Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
I finally completed my Annual Church Conference forms! And that’s a good thing since our Church Conference meeting was held this past Monday!
One of the forms I get to help complete year in and year is a Nominations form for the upcoming year. We have 140 program and administrative positions that are listed on our Nominations form.
And of those 140 total positions, from August through October, the Nominations Committee needed to fill 45 of those positions. 45 positions. I am pleased to announce that we did it! This past Monday evening, our congregation approved those 45 names who will help lead us in ministry for the upcoming year.
In addition to our administrative and program leaders, there are many other ways that people provide leadership throughout the church. Leadership is a vital part of any church. I strongly believe that the church will only go as far as the leadership of the church, under the authority and direction of the Lord Jesus, will take them.
I was in a meeting with our Bishop a few years ago and a lay person who was also at the meeting was complaining about the poor pastoral leadership at her church. And she said, “Bishop, you need to do something about this.” Referring to the poor leadership of her pastor.
And the Bishop responded that his goal is to equip the pastors of the Conference to be the best possible leaders that they can be. And then he asked us this question: What are the three most important qualities that a church needs in a pastor? He answered his own question. He said the first most important quality is leadership. The second most important quality is leadership. And the third most important quality is leadership. Leadership. Leadership. Leadership.
About 600 years before the birth of Christ, the Lord spoke through the prophet Jeremiah of just how important it is for God’s people to have strong leaders. The Lord said, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.”
This just goes to show how much God cares for His people. And then the Lord says through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”
The Lord wants to call forth leaders for the purpose of caring for all of His people, especially for those, who for whatever reasons, are outside of the sheep fold.
What are the qualities of a good leader in God’s eyes? These qualities come from Colossians chapter 1, verses 11-20.
A good leader knows where his or her strength is found. A good leader knows where his or her strength is found.
The Apostle Paul writes in verse 11, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his (meaning Christ’s) glorious power.” Isn’t it great to know that to be a good leader has nothing to do with our strength but it has everything to do with relying on God’s strength?
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year before we begin the Season of Advent which prepares us for Christ’s birth.
Christ the King Sunday is a day to celebrate Christ’s glorious reign over all the earth. It’s a day to remember that Jesus Christ wants to reign in our lives, have supreme control over our lives, and give us the strength that we need to accomplish whatever He wants to accomplish through us.
When I was in college, I attended a revival at a nearby United Methodist Church. I can’t even remember the name of the guest preacher but he was an awesome speaker. And he described a time in his life which has always stuck with me even to this day about the importance of relying on God’s strength for ministry.
He said how he was pastoring a church and he couldn’t get it to grow. He said that even though he would put in 70 hours a week by visiting the sick, going door to door in the community to invite people to church, work on his sermons, and attend church meetings, the church just didn’t grow.
He was reaching a point of burn-out in his ministry and ready to call it quits. But one day, he felt the Lord calling him to use a different strategy. During his personal devotions one morning, he felt the Lord telling him to quit relying on his own strength to grow the church, and to start relying on Christ's strength through prayer.
The next day, he went into the church office like he normally did, and told his church secretary to call every denominational committee and community board and inform them that he was resigning as of that day.
He then proceeded to walk into his pastor’s study and throw away all of the paper work that was cluttering his desk. And then he walked over to the middle of his office floor, sat down on the carpet, and spent the rest of his morning in prayer.
This went on for the next several days and the people in his church began to wonder if their pastor was OK. But over a period of time something wonderful began to happen. The church gradually began to grow. The church began to grow because this pastor and soon after, the majority of the congregation, began to make prayer and dependence on God, their first priority in everything they did.
If nothing else, Christ the King Sunday, has a way of knocking us to our knees to the point where we realize that it’s not our strength or our busyness, but it’s God’s strength working through us that makes all things possible.
The second quality of a good leader. A good leader is patient. Paul writes in our Colossians scripture to endure everything with patience.
Do you know why patience is so important for a leader? It’s because leaders are in the people business. If you think about it, any healthy relationship involves patience.
One of my favorite all time TV shows is Greene Acres. Poor Mr. Douglass. He had to exercise his patience everyday with some of those townspeople. He had to deal with Mr. Haney who would try to sell him anything under the sun. And then there was Eb, the bizarre hired hand. Fred & Doris Ziffel, his crazy neighbors who were also the proud parents of Arnold the Pig. And last but not least, his wife Lisa, who wasn’t always with it, if you know what I mean.
What always amazed me about this show was in how Mr. Douglass was able to show patience. Watch this scene when Mr. Douglass tries to explain to Lisa about their fuse box.
(Green Acres Clip)
I came across these five points to help leaders in having patience in working with people so that we can endure with patience.
Number one - We are patient when we remain positive under pressure. Have you ever been in a meeting or a conversation and things turned negative and sour? When we remain hopeful, even though problems come our way, others see that positive attitude and it can make all the difference in the world.
Second, in order to endure with patience, we need to be sensitive to people. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus tells us.
Third, we endure with patience by controlling what we say. When we speak, it should be to build others up and not to tear them down.
Fourth, we endure with patience by being peacemakers. The scriptures consistently tell us to refrain from quarrels and arguments that get in the way of our main mission of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with a lost and hurting world.
And fifth, we endure with patience by being a people of prayer. Prayer is probably the best way to have more patience in our lives. Prayer is how we hand our problems over to God.
And then there’s this third quality of a good leader found in our Colossians’ text. A good leader is filled with joyful thanksgiving. Paul writes in verses 11 & 12 for us to joyfully give thanks to the Father.
Notice how I am able to weave Thanksgiving into this sermon.
Good leaders and good shepherds are people who are constantly aware of the blessings that are all around us. Their faith doesn’t become dull and boring. Their lives are filled with expectation about what God is going to do next.
“I wish I had never read Huckleberry Finn,” a man once told its author, Mark Twain. With a scowl, the great humorist asked the reason for such a remark. “So that I could have the pleasure again of reading it for the first time” came the reply.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said about the stars, that if the constellations appeared only once in a thousand years, imagine what an exciting event it would be. But because they’re there every night, we barely give them a look.
Rev. William Secker once said, “The Lord Jesus spreads a large table every day.” Really, if you think about it, that spread of food that graces our tables on Thanksgiving Day represents a very small portion of the many blessings that God has poured out upon us.
One of the qualities of being a good leader is to keep a thanksgiving spirit fresh in our lives.
Panera Bread is a restaurant that is known for their fresh breads. Their philosophy is to always have fresh bread for their customers. No bakery would ever try to advertise by saying that they offer “unfresh bread.”
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says, “Give us this day, our daily bread.” Not our weekly bread. Not our monthly bread. But our daily bread. Sometimes, we as Christians, forget that Jesus wants to give us fresh bread each day. It’s this fresh bread that leads us to be filled with joyful thanksgiving on a daily basis.
And I just don’t mean white, wheat, asiago, or rye bread. I’m talking about spiritual bread that feeds our souls, that inspires us in our faith, that gives us energy to spread the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we go.
Christians who are filled with joyful thanksgiving are those who are filled with passion, energy, and an anticipation of what God is going to do next.
Rev. Dick Lyndon became Senior Pastor of Goshen First United Methodist Church, in Goshen, Indiana, in 1991. Goshen First United Methodist Church was a declining downtown church which had very little vision for the future.
Through Dick’s inspirational leadership and through the renewed life and energy among the congregation, new discipling groups and Bible Studies were started along with a midweek ministry that offered a meal and small group opportunities, and the congregation also added a new facility to reach a rapidly growing unchurched population on the growing west side of the city.
This church, which had been in steady decline, has been reaching all ages with the message of Jesus Christ’s love.
Not only did Dick’s leadership have an impact upon this church, his influence and expertise has had a national impact on churches across the country. In 1995, there were less than ten multi-site congregations in the country, but as of 2003, there were more than 1,200 churches that elected to reach people in multiple sites.
Dick Lyndon’s high energy pastoral leadership has had a tremendous impact upon my life. I got to know Dick in 1997 when I visited his church in Goshen, Indiana and came away inspired and excited about the new life that was being breathed into this congregation. Dick and I talked on the phone and would e-mail back and forth about ministry ideas and what he thought would work and not work at the church I was serving in Toledo at the time. But even more than his helpful thoughts and ideas, his high energy for the sake of the Gospel is what has meant the most to me.
In 2004, after a six week illness, Dick Lyndon passed away at the age of 62.
I knew Dick Lyndon to be a person of joyful thanksgiving. Someone who was truly a great shepherd. Someone who cared about God’s sheep, both in the fold and outside of the fold. Someone who was filled with passion, energy, and an anticipation of what God would do next.
God is looking for good leaders. Leaders who have these three qualities. 1) They draw their strength from Jesus Christ, who is the King of Kings and the Lord of lords. 2) They know how to be patient and build people up. And number 3) They are filled with joyful thanksgiving. They are inspiring to be around. They have a vision for the future.
There are others that I could have lifted up who have served as positive leaders in the church and I’m sure that you can do the same. But here’s what I want to have us think about before I close this sermon. To various degrees, God is calling each one of us to serve as caring shepherds for people who are inside or who are feeling outside of God’s fold. That’s the focus of our Jeremiah scripture this morning.
Now, you might not think of yourself as one of the many leaders in the church or as one of the shepherds that God has called to serve in and through the church, but really, we’re all called to have a part in being God’s shepherds.
Or let me put it this way. Anytime that you are involved in a ministry that involves making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our community and world, then you are a leader in the church. The question is what kind of leaders are we? Do we have the qualities of a leader that we have been looking at this morning?
Are we relying on God’s strength and not our own? Are we a people of patience which we need when we are in relationship with other people? And are we leaders who offer joyful thanksgiving and have a positive expectation of what God is going to do in and through us?
I mentioned earlier that our Nominations form lists 140 positions which include serving on our Church Council to serving on our Board of Trustees, to Finance, to Staff/Parish, to Worship as well as several other committees and program areas. If you will be serving in one of those 140 positions in the coming year, if you’re able, I invite you to stand and remain standing as I pray this prayer.
And I invite all of us to bow our heads as I lead in this prayer for all of our leaders here at First Church:
Lord Jesus, on this Christ the King Sunday, you invite us to be leaders and shepherds for the people in our church and community. Raise up within our own congregation more leaders and shepherds who have a heart for reaching people. And for those new shepherds and leaders who you are calling in this moment, may they remember to always draw their strength from you, may they remember to be patient and seek ways to affirm people and build them up, and may they inspire others through joyful and thankful living. We pray this in your name, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. Amen.
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