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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Uncover the values that are really believed by observing the behavior, by listening to
the stories, by seeing what is celebrated and what is tolerated in the culture.
Identify the values beneath the surface that you want to remain, values that are excellent and praiseworthy.
Find what actual beliefs and values are affirmable and affirm, celebrate, and reinforce them. Starve and confront the unhealthy ones, but affirm the healthy actual values and the right beliefs.
The local church needs brave culture leaders. We need to paint wonderful pictures of future obedience, while leading our churches to repent of our past failures.
When major unbiblical deviations go unaddressed, it only serves to undermine the membership’s view of the care, courage, or competency of the leadership.
Exposition is the step in the process that gives Christ-followers a tremendous confidence in the possible future for any church.
Every single day, we must come to our Bible expecting God to change us, renew us, and cause us to repent. It should be no different for the Church of God. And the means that God uses to shape individuals is the same means He will use to change a church’s culture.
The teaching and preaching of God’s Word is our hope and God’s power for change.
For a church to change into an epicenter of leadership development, God’s Word will lead the way.
to touch, feel, and see ideas and concepts.
For a culture to really change, it needs new stories, new heroes, and even new villains.
People will follow your example before they follow your vision.
If a church sees regular examples of people they know used by God as leaders, the Spirit will surely begin to stir many more to action. So many lies that lead to apathy can be struck down through the right use of story in the local church.
A villain story is a narrative of warning. On our best days we learn to obey God simply by “believing yet not seeing.” Other days, we trust God because of His historical faithfulness in the particular area. There are some days, however, when only a warning will keep us true.
a villain is not a particular person in your church—not someone you would name in front of the congregation—but a picture of a wasted life, of the futility of living for the temporary pleasures of today instead of embracing the mission of God.
The process of incorporation is the creation of systems, policies, structures, the reallocation of resources, and other such things to reorient the church around its new desired cultural ambitions.
If developing leaders is essential, the church must incorporate the conviction into the normal rhythm of the church.
To measure progress, a church needs to establish specific goals and outcomes.
multiplying godly leaders in all spheres of life will be something that is evaluated.
Evaluation, of course, helps ensure this happens—that each ministry and each ministry leader embraces the blessed burden of equipping others.
A church can and should be a leadership locus, a center of development and deployment for men and women joining God on His mission.
“Constructs are the systems, processes, and programs utilized to help develop leaders.”
“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”
“thought is the child of action.”
A leadership pipeline, for example, shows people “we value leadership development so much that we have a plan to make it happen.”
Jesus’ concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes would follow.
Jesus did not divorce leadership development from discipleship. As He invested in the Twelve, He continually “discipled” them while simultaneously developing them to be leaders.
The Church holds the conviction to develop others for the future.
God’s people have always multiplied. The faith has always, by God’s grace, been transferred from one generation to the next, from one person to another.
We are Christians because others have shared the gospel with us. We have matured because others have helped develop us.
We have great biblical examples of leaders developing others.
He chose to ensure the gospel would spread through the disciples, and He prayerfully selected those to whom He would hand the mission.
