Exodus 32, sounds much better than that.
When you think of the Exodus, it must
have been a wonderful experience for the children
of Israel.
Do you know how many years they'd been
in bondage, anybody?
430 years, if my memory serves me correctly,
they'd been in bondage in Egypt.
430 years of sheer frustration for the nation
of Israel.
And then of course there was that tremendously
frustrating period when God sent the various plagues
on the land of Egypt and Pharaoh kept
changing his mind.
Have you ever used your imagination and read
through that passage in Exodus?
Can you imagine the frustration which the people
must have felt after the various plagues?
Pharaoh decided to let the children of Israel
go and Moses went back in triumph to
Goshen and he told the people to pack
their bags, get their suitcases ready, get the
cattle together because they were about to go
on their way.
Time and time again, Pharaoh changed his mind
and they had to unpack everything and settle
back into their captivity in Goshen.
And then the day finally came when Pharaoh
was to release them from his captivity.
Full of excitement and expectation, they commence their
journey.
Oh, they knew that there were many hardships
ahead and there were many setbacks which they
faced.
But here in chapter 32, when God gave
the Ten Commandments and various other laws to
the people, you can see their enthusiastic response
in verse 3.
Get the sense of enthusiasm and expectation here.
Everything the Lord has said, we will do.
Moses was a very careful leader so he
wrote down everything which God had said and
then he read the book of the covenant
to the people and again they responded, verse
7.
We will do everything the Lord has said.
We will obey.
And then Moses went up on the mountain
of God and he said to the people,
verse 14, Wait here for us until we
come back to you.
Aaron and Hur are with you and anyone
involved in a dispute can go to them.
Moses is a very good leader.
He's making ample delegation before he goes.
But by the time you get to chapter
32, everything is falling to pieces.
I'm sorry, I completely misread you.
All the previous verses were in chapter 24.
That was just to see how many of
you actually are asleep on a Sunday afternoon.
They're all in chapter 24.
Now they're in chapter 32.
Welcome, you've arrived.
Chapter 32.
By the time you get to this chapter,
you've been there a long time, but by
the time you get there, you'll find that
everything is falling apart.
It really is, isn't it?
Everything is falling apart.
Verse 1.
When the people saw that Moses was so
long in coming down from the mountain, they
gathered around Aaron and they said, Come, make
us gods who will go before us.
Chapter 24.
Everything the Lord has said, we will do.
Chapter 32.
Let's make other gods who will go before
us.
As for this fellow Moses, the Moses they've
been so excited and so enthused about.
As for this fellow Moses who brought us
up out of Egypt, we don't know what's
happened to him.
And it's not long before they're worshipping a
golden calf.
Verse 4.
And they're saying, can you imagine it?
The people of God are saying, These are
your gods, O Israel.
These are the gods who brought you up
out of Egypt.
Exactly what had happened between chapter 24 and
chapter 32?
What had happened to bring about this tremendous
change?
Well, a very simple thing had happened.
The leader had gone.
He'd gone up on the mountain to meet
with God.
And when the leader was gone, confusion and
chaos very soon followed.
Now, the man who followed Moses as the
leader of Israel was, of course, Joshua.
And I want you to turn now to
the book of Judges to see the leadership
influence of this man Joshua.
Turn to Judges, and it's definitely chapter 2.
Judges chapter 2 and verse 7.
Here you read about the leadership influence of
Joshua.
Judges 2 verse 7.
Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of
Joshua and of the elders who outlived him
and who had experienced everything the Lord had
done for Israel.
There's the influence of a leader.
When Joshua was there, the people followed God.
When the other elders who'd ministered with Joshua
were there, they continued to follow God.
And when all the other people who'd been
touched by the man Joshua were there, the
children of Israel were faithful to God.
But verse 8 reports the death of Joshua.
And then listen to the solemn words of
verse 10.
After that whole generation had been gathered to
their fathers, the generation who'd been influenced by
Joshua, another generation grew up who knew neither
the Lord nor what he had done for
Israel.
And then the Israelites did evil in the
eyes of the Lord.
They served the Baals, they forsook the Lord,
the God of their fathers who had brought
them out of Egypt.
And then just look at chapter 3, verse
9.
Chapter 3, verse 9.
They've turned away from Joshua's influence, they've turned
away from God, and they're in a real
mess.
But verse 9, they cried out to the
Lord.
And he raised up for them a deliverer,
Othniel, the son of Kenaz.
Verse 10, the spirit of the Lord came
upon him so that he became Israel's judge
and went to war.
Verse 11, the land had peace for 40
years until Othniel died.
And then once again, the Israelites did evil
in the eyes of the Lord.
Now we could trace the story right through
the fortunes of the children of Israel in
the Old Testament.
There's a very simple pattern when you read
through.
When the leader is there, when he is
walking with God, then the people are walking
with God.
They're moving on for God.
But when the leader departs, or when the
leader goes astray, almost immediately chaos and confusion
enters the camp.
The spiritual forces of the children of Israel
was directly linked to the spiritual leadership in
the nation at that time.
So I think we can say with absolute
conviction this afternoon that the subject we've been
looking at together this weekend is an absolutely
crucial subject.
When the leadership of the church and of
the Christian unions and of the youth fellowships
and of the missionary societies in our nation
is really walking with God, then the people
will rise up and they will walk with
God.
I said in answer to a question yesterday,
I think, or in my seminar, I can't
remember where, what people are looking for today
are models to follow.
They are looking for people to imitate.
It's one thing for me to get up
here and speak to you, or for others
to get up here and speak to you.
That's not easy, but it's one thing.
It is quite another thing for me to
be living a life Sunday by Sunday, Monday
to Friday, which people want to follow.
That's leadership.
Not just lecturing from the front, but living
the life that will infuse and motivate others
and give them a desire to follow.
So I want to begin this afternoon by
giving you five reasons why leadership is absolutely
essential to the health of the Church or
the Christian Union.
Five very simple reasons.
Firstly, as we've seen, I just underline it,
without leadership, chaos will very quickly result.
Leaders are essential to prevent, for example, friction,
to prevent duplication.
Leaders are essential to ensure that things actually
get done.
Churches, Christian unions, missionary societies can become great
talk shops, can't they?
Endless committee meetings, endless fellowship meetings to discuss
what we should be doing.
But the question is, what are we doing?
Leaders are people who turn discussion and ideas
into action.
And if we don't have leaders, there will
be duplication, there will be friction, there will
be demotivation, and there will be chaos.
Secondly, leadership is required if people are to
maintain their motivation.
Leadership is required if people are to maintain
their motivation.
Let me give you a biblical example of
that.
Turn to a remarkable example in the 27th
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
I want you to turn to this chapter
because it's really very exceptional.
Acts chapter 27.
This is the account of the violent storm
which Paul encountered as he sailed towards Rome.
Now remember, Paul is a prisoner on the
ship.
Get that in your mind as you read
this story.
Chapter 27, and we take up the story
in the 14th verse.
A wind of hurricane force called the Northeaster
sweeps down on the vessel as they head
for the island of Crete.
And the ship is caught in the storm.
Initially the crew respond very actively to the
storm.
Look, for example, at verse 18.
We took such a violent battering from the
storm that the next day they began to
throw the cargo overboard.
That's normal.
There's a crisis.
A life and death crisis.
And initially the people caught in the crisis
are highly motivated.
They're very active.
They take action.
Throwing everything overboard to lighten the ship.
Verse 19, on the third day they threw
the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands.
That must have taken some doing.
But then as you can see in verse
20, hope is beginning to fade fast.
And when hope fades, motivation disappears.
Verse 21 tells us that they aren't even
eating.
The initial active response has become totally demotivated.
And here are the people so demotivated, so
afraid, that they've actually stopped taking food.
Now what is needed in a situation like
that?
And you can illustrate that situation in many
churches, in many Christian unions up and down
our country.
Christians who are demotivated.
They've lost their hope.
They've lost their sense of victory.
They feel they've been evangelizing and witnessing and
testifying for 5, 10, 15, 50 years.
Nothing seems to have taken place.
And they're basically demotivated, going through the motions.
What do we need in a situation like
that?
Quite simply, a leader.
A leader who can inspire with hope.
A leader who can rekindle lost motivation.
And the Apostle Paul was just such a
man.
Strong in faith in the promises of God,
he tells them of God's promise to him
that he would stand trial before Caesar.
And then he encourages them in verse 25,
Keep up your courage, men.
I have faith in God.
You might not.
But I have faith in God that it
will happen just as he told me.
And it's clear if you look at verse
33 that the prisoner on board the ship
has taken total charge of the situation.
Paul urges them all to eat.
For the last 14 days, he says, you've
been in constant suspense.
You've gone without food.
You haven't eaten anything.
Now I urge you, take some food.
You need it to survive.
This is the prisoner speaking.
Not one of you will lose a single
hair.
I must get on board fast.
Not one of you will lose a single
hair from his head.
Now look at the result.
Look at the result of this intervention.
Verse 36, They were all encouraged and they
ate some food themselves.
And what happens?
Action begins to return.
Verse 38, When they had eaten as much
as they wanted, they lightened the ship by
throwing the grain into the sea.
A hopeless situation where all hope and motivation
had gone is totally rescued by one man
who has faith in God.
Now I'm challenging you as you go away
from this conference.
How many in your Christian union, how many
in your church, how many in your youth
group are spiritually demotivated?
They're going through emotions because they're fearful of
the consequences if they don't.
But they're demotivated Christians.
How many do you need to get alongside?
And by your model, by your example, you
are going to rekindle lost motivation.
And you're going to get people and groups
and CU's and please God, even whole churches
moving again for the glory of God.
Now you say to me, look, I'm so
young.
And I will tell you that in the
history of the Christian church, it has been
young people time and time again who in
a day of crisis have taken their stand.
I wish I had time to tell you
in Carlisle in less than three and a
half hours.
But I wish I had time to tell
you of the history of Christian missions.
If I could trace through the history particularly
of the last 200 years of Christian missions,
I would show you people of your age
and just above, five, six years above the
age of many of you who have been
absolutely at the forefront of the missionary advances
in churches all around the world.
I wonder how many Christian unions, I wonder
how many youth fellowships and I wonder how
many churches are just waiting for you to
go back and live the life and inspire
and rekindle lost motivation.
It's the great task of leadership.
And then thirdly, leadership is required if people
are to be used to their full potential.
Leadership is required if people are to be
used to their full potential.
One Christian preacher illustrated a common problem in
the church from a childhood memory.
I'll read this to you.
He says, I've got a vivid memory of
a day when I was a child and
I was playing at the side of a
London canal with my sisters.
Our rubber ball went in to the canal
and bobbed about tantalizingly near the bank.
I, the youngest at the scene, was urged
to reach for it.
Obediently, I crouched perilously on my haunches and
stretched for all I was worth and just
touched it.
Go on, hissed my sister fervently.
You're there!
And I was.
But as she spoke, she gave me an
encouraging push and the next moment I had
my first experience of total immersion.
Now the point of this story which the
preacher is making through the illustration is that
in the church there are so many of
what he calls elder sisters who are quite
happy to allow the few, to encourage the
few to carry all the responsibility.
You know, I visit maybe two or three
churches a week in Britain.
And this, to me, brothers and sisters, is
a tragedy.
It makes me weep sometimes.
As I look at British churches over and
over again, I come to the conclusion if
you took ten or fifteen people out of
most churches in this country the whole thing
would collapse.
Because the whole church is built often on
even fewer than that.
People who are taking all the responsibility.
And some foolish Christians put these people who
take all the responsibility on a pedestal.
And they say, what marvelous people.
Oh, the commitment.
They're there at every service.
They sit on every committee.
They're involved in everything.
Committed people they might be.
Foolish leaders they undoubtedly are.
If you want to be a bad leader
just do everything and you'll wreck the place
in a few years.
It's a very simple formula.
If you want to go home and wreck
your church that's your desire at the end
of this weekend.
You just go home and sign up on
every committee.
You get involved in everything.
You get on the spiritual star list.
He does everything.
Great man.
And you'll ruin the church.
You know what Ephesians chapter 4 says?
If you want the body to grow it
only grows when every muscle and when every
sinew is playing its part.
Some of the local churches today they're ugly,
ugly things.
There are some churches with one great big
right leg.
That's all you can see.
A great big right leg.
There are other churches with a great big
right ear.
Totally imbalanced bodies of Christ.
Where one muscle is doing everything and therefore
growing enormously.
But it's an ugly, ugly picture.
The true picture is every sinew and every
muscle playing its part.
Part of the challenge of leadership as Andy
shared with us this morning is the challenge
of handing over.
Handing over to the young brother or the
older brother.
The young sister or the older sister.
Who, horror of horrors, will do it different
than you've been doing.
And may well do it better than you've
been doing.
But the challenge is to know when to
hand on.
When to encourage someone alongside.
Stand with me for six months.
Stand with me for a year and then
it's yours to run with.
Part of the challenge of leadership is the
challenge of getting the best out of every
member of those you are responsible to lead.
Fourthly, without leadership people will not receive the
care which they need.
Without leadership they will not receive the care
which they need.
We saw at the end of my talk
last night in 1 Peter 5 that this
is the responsibility of overseers in a church.
Be shepherds of God's flock under your care.
Serving as overseers not because you must but
because you're willing as God wants you to
be.
Not greedy for money but eager to serve.
Not lording it over those entrusted to you
but being an example to the flock.
Now we could say many things from those
verses because they're full of instruction on the
subject of leadership.
The only thing I want to say is
this.
That in every church and in every Christian
union there must be people who sense the
responsibility to care.
There must be people who sitting in that
meeting or at the end of the meeting
are looking around.
Who's missing today?
And was that person missing last week?
Not because you're thinking in some critical fashion
but because you're thinking in some caring concerned
fashion.
I went to a church down in the
Midlands not so long ago.
And I went for four Sundays.
And I'd been to the church many times
before and I knew one young man.
Brilliant preacher.
Graduate of a Bible college.
Marvellous Christian fellow.
Real gift in ministry.
And I noticed he hadn't been around during
the four Sundays I was there.
So I went at the end of my
four Sundays and a couple of days left
in the area to one of the elders
and I said, James, what's happened to James?
Where's he been?
And this elder said, you know, we've missed
him.
We've no idea where he is.
So I went to his home and he
opened the door.
And I said, James, I've noticed you haven't
been around the last four Sundays I've been
here.
Anything wrong?
He said, seeing you've asked I'll tell you.
Come on in.
Nobody else has asked.
As you've asked, I'll tell you.
And he sat there in his room and
he told me the most horrendous story.
He was actually struggling with homosexuality, with homosexual
desires in his life.
He'd been doing so for over ten years.
He hadn't fallen.
He wasn't a practicing homosexual.
But he was struggling with this tension.
And he was bleeding.
He was hurting.
And I had to come to the conclusion.
It was a sad conclusion.
I hope I'm wrong.
But there just didn't seem to be anybody
in that fellowship who was overseeing the flock
and looking out for the wounded lamb who
needed the shepherd's care.
You know, if you're in responsibility in your
Christian union, it falls on your plate, brother,
sister, to overlook the flock and to minister
to those who are in need.
Without leadership, people will not receive the care
which they require.
And then, fifthly, without leadership, the job, quite
simply, will never be done.
Without leadership, the job will never be done.
Do you think the walls of Jerusalem would
ever have been rebuilt if Nehemiah had not
taken the lead?
There would have been great meetings about it,
I'm sure.
There would have been consultations and conventions and
executive committees and all kinds of things amongst
the Israelites.
We have to get round to working out
some plans for those broken-down walls in
Jerusalem.
Let's meet again next Tuesday and discuss the
matter further.
Unless Nehemiah had said, God has called me,
are you ready to join me?
Those walls would still not be rebuilt today.
Would the Gentiles have been evangelized?
If God hadn't put his hand on Paul
and said, Paul, you're my man.
I want you to be the apostle to
the Gentiles.
Where would the Reformation have been?
If God had not said to Martin Luther,
Martin, it's your task.
I'm with you.
You have a few helpers around you, but
you're my man.
Now go out and do the job.
Who can estimate the impact which William Carey
has had on the world missionary movement in
the last 200 years?
If you haven't got the book yet, you
may still be able to get it.
No, I don't think you can.
Hard luck.
Come back next year.
William Carey, the cobbler.
What an impact that man has made on
missions in the last 200 years.
One man available to God, and the job
is done because a man was willing to
take the lead.
You can see the vital importance of leadership
just by looking at the life of Jesus.
Three years of public ministry.
What does he do?
He invests days, weeks, months in his disciples.
He could have spent the whole time ministering
to the millions, couldn't he?
He could have just performed a few miracles,
the crowds would have gathered, and he could
have ministered to the millions, but he didn't.
He invested his life in the disciples.
Why?
Because he knew, humanly speaking, that if what
God had sent him to do was to
be carried on after his ascension, he had
to have men ready to run with the
task.
I'll never forget Tom Houston, who was the
General Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible
Society for many years, about ten, eleven years,
I suppose.
It's, I suppose, one of the kind of
plumb evangelical jobs in England, if you think
of things in those terms.
And there was quite a shock when Tom
Houston resigned at the age of 48.
And he came to a conference where I
was present not so long ago, about a
year ago, I suppose, and he explained his
thinking.
He became the Chief Executive when he was
37, I think, or 38.
And he said, I did my executive task
for about eight years, 38 to 46.
He said, those are the best years of
your executive life.
And then he said, I began to look
around after eight years for my successor.
I identified him, and for the last two
years, I've prayed for him, I've prayed with
him, I've trained him, and now I'm getting
out.
Because I've trained my man and I want
him to have the freedom to take over.
And he explained that if he had stayed
in the job any longer, his own motivation
would have dissipated, and the young men coming
up underneath him would not be able to
mature and come to full flower, because he
was holding them back.
He was looking to the future.
He, like the Lord Jesus, was willing to
give his time and his energy in training
his successors.
Because without leaders, the job will never be
done.
So there's five reasons why we desperately need
leadership in the church today.
Now I imagine that all of you would
agree with those reasons.
Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I imagine
that most of you would agree with those
reasons.
So let's ask a final question at this
conference, and it's a very brief one.
If we'd all agreed that leaders are so
necessary, why are there so few?
Why are there so few?
Oswald Sanders in the 1960s wrote these words.
Has there ever been a greater dearth of
God-anointed and God-mastered men to meet
the crucial need for leadership?
He goes on to write, This type of
dedicated leadership has always been in short supply
for the simple reason that its demands are
too stringent.
You know, I think if Oswald Sanders was
writing today, he'd say the same thing.
There's a great dearth of real leaders in
the church today.
William Sangster, the great Methodist preacher, put it
like this, The church is painfully in need
of leaders.
I wait to hear a voice, but no
voice comes.
And I love the back seat in the
conference and in the synod.
I would always rather listen than speak.
But there is no clarion voice to listen
to.
Why is that?
Why do we love the back seat?
Why are we slow to take the initiative
and go to it for God?
Let me give you three reasons.
You've been very patient and we'll finish with
these three reasons.
Number one, there is an unwillingness to lead
because of a total misunderstanding of the job
of leadership.
Many Christians, as I suggested last night, have
been very surprised on reading Paul's advice to
Timothy.
1 Timothy 3, verse 1.
Let me read it to you in the
New English Bible.
To aspire to leadership is an honorable ambition.
That still comes as quite a shock to
many evangelicals.
To aspire, to desire, to actually seek after
leadership is an honorable ambition.
To many people, that seems to conflict with
Jeremiah's counsel to Barak in Jeremiah 45, verse
5.
Seekest thou great things for thyself, said Jeremiah,
seek them not.
We feel much more comfortable with that, don't
we?
Surely in Christian service it should be the
office that seeks the man rather than the
man seeking the office.
Is it not a very dangerous thing indeed
to put ambitious men into Christian leadership?
I think our concept of leadership, as I
said last night, is all wrong.
The concept of honor, power and prestige.
That's why we think in a totally wrong
way of leadership.
The responsibility of overseer, which Paul is referring
to in 1 Timothy 3, was far from
being a coveted position.
You weren't getting long lines of people at
the application desk to be an overseer in
Paul's day.
To aspire to such a position was to
aspire to danger, contempt, rejection and heavy responsibility.
The only reason anyone would aspire to such
a task was that they were desperately concerned
for the glory of God.
Yes, to seek great things for yourself is
wrong, terribly wrong.
But to seek great things for God and
therefore to use your gifts to do great
things and to see great things done for
God is an honorable and a beautiful ambition.
I hope you're going to dismiss entirely from
your mind the worldly concept of leadership after
this weekend.
I don't think there's any better explanation of
the difference between the world's view of leadership
and the Bible's view of leadership than that
given by Oswald Sanders.
Let me just read this magnificent paragraph of
literature to you.
True greatness, true leadership is achieved not by
reducing men to one's service, but in giving
oneself in selfless service to them.
This is never done without cost.
It involves drinking a bitter cup, experiencing a
painful baptism of suffering.
The true spiritual leader is concerned infinitely more
with the service he can render God and
his fellow men than with the benefits and
pleasures he can extract from life.
The Christian leader aims to put much more
into life than he ever gets out of
it for himself.
That's why the Lord Jesus said, to aspire
to leadership is to aspire to become everybody's
slave.
To aspire to Christian leadership, then, is not
pride.
To want to become everybody's slave is not
pride.
It is a humble place to aspire to
true Christian leadership.
So can we go away from Motherwell with
that clearly in our minds?
Have we caught it?
The Church is desperately in need of leadership.
So if God has given you the gift,
take down the evangelical humility mask.
Oh, I could never do it.
Not me.
I can see Fred down the road doing
it twice as well as I can.
If you have the gift, get to it
for God.
It's not a proud thing to aspire to
Christian leadership, to desire to become everybody's slave.
And then the second reason that many people
do not become leaders, and I think it's
probably the most prominent reason, is just fear.
Fear.
Fear of failure.
Fear of criticism.
An inferiority complex which is often seen in
a person making wrong comparisons with other leaders.
Now you can see this throughout the Scriptures
when God called Joshua to be a leader,
four times in the first chapter of Joshua,
He has to urge him, Joshua, be strong.
Be courageous.
You can just see Joshua, can't you?
Trying to get away.
And God says, Joshua, be strong.
Be courageous.
And he's just trying to get away again.
Be strong.
Be courageous.
It's exactly the same when He calls Jeremiah.
Jeremiah responds with doubts and fears.
And God says to him, Jeremiah 1.7,
don't say I'm only a child.
Don't be afraid.
I'm with you.
I'll rescue you.
And Paul was instructing Timothy to take over
his leadership.
He had to constantly urge him to be
strong, to be courageous.
And remember 2 Timothy 1.7, God hasn't
given us a spirit of timidity, but of
power, of love, and of self-control.
Paul has to say to Timothy, and again
and again, endure hardship.
Don't run away from it.
Stand firm.
Be strong.
Take your share of suffering.
Very interesting to do a little character study
of Timothy.
Three things come out.
Number one, he was very young.
Probably in his mid-thirties when Paul wrote
to him.
You might not think that's young, you might
think that's ancient, but certainly in eastern terms,
that's very young.
He's a very young man and he felt
his youthfulness very much.
And Paul has got to constantly encourage him
to be strong even though he's young.
Secondly, physically he was very weak.
Paul talks about his frequent ailments.
And he gives him that very liberating piece
of advice, not to stick to water, but
to take a little wine for his stomach's
sake.
His frequent ailments.
Physically he was very weak.
And emotionally, he was quite weak.
That's obvious.
Paul has to constantly encourage him, be strong.
Don't be timid.
John Stott in his commentary says that if
people had been talking today in sophisticated terms
about Timothy, they would have described him as
an utter introvert.
Do you feel like that?
You've found this weekend desperately difficult because you're
an introvert by nature.
Such a man was Timothy!
And Paul says, I want you to take
my responsibilities when I'm gone, many of them.
That was obviously God's will as well.
Many people quake and tremble as they contemplate
the responsibilities of leadership.
Thomas Akempis put it like this, it is
much safer to obey than it is to
rule.
Much safer, much easier to obey than it
is to lead, than it is to rule.
Let me just mention two particular fears.
Firstly, there is the fear of failure.
There's a sense in which every leader puts
his neck on the guillotine, isn't there?
He says, brothers, sisters, come on, this is
our goal, let's go for it.
Time and time again, I think in my
work, you know, are we going to reach
that goal?
Are we going to reach that goal?
Or are we going to fail?
You know, that kind of fear is not
wrong.
But if it becomes totally debilitating and you
can't do anything because of it, what's happened?
Well, you're making a statement about God, really,
aren't you?
You believe God has called you to leadership.
You believe God has given you these goals.
And if you can't move because you're worried
you'll never make it, what are you saying
about God?
If you're walking with Him and if you're
doing your will, there should be victory on
our lips and in our hearts.
And then, secondly, there is an inferiority complex
which keeps many back from leadership.
A very common example of this is wrong
comparisons.
You look at other people and you see
their leadership qualities and you see their characters
and personalities and you say, well, I could
never be like that.
And therefore, I could never be a leader.
But, you know, I'm just amazed at the
kind of people God uses to lead His
church through the Bible and through church history
and as I have the privilege of rubbing
shoulders with some Christian leaders in the world
today.
I am amazed at the variety of people
God uses to lead His work.
You take Moses, the meekest man on the
face of the earth.
You took Peter, who never went around putting
one foot in it.
He would jump in every time with both
feet.
He wasn't a man for half-measures.
You can't get two more different personalities.
And yet, who is to say whom God
used of those two personalities the most?
There is no leadership personality, an identical personality
picture of a leader.
No such thing.
God will take you where you are if
He wants you to lead in His work
and He will use you as you are.
He will refine your personality.
He will sanctify you, but He will use
you as you are.
Don't be ashamed to be what you are.
You know, there's only one you in the
body of Christ.
Only one.
There aren't two of you.
There isn't two of me.
Praise the Lord.
There's only one you and God wants you
to be you.
He doesn't want you to try and be
anybody else.
He wants to take you as you are
and He wants you, if He's calling you
to leadership, to lead the work forward in
a way which will be in accordance with
your personality.
Wrong comparisons is another reason why many people
never move into leadership.
And the final reason, and I hope you
won't think I'm too blunt at the end
of the conference, but I think it's true,
the final reason is just laziness.
Laziness.
I believe Western society is a very lazy
society.
And I believe a lot of Christians just
aren't ready for the hard work of Christian
leadership.
I don't know how you view the Christian
life, but if you view it in any
way or any other way than taking everything
of you, then I think you've missed the
mark.
The commitment to Jesus Christ is absolute.
It's 24 hours a day.
It's true for leaders, it's true for followers.
When Paul is charging Timothy right at the
end of his second epistle to him, he
says, Preach the word, be instant, in season
and out of season.
What does that mean?
It means be ready to preach, be ready
to fulfill your ministry, whether it's convenient or
inconvenient.
And you have got to be ready for
massive inconvenience if you move into Christian leadership.
You know what I found about people?
They don't get problems at the right time.
They don't.
They don't look at my diary and decide
when they're going to have problems.
They don't look at the one night in
the week that I've got to have with
my family and say, well, I won't have
a nervous breakdown that night, I'll wait until
Thursday, because Peter's at home with the kids
on Wednesday.
It doesn't quite happen like that.
Problems come at the most inconvenient times.
Now there's a time for rest in Christian
leadership, and there's been far too many Christian
leaders over the years who haven't realized that.
But you must be ready for massive disruption,
massive inconvenience in your life, if God is
calling you into Christian leadership.
Well, there must be end.
We all see the need.
There's many more than five reasons, but I've
given you five.
And I hope you're going to go away
from this conference with the challenge.
The challenge that to aspire to leadership is
no wrong thing.
It is not a position of pride to
aspire to become everybody's slave.
I hope you're going to ask the Lord
to deal with your fears.
Fears about Him.
Will He really come through with the goods,
if you trust Him?
Fears about yourself.
God can use you.
And I hope you're willing to put laziness
behind you, and you're ready in season and
out of season to be used in the
hands of God to take His work forward
in your generation.
May He give you the grace to be
His man and His woman in our day.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the great leader,
the captain of our salvation, the leader of
your people.
And we thank you that you are leading
us to glory through the cross, through the
shame.
You led on to glory.
Lord, we want to follow in your footsteps.
As we follow in your footsteps, we're living
the resurrection life.
What you're calling us to is not drudgery.
You're calling us to joy.
You're calling us to freedom.
And even the hardships, Lord, are no burden
when you are with us.
Lord, we pray that you'll help us to
be willing to follow you.
And at the end of this conference, just
to pause, to think of one step, Lord,
that we can take in response to what
we've heard.
Maybe it's in our Sunday school class or
the Christian Union or the Youth Fellowship or
the church.
Just one step forward, which we can take
in leadership of your work.
We don't, Lord, want this to have just
been an enjoyable conference.
But we want it to have been something
which bears fruit in the work in which
we are involved and in the kingdom of
God.
We ask this, O God, for your glory
and in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, once again, I'd like to thank you
all most sincerely for being with us this
weekend.
Hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've
enjoyed it.
Look forward to seeing you at Easter, June,
July, August.
The year program starts in September and we'll
let you back for the conference next February.
But, of course, this hasn't been a recruiting
weekend at all, in any way.
But it's been a great delight to have
you with us and we hope you've enjoyed
it.
Travel safely and thank you very much indeed
for your fellowship.