More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Our job is to train them, not do it for them. It’s the nature of leading our families.
Do you really want a church that is growing in unity and toward maturity? Then make your cause, your holy cause, the equipping and preparing of God’s people.
As God’s people are equipped for ministry to each other, they are also equipped for ministry and leadership outside the body of Christ. As we develop leaders for both the Church and the world, we must develop them to lead as God leads. We must hold conviction for leadership to be rooted in the character of God. To that critical conviction, we now turn.
Strong cultures can edify or they can destroy. Leaders can bless and serve people or they can hurt and dominate people.
we must view work and leadership as a gift and not a god.
We must not value productivity over people. We do not have to trade health for effectiveness. We can be both healthy and effective.
Man is the divine image. As servant king and son of God, mankind will mediate God’s rule to the creation in the context of a covenant relationship with God on the one hand and the earth on the other.
The implication of this view leads us to see mankind’s creation with an implicit and incredible destiny.
In an unimaginable expression of grace, God has made it so that created man can experience firsthand the majesty and glory of the Uncreated One. God not only created us to bring Him glory and to behold His glory, but He made us to find our fullest joy in savoring His glory.
God’s people were the first to be given leadership and we were told to reproduce more! We were never meant to be power grabbers, but power givers.
Not only did God make us to thrive within creation, but He also commissioned us to lead this creation so that others in this creation would flourish and thrive.
God’s plan from the beginning of creation was to entrust leadership to His people so that they might fill the earth with glory-reflecting image bearers who strive to make the earth a glory-yielding garden for the name of Jesus.
As part of His mission, we now embrace His command to make disciples of all nations, so that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation will give Him glory (Matt. 28:19).
He is creating for Himself a people from all peoples who will be His forever, and we are invited...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
This distortion is so pervasive that people are wholly rejecting leadership, rather than the sin that has distorted it!
Many people simply do not want to be led. Like our first parents in the garden, stiff-necked and self-assured, we firmly denounce any attempt by God for others to lead us.
Every one of us has countless stories about leaders in our lives that were not using their power to cause us to flourish, but rather used us for their own gain.
Each one who has been placed in a position of leadership carries with us tremendous responsibility, and so do those we develop for leadership.
How can we reconcile this current mistrust of leadership and the historic reality that God made men to lead? Praise be to God, Jesus redeems.
Leadership is much like nuclear energy. It is able to warm a whole city or bring it to waste in death and destruction; it’s all in how it is used.
What if your leadership and the leadership of those you develop could be used to point people to our Creator and King?
The way our churches train and develop leaders can become as a spring of fresh water spilling out into a dry land.
The primary purpose for our leadership mandate is to make known the glory of God by leading others to flourish in God’s design.
Sadly, many don’t just want to lead greatly, but also want to be known as great leaders. But this isn’t what God intended.
Again, God’s plan from the beginning of creation was to entrust leadership to men and women so that they might fill the earth with glory-reflecting image bearers who strive to make the earth a glory-yielding garden for the name of Jesus.
What must leadership look like for the people of God? What must leaders, who embrace leadership in the image of God, do?
The leadership God has entrusted to mankind can be placed into three primary activities:
Leaders are called to reflect God’s glory.
Leaders are called to replicate.
Leaders are called to cultivate.
God is far more concerned with the leader’s personal sanctification than He is with the leader’s ability to influence others.
God does not need your leadership. Don’t get us wrong; He wants you to lead, and He wants you to lead well. But, do not mistake God’s desire as dependence on His creation.
Lord cares for their response to His holiness more than how many responsibilities they steward.
The story of all of God’s leaders, from Abraham to John, and everyone in between, is the story of God
relentlessly sanctifying His leaders into His image.
all of God’s leaders must have godly character in common because God’s leaders reveal God’s character through their lives.
It is not first the work of our hands that pleases the Lord, but the condition of our hearts. We cannot go on leading or living as if our results are God’s primary concern.
Our leaders, unlike any others, must be faithful to reflect the glory of God through their own lives.
However, our faithful God would not see His design for mankind thwarted. From the garden to Christ’s return, the Scripture reveals the Father’s dedication to restore His image in mankind and to set them on a course to reproduce God-honoring image bearers for His glory.
When God reveals Himself to Abram, He is not just looking for a worshipper. Instead, He is aiming to channel His grace and mercy through and to mankind once again.
In fact, every ounce of leadership entrusted to
us by God is a stewardship.
Christian leadership, like no other kind, with the posture of a servant aims to cultivate the world so others can flourish according to God’s design.
We are not simply here to bear fruit, but to create environments where others, inside and outside the family of God, can be fruitful and can experience the peace of God.
Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.”
For mankind to flourish is for mankind to spiritually flourish, psychologically flourish, sociologically flourish, and physically flourish.
God’s desire was that the very people the Babylonians conquered would be common grace to the Babylonians.
This is what the leadership mandate looks like in a fallen world. God’s people, whether at work in the marketplace, leading at church, or caring for family, are to cultivate the surrounding soil.
Whatever is in your care, if you are leading according to God’s design, should be a place of life and shalom.
We must be leaders and develop leaders who reflect, replicate, and cultivate.
