i tried to figure out how to get my notes open on my phone while i'm still have this meeting and i didn't want to log out of this meeting and have to log back in and and i made sure i i wrote that down and as soon as i got home i ordered that book because i knew that was it wasn't coincidence that i just happened to tune in and writing to hear this guy talk about the this topic that i i felt to speak on tonight and to bring up a resource that i hadn't yet read and it just all went all went right in line with tonight's outline

can i get a show off hands on who here thinks you are a leader we have a few online i i believe there's some if you're on on facebook live if you want to do a thumbs up or something in the chat so there are several of us here that are probably leaders and people leaders in business that's one avenue obviously of being a leader maybe you don't have any direct reports but you can still stand up and be a leader at your job we have several leaders in the church whether you're a paid leader or volunteer leader when we have our annual leadership retreat we have you know it seems like half half of the church that that have leadership spots and roles and that's amazing maybe you're the leader of your family husband spouse dads is this starting to feel a little bit more like maybe this does can kind of apply to all of us in here maybe you're you're leader of your children moms dads or or you're in a situation where you're raising your your grandchildren or foster children or something else so i think we can all all admit that we all have some type of leadership responsibility uh we can all lead our mentor the young family next door to us there's several opportunities we have to be leaders but last and most important we are all called to lead people to christ you don't have to be called to be a preacher to be important you don't have to be be a people leader and high in an organization to be important or to feel like you're a leader you don't have to be an adult not and and have children to be feel important to be a leader because we are all called to be leaders and lead people to christ

so you may say you've talked a little bit about servant leadership so far what is it and when i say servant leadership there's a lot of different leadership styles formal leadership styles you know back in the day as they say they're uh you kind of just you said you know what this is my personality and this is what i'm gonna do there always wasn't a lot of wisdom and different thing in business or or life but there are some several different leadership styles and this is one of the the popular leadership styles so i'm just going to talk about that a little bit of what it is i'm gonna first say what it's not servant leadership is not letting your people run all over you letting your employees mike run all over you and and call the shots or let your your kids or your family do everything they can to break the rules and just get by and say you know what i'm going to be a servant i'm going to sit back and and i'm going to clean up your mess time and time again because andrew got up there and talked about being a servant so i'm going to be a servant and let you do whatever no that's not what it's about it's not doing everything for everyone just so they're not held accountable i mean yes we have opportunities to do some of these things but that's not what it's about when i my my previous job when i was promoted into the senior leadership positions there i was trying to explain this to a couple of the other leaders and they didn't really understand it that time and they were just like well i mean that's good but we have to make them do stuff and we have to that and you know one of the one of the other chiefs at that time it was always a pet peeve when i was not a leader when they would come in and throw me their car keys and say hey can you go wash my car while they go sit and you know do whatever they want to do drink coffee whatever so i made up my mind back then you know 20 years ago i wasn't gonna do that so i was trying to explain those things without being too offensive to them because they were things they were displaying and they didn't really get it and again you know servant leadership it's not about not having a backbone to tell people what to do it's not about avoiding conflicts and just letting people get by with whatever because you don't want to have that conflict

but what is it if you read in scripture this is the way christ led matthew 20 25 and 28 says but jesus called them to himself and said you know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them and those who are great exercise authority over them yet it shall not be so among you but whoever desires to become great among you let him be your servant and who whoever desires to be first among you let him be your slave just as the son of man did come to be served did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many time and time if you look through scripture we know jesus was a leader we know he was leading people people followed him everywhere he went it's because he was a servant he didn't get up there and say you have to do this and i'm going to make you do this and if you do this and follow me you're going to feel important i'm going to make you feel important no he did this he he was a servant everywhere he went as a matter of fact after he finished the statement he had compassion on two blind men and he healed them you know it can be said that most of the recorded miracles in the bible most of his miracles can be attributed to his servant leadership out of wine at a wedding no problem let me fix it for you out of food at a gathering when they're all there to listen to them i got this i'll take whatever you have and i'll i'll serve you i'll do what i can to serve you to make you feel important you come to my house with dirty feet we may say gross please rinse your feet off outside there's a floor mat wipe them off ah i got this too let me wash them for you he was a servant everywhere he went he fixed people's problems so they could be successful he set them up to be successful by being the servant what has he done for you has he healed you we have a lot of people in our church congregation that are sick right now can he heal them absolutely has he provided a job for you you know what with that job with that with those miracles we have to do a little bit he can provide the best job in the world for me but if i don't do my part to to be a good employee and to work hard then then it's a way so he's not just opening up and just pouring out you know filling our bank accounts with thousands of dollars i mean i don't know how many got their stimulus checked this week we got ours in the bank today that was kind of nice but that's not an unlimited resource of god just saying here you go pastor here's here's millions of dollars we have to do something for it but he is he is setting us up to be successful by being a servant for us

again it's biblical we can go through and find several characteristics of servant leadership in the bible jesus tells us number one to have integrity proverbs 21 3 says to do righteous and justice is more acceptable to the lord than sacrifice have integrity do not try to cheat your way to the top or cut corners just to make extra money have integrity in all that you do they say integrity is who you are behind closed doors that's more important than who you are in front of everybody else we're also taught to be humble i can get up here and say i'm the most humble person in the world just look at me 3 12 says since god chose you to be the holy person he loves you must clothe yourself with tender hearted mercy kindness humility gentleness and patience you know sometimes it's hard one of the hardest things is to admit we we may not know everything depending on your personality trait or your personality straight uh type sometimes that's hard to do a lot of personal references tonight but i couple months ago had a job switch and i left a position pretty much i i knew what to do people knew i was the go-to if they needed something unfortunately it was all hours of the night if there was a situation a problem i knew who to call or i knew how to fix it and i left that to go to a new job for a growth opportunity but i became the new guy and i became the one that had a call has to call hey can you help me with this you know the person i share in office today i'm like uh this is my first time doing this here can you help me that's not easy for me to do but it's important to be humble in all that we do and say you know what it's okay if you don't know how to do everything it's okay to ask for help and you know again i'm talking a lot about business a lot about work but this is the same in our families it's the same when you know we want to go be a leader to the and serve that that neighbor and disciple them and we don't quite exactly know how how to do it that's why we have resources and and pastor and church leadership to help us in those situations and complete honesty i'm not the i'm very much not the person to go just knocking on people's doors and inviting them to church i mean that's not my thing but sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone and it's okay to not know everything it's okay to ask for help

we're also encouraged to be good stewards in first peter 4 and 10 says as each one has received a gift minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of god a lot of times where does your mind go when you we talk about stewardship money a lot of times but stewardship isn't just about money one of merriam-webster's definitions of the word is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care we have to be good stewards of of the things that god gave us the talents and the abilities that he gave us we must be good stewards of the people in our family that we are are there to be leaders of we must be good stewards to our children we must be good stuart stewart's the to our employees that we lead and it's also what is servant leadership it's also a proven way to be a successful leader why it's the way jesus led in grad school i i went to a christian university so it was most of the things we did were bible based so it wasn't like i had to you know breaking down walls to share what i believed but we had a lot of papers on you know what is what is the you know what does the bible say about your life are your your your leadership style how does that relate to the bible like well it's it's there it's it's what i do i mean it doesn't challenge me because that's what it's it's doing i want to follow the bible and if i follow the leadership principles in the bible i'm going to be successful in life it's so easy we have i talked about all the books that that i've read are out there on leadership but we we have the ultimate leadership book as i mentioned in the beginning you know there are some other leadership styles but this is a very successful style doing anything like jesus does you're going to be successful in that book the way of the shepherd there were seven principles that the author wrote about and this is kind of a story it's a parable but it's about a modern day shepherd and his sheep so this young student at a university is is finishing up his uh his mba and he got hired a couple weeks before close of school and he went to one of his beloved professors because he was he was concerned not about the financial aspect of his job that's what he went to school for but he was concerned with the the people leadership he had nine people that were going to report to him immediately and he'd never he was early 20s he had never led anybody in his life and and he wanted he went to this professor to ask him hey can you can you teach me about people can you teach me about being a leader i got the other stuff down pat but teach me about being a leader and the uh the professor thought about it for a while and made him guarantee that he was willing to give up his saturdays from then until graduation to talk about leadership principles the story goes on he had to meet him out on his ranch and he showed him a sheep and there was some you know the the student was like what are all these smelly sheep man this smells so bad what was it what is this about and as you can imagine that was his first lesson you know he came back and taught that lesson after the fact

but there are seven principles in this this book and i'm gonna i'm gonna go over and briefly again this could be a whole whole lesson a whole series in itself but i think there's some good things that can help us understand how to be good leaders the first one is know the condition of your flock how can you lead people if you don't know what condition they're in or what they need how can you help your your kids with their schoolwork or you help them grow up if you don't know exactly where they're at or what they're going through if you don't talk to them if you don't spend time with them one-on-one how do we do this we allow them to ask questions and if you don't know the answer it's okay figure it out and get back to them you know in in the business world how do you how do you do this maybe you put a survey monkey out there and kind of survey the staff see where they are i think one of the hardest things to do but yet most beneficial is is to do that with an open text box to allow people just to type in what they really think that might be kind of eye-opening i've been through some of those sometimes you have to dis disregard a few of the disgruntled employees but that is that is a way to know the condition of your flocks and know how they are to know where they're at you have to speak to them and figure it out the next one is discover the shape of your sheep know what their knowledge base is find out what they're comfortable with and what they need help with what can you do to help them be successful

the third point is help your sheep identify with you you build trust by modeling the behavior you want it cracks me up to yell at you when you're yelling at your kids about you're saying stop yelling as you're yelling at them we have a dog most of you have seen maybe seen on on social media got her you know we did the whole quarantine thing got new cars got a dog out of camper everything else that you know most of the world did during the quarantine and she'll be barking when we get home and i think we're yelling just as loud like because you know it's it's not helping anything to do that but how do you how do you get your your family your children your the people you're trying to lead to uh identify with you you model the behavior you want them to do i talked about the story of washing the work vehicles and about not doing that so how did i how did i change that i went out almost every day and washed my own vehicle and then i went and helped them wash theirs again not saying that to be you know good you know pat myself on the back but i wanted them to know that i was there and i would help them be successful and what did they do in turn they went in my office when i wasn't in there and would grab my keys and go wash mine not because i threw the keys at them not because i said hey you need to go do this while i went and played crossword puzzles but because i modeled the behavior that i wanted to receive you also have to communicate your values off them let them know what kind of behavior is acceptable this is something that can you know all facets of our life you know it's what is it is it work is it home with our children sister tammy is it patience in the er you have mike you know you have to draw the line sometimes and let them know what behavior is what behavior is acceptable and what's not acceptable and then tell them why it's not acceptable if you want to be a great leader you have to be personal

there's the staff of direction the shepherd staff has multiple uses again i mean we could spend hours going over this stuff but that shepherd used that staff to kind of tap my sheep just to know let them know he was there he was watching for him when they started to go the wrong way it was just kind of a little nudge he could reach out there kind of little nudge to to get them to go the right way when they would start to wander off he would you know let him know the other thing that hook on the end of the shepard staff was for if if a sheep would fall down or get stuck in a crevice he could go around their neck and pull him out he let those he reminded those sheep that failure isn't fatal does that sound like somebody else you know what sometimes we're gonna mess up and that's okay we're gonna go the wrong way but we have somebody there the great shepherd that's there to guide us that's there to tap us on the shoulder and say hey i think you're going the wrong way hey you know what you fell down let me reach down and pick you up that long arm that we we've all felt at different times in our life to reach down and pick us up and and it's okay failure that failure that we've had that we've all had and we will all continue to have that failure isn't fatal just because we failed doesn't mean it's over doesn't mean game over again i mean a lot of these things are from from a book as i mentioned but it's it all goes back to that that ultimate book and that ultimate example of servant leader jesus we have to

make your your pasture your home a safe place make it a place that your your children feel free to speak to speak their heart to speak their mind teach them to speak up when problems start don't give them time to dwell on the problems because they're too scared to bring it up and the same again for the workplace let them be able to to speak freely and feel safe in doing so the rod of correction who wants to talk about that right the shepherd rod that that was there for correction but i i learned in this discipline comes from the latin word disciples i probably said that wrong but that's where we get the word pupil so the root of discipline is pupil so discipline is not about placing blame it's not about punishment it's about instruction i think we've all been been there we've had that that that instruction given to us but it's okay that's how we learn that's how we how we get better

and lastly in this out of the seven traits is the heart of a shepherd great leadership is about a lifestyle not just a learn skill great parenting great relationships are about lifestyles not just about checking all the boxes reading all the books learning what what exactly to say it's about modeling it daily most of all to be successful you have to have a heart for your sheep i'm so thankful we have somebody that has a heart for us that he's he he's demonstrated it time and time again and he's doing everything he can for us to be successful

what are some practical ways that we can be a servant leader i think one of the first one the first and most important in my mind is just to be intentional in your actions be intentional in what you do your words carry a lot of weight if you're in a position of authority be careful with those words but your actions are so much more important be intentional in your actions roll up your sleeves it's okay to take time out of your busy day by your busy schedule to get dirty stop doing your dishes and help your kids with their homework it's okay if those dishes pile up stop doing whatever project you are and spend some time with your family spend some time with that neighbor that you're trying to disciple you know it and again going back to the first point you have to be intentional maybe you block time on your day out of your day to spend spend the day with them that's what i've learned i have to do at work because i talked about the calendar earlier and people can just schedule stuff so it just so happens by coincidence tomorrow i blocked my whole calendar and i'm going to go up and spend time with the team how am i going to know where they're at how am i going to know what they need as the leader if i don't spend time with them how are you going to need to how are you going to know what your kids need what your spouse needs if you don't be intentional to spend time with them was it easy for me to to click about 10 hours of busy during that knowing all the projects i have going on not at all but it's you have to do it if you want to be successful you have to do it you have to be intentional and then again show them you care if you're in a situation where you're a people leader ask about their family and then follow up later with them if they're sick if they they're going through something maybe you give them a card listen when they respond to you don't look away don't look at your your smart watch how many has a smart watch and i i do not like notifications if you look at my phone it's over there i guarantee you there are no notifications on it does anybody resonate with that or do you have 15 000 who has 15 000 uh email notifications on your phone sarah i don't like notifications so if i'm sitting and talking in a conversation my watch is going off because i'm in a group message or something like that it i want to look at it i want to and i i somebody called me out on it the other day i don't even remember what what the situation was and it wasn't it was they're like oh do you need to go are you busy no okay i i was not focusing on them in that conversation it was kind of shame on me for doing that but listen when they respond to you and then going back to earlier it's okay to correct them it's okay to set boundaries we know that boundaries are safe boundaries help us grow boundaries help us be successful as long as we're doing all this in love the last practical piece is don't ask them to do something you're not willing to do don't ask them to do a task at your workplace and then go sit down and goof off same goes for your children don't ask them to go do something that that you you just because you're you don't want to get up and you don't want to do it but work alongside of them

in closing tonight if everybody wants to stand i hope i've done a little bit to uh make this make you feel like this is meant for you as well um i have a plaque on my desk right now and it means quite a bit to me more than than i expected it to i'm sure there's many people here that have awards from your jobs maybe it's you know so many years of service uh maybe you went out above and beyond um maybe you got a clinical save sister tammy maybe you did something along those lines to get award but this do you know why this specific award means so much this plaque means so much to me and even made me tear up when i received it because when i was leaving my last job it was given to me by my employees it was their idea they designed it they paid for it out of their pocket and they presented it to me it wasn't given to me by my boss or by the board of director directors of the district that i gave a lot of my life to it was from my employees because they knew i cared for them and it made it hard to leave again not because of the senior leadership team but because of the employees and i can look back on that job and know that i i was successful again not to brag but i was successful and i was intentional to help them grow and i left the place better than when i i got there however there's one that's so much greater than that jesus was the ultimate servant leader everywhere he went he served did some confuse him for being too meek yeah could he have demanded that the disciples pray all night and then he went and slept why does he need to pray right why did he need to do that he was the son of god he didn't need to do that but no he stayed with them he prayed with them could he have distracted peter so he didn't go denying him yeah he could have you get the point i hope he could have done anything he wanted and he did he did what he wanted he became that that servant leader for us as an example that ultimate servant leadership act was dying on the cross for you yes you specifically he chose to do that in an act of true leadership as i was studying for this and writing this out i was getting emotional like i am right now because he chose to do that for me no matter how many times i failed no matter how many times i i wander away he has to pick me up he keeps doing that because he is that ultimate ultimate leader for us that ultimate servant for us not only did he die for us i mean again he died for us for you for me it didn't stop there he went to create a place for us he went to serve even more and i just ask you to try to be that leader be that leader like christ in closing hebrews 12 1-2 says therefore we also since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto jesus who is the author and the finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of god he did that for you he did that for me we can just follow his example to be that great servant leadership

let's just take a few moments just to thank him for what he's done lord we thank you jesus we thank you jesus for dying for us god we thank you for being that example for us oh god we thank you jesus we thank you lord yes we do we thank you we thank you jesus we thank you jesus thank you jesus