Let me begin by saying that very, very
few are really successful in leadership.
Some can manage for a while, but not
many can keep going.
You'd be amazed the feedback I get every
year from team members on OM against their
leaders.
The number one cause of disillusionment in OM
is connected with the follower-leader relationship.
The follower just doesn't feel after spending a
year with this fellow that he has anything
much to offer.
In fact, he's quite discouraged, and in some
cases I even get a letter saying the
best thing for this field is if this
guy could go.
And of course it's very interesting to go
around trying to follow up on those situations.
I think of a brother many, many years
ago, none of you know him, and I
only knew him at a distance.
He seemed like the most nice fellow, he
seemed a little loving, and when you first
got to meet him, he just, you know,
he just seemed everything a Christian would be.
But by the end of one or two
years, I hardly found a team member who
could bear that fellow.
And this was very much in the beginning
of the work, and I really began to
do a lot of thinking.
I found out how hard it was for
a team member, I mean a team leader,
or even a country leader, to win the
respect of a majority of his team members.
Even to win the respect of half of
them.
I usually figured if they had half of
them, that was a pretty good situation.
And so there's a lot more to leading
even a small team than we think.
And though young people on OM, because they're
given a strong message on brokenness, a strong
message on submission, a strong message on, you
know, a lot of other things along that
line, they will go along quite a while
with a leader.
But down in their heart, they won't really
be happy.
And of course, generally, they push on, or
they become discouraged.
I know some who have been so discouraged
by the leader, and so confused by that,
that they almost gave up their faith.
Because they figured if this leader can't live
it, I'm never going to live it.
So what's the sense?
And so discouragement comes in.
I can't think of any greater need in
the Church of Jesus Christ than leadership development.
And I repeat that because I'd like you
to write it down, jot just a note,
taking notes is good if you just put
things down on paper that will just enable
you to associate and remember what's said.
But I can't think of any greater need
in the Church than leadership development.
And probably most men of God today have
made similar statements, similar statements.
I can't think of any more important aspect
of the Lagos ministry than leadership development.
And one of the reasons I've had this
session tonight is because I realize here are
having leadership conferences in youth conferences to train
people, you know, who come on the ship.
But how much of us, how many of
us who are actually on the ship are
making efforts in leadership development?
When you leave OM, people, whether you want
it or not, are going to expect you
to have a certain amount of leadership.
You will say to them, I don't know
anything, and they'll say, well, what have you
been doing for three years?
You'll say, I don't want to be a
leader.
You say, that's okay, nobody else does want
to be a leader here either, but you
obviously have more experience than the rest.
We, a lot of us, may not think
we have much experience, but compared to many
others, we have a lot.
We've had young people in India go off
our teams who we were not allowed to
be leaders, and within two years they're pastoring
a church.
And there are many reasons for this happening.
One of them is, of course, many people
begin in the Christian life, not so many
go on.
Who's going to shepherd all these people who
are beginning?
If as the years go on there's less
and less people going on, as the devil
knocks them out, that's obviously what he's doing.
So there's less and less people as years
go on, that means there's less and less
potential leaders for an increased number of people
who keep coming to Christ.
We left behind 300 or more babes in
Jesus Christ in Sri Lanka.
Who's going to lead them?
If people in Sri Lanka have the attitude
of many people on OM, I'm not a
leader, then who's going to lead those 300
babes in Christ?
And so I believe leaders training is needed
on a much broader level.
It doesn't hurt anybody to be exposed to
a bit of leader's training.
It'll help you, if nothing more, understand your
leader better.
The incredible problem he has trying to keep
people happy and to keep them pressing on
and untangle innumerable difficulties that come up every
day.
So leadership training is needed on a wider
level.
Let's face it, if we get married and
have children we're leaders.
When our husbands go away we're in charge
if we're a wife, so we have to
be a leader.
And some of the principles of leadership are
so basic that they're valid whether you're leading
a hundred people or a team of five
people or a Volkswagen van of people or
your own family.
And I believe one of the reasons for
family breakdown in the 20th century is poor
leadership on the part of the husband.
He can't even win the respect of his
own kids.
I don't know how many children I've interviewed
basically don't respect their father.
They've told me my father never communicated to
me.
He was never a leader in the home.
There's nothing that can mix up a child
more than seeing the husband pushed around the
home by the wife.
And this can mix him up and confuse
him.
And so I think we see that this
is really a big area where we need
a lot more emphasis and a lot more
study.
Now the next point I want to give
you is simply that a leader is a
reader.
Most of what I've learned about leadership I've
learned through reading.
I've had very little training in this area.
I wish I had more.
I went through the Moody Bible Institute.
They don't offer one single course on leadership
development.
The number one biggest Bible school in the
world.
Not one course on leadership development.
And what I've learned, I've learned the hard
way out leading people.
I had some leadership training before I was
saved, which was a very helpful thing.
And then I read.
Now I brought some books tonight that I
want to give away.
We have one book or two books per
person if you read them.
I'd like you to jot down some of
these men because the men who have written
these books are people we can learn from.
And you'll find some of these books in
the library.
You only take one or two from here.
Return them to Jack Randall or myself when
you're done.
And let me just quickly mention some of
these books.
Hudson Taylor.
Read what you can on Hudson Taylor.
One of the greatest Christian leaders of all
time.
He faced enormous problems.
Many of his co-workers were not content
with his leadership.
He was viciously attacked, but he plotted on.
And this is just one of the books.
God's Man in China, Hudson Taylor.
Another one that's valuable is Hudson Taylor's Spiritual
Secret.
Read Hudson Taylor.
Another man that's worth reading about for leadership
study is William Carey, great pioneer to India.
Read books on prayer.
Again, I don't want to tarry on each
point, but if a leader is a reader,
we know twice as much a leader is
a man of prayer.
A man of prayer.
Prayer does not come easy.
Way over 50% of all the leaders
I've ever counseled and I've also taken surveys,
over 50% by far are having trouble
with their prayer life.
So just because you're having trouble with your
prayer life doesn't mean that you're disqualified from
leadership, as long as you stay in the
battle.
As long as you keep trying to learn
and keep repenting and keep pressing on and
keep trying to learn reality in prayer.
God will use you to the degree that
you learn reality in prayer.
One of the things that will help you
is reading books on prayer.
This is one by E.
M.
Bounds, one of the best writers on prayer
there is, especially the book Power Through Prayer,
which is written for preachers and leaders.
Very devastating book.
And the other is Andrew Murray, one of
the outstanding devotional writers.
Both of these were mission leaders.
They were not just mystics dwelling in cupboards
somewhere reading books and praying, they were dynamic
Christian leaders who knew that the foundation for
Christian leadership is spiritual life, spiritual reality.
And that involves prayer.
So read books on prayer.
Read books by Alan Redpath, another one of
God's leaders.
He's pastored Moody Church and many, many trials
in the process of it.
He pastored Charlotte Chapel, many, many trials.
And now he's got on an itinerant ministry,
which is always a lot easier.
Of course, he's a lot older now, but
his books are very, very powerful.
This one happens to be Victorious Praying, Alan
Redpath.
Yes, we have some of his pages.
One of the instructors I had when I
was at Moody Missionary Practices was a man
named Paul Adolph.
This is his book, Release from Tension.
Health Springs Forth is the same book.
This is a new edition book that meant
so much for my wife.
A lot of valuable material.
Read Oswald Sanders.
Oswald Sanders.
He has a book on leadership.
I don't have a single copy in my
own revolving library.
I think there's some in the library.
If you could put that on the top
of your list tonight for leadership training.
Oswald Sanders.
This is his other book, A Spiritual Clinic,
Problems on Discipleship.
He was, for the past 10 years or
so, the leader and director of the Overseas
Missionary Fellowship, one of the great missions of
our time, founded by Hudson Taylor.
Read books by Evan Hopkins.
This one is called Henceforth.
He was one of the dynamic founder leaders
of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Another book that I put on a level
with this one is Sacrifice by Guinness.
Sacrifice.
To me, these books are classics for anyone
who wants spiritual development.
So, read Henceforth, the meaning of Christian discipleship.
Read Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Carl Barr, who was the founder of neo
-orthodoxy, stated of Martin Lloyd-Jones that I
was not even skeptical of him.
In fact, there were two different schools.
He said Martin Lloyd-Jones was the greatest
living preacher of the 20th century.
He's still alive.
He's the only man in Britain apart from
Billy Graham that can spill the thickest bloodstorms
of the nation since Donald Mack.
Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Spiritual Detractors are the best books I've ever
read.
His Daily Devotional, which is stated in the
other book, is two volumes of the Sermon
on the Mount are classics on the subject.
Read it.
Spiritual Weakness.
He had a pastoral seminar meeting every week
in London when I first went to London.
I could go 150 minutes or 10 Saturdays
a week.
We can't do that in our own educational,
but we can sit and speak through reading
his books.
Another Oswald Sanders book I've already mentioned here.
Read Eugenia Tyton.
I've met her a lot on the ship.
One of my most competent and well-read
comebacks.
Make Love to Rain.
Now, she doesn't actually emphasize leadership, but the
principles he has.
I can just say that it's the leaders
in Ohio that had more of this earlier.
We'd be a lot further than we are
today.
A lot of the mistakes that leaders have
made in Ohio, she covers in her books.
She's very good, especially in helping us understand
people.
A leader must learn to understand people.
Absolutely.
They must learn to understand people.
So, anybody who has a good insight into
people like Eugenia Tyton or Keith Miller, another
one I recommend.
These books bounce off each other.
Anybody who has a deep understanding of people,
and I'll add to that Lehag, Spirit, Control,
Temperance, all three of these books, is going
to be very helpful here.
Many leaders make their biggest mistakes because they
fail to understand their people.
That, hey, for example, that person is being
insincere, when in fact that person is of
such a distinct temperament, has such a different
lifestyle, and that the leader cannot make the
association so remarkable as being insincere.
It's very difficult to know when you're leading
a team who the really potential people are.
Um, I was amazed.
I was amazed.
One of the biggest clucks I ever saw
came in Ohio.
When I first got here, the whole first
year, was a guy named Frankie.
I told him, let me send you this
guy.
He's called Provincial Leader.
You know, he's the same guy.
And, uh, I, uh, after the first year
was heaped by words, got a fourth year.
But, uh, leaders, you never know what the
potential may be.
You never know.
Some people are very slow in developing.
Some people are late adolescents.
You get them out of your team when
they're 19, and they're just kids.
And, uh, if you take time with it,
and you're patient with it, and loving with
it, and demonstrate to him, like, uh, discipleship,
you may discover he becomes a great soul
winner of all time.
The man of the greatest kind that I
like, unless you just have to finish the
book, is John Peachman.
He was a man that should have died
10 years ago.
Everything was against him.
He had the plastic valve in his heart.
That's how he should have died.
Yet, he's become one of the great outstanding
leaders of the Whitman Bible Translation.
Let me assert here that there is no
one type of person who becomes a great
Christian leader.
Get that out of your head.
It's not the hilariously outgoing, dynamic type who
necessarily makes good Christians.
It's not necessarily the, talkative person.
The very, very quiet, very reserved men who
have become great Christians.
After all, the Bible says, be slow to
speak.
So, one of the qualifications for leadership is,
I'm sure, be slow to speak.
A lot of people who seem to be
good leaders, they start off with hilarious, outgoing,
generally, you know, rich leaders.
They fizzle.
They put off their team members.
They never learn to battle.
And it's a dark horse, quiet fellow, who
suddenly comes into the arms.
He's faithful to the responsibilities he's given.
This guy is the director of the Missionary
Society.
I'm amazed to meet so many Missionary Society
directors who are very quiet, reserved men.
Okay?
So, don't get one little type of, you
know, what you think a leadership is.
Because spiritual leadership is distinct from leadership in
the world in that it's so greatly dependent
on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
The ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit makes very, very different
types of people.
There's men, men, and youth.
Another very interesting leadership study is Reed Howell,
Interceptor.
He's the founder of the Swazi Bible College,
the National Graduate School of Anthroposophy Studies.
His son, Samuel Howell, is one of our
strongest prayer partners in this world.
Very godly man, very unique man, a bachelor,
who at the age of two was taken
by Reed Howell and given away to some
friends, to Reid, to break every rule of
the book of God and children.
And yes, this man, Samuel Howell, is the
son of Reed Howell, one of the most
godly men I know today.
Anyway, this is a very interesting leadership study.
He was a bit of an extremist.
Many leaders are.
It's got to do with youth.
I think it's important to emphasize at this
point another big factor, that there are different
kinds of leaders.
There are the pioneer leaders, actually the world
doesn't need too many of them.
For different types of people, that's the more
attractive leadership.
Oftentimes, that's the kind of leadership people get
prematurely into.
How many of them have met people who
started their own organization, figured they were wrong,
and they blew out?
So there is the pioneer type of leader,
but there's also the faithful man type of
leader.
Supposedly a good example of this is by
South, I suppose, is the pioneer type of
leader, always starting new projects, always pushing ahead.
And a perfect example of the other kinds
of leaders is Jonathan MacArthur.
Jonathan MacArthur started very little ago, in his
12 years in Europe.
He'd take up where other people had left
off and faithfully carry on in real dynamic
leadership for 12 years in his main job.
And I've read that work from when I
was 13.
It's very encouraging, of course.
I might have to tell you what year
it was.
I knew it was the end of the
last 24 years.
A couple of other books, Norman Winston Steele,
outstanding Christian leader.
You may not agree with theology.
He has become more evangelical in the last
10 years, but a brilliant leader.
Unique style.
He's a fantastical optimist.
And if you're going to be a leader,
you've got to be an optimist.
And I strongly recommend this book.
Top prize in optimism.
A lot of countries that have done shit
to work have begun, for about two shillings,
an 18-shill book.
But there is a book worth reading.
I can't think of anything that has saved
me over the years from total depression, more
than the little bit of optimism I've been
able to hang on to.
And people like Steele have been a great
help to me.
So leaders are readers.
In reviewing those books, I've covered about three
or four more of my points, which I
feel are very important.
Let me re-emphasize the leader is a
man of prayer.
Don't give up on your prayer life.
Most leaders have a tremendous struggle in that
area.
It doesn't come overnight.
The foundation of leadership is spiritual life.
There are many different kinds of leadership.
So though you may not be the pioneer,
aggressive, dynamic, charging down the beach first type,
there still may be very important place of
leadership.
Now, Al Meyer here, for example, may not
think he's a leader, but he has had
to leave the mechanic space for the past
year.
And he's discovered, I'm sure, from what I've
heard, that that isn't so easy.
Just keeping three men working happily together.
Now, has that been a little bit of
a chore at times?
Certainly has.
And I can tell you, my first team
was only two people.
My second team was only four people.
And that just about drove me out of
my mind.
So be happy if you start small.
But be ready and realize there are many,
many different kinds of leadership.
Now, I have a very, very excellent leaders
memo that was developed out of a leaders
conference that I did not attend in 1967,
in which there were a number of speakers,
including Dale Rotob, Jonathan McCroskey, and others.
And I thought I would just give you
some of the things, share with you some
of the things, before we open for questions,
that they put down for leadership development.
A leader must have a vision, including a
vision of what God can do, and a
vision of the world.
A leader must have a vision.
It may be small, but he has a
vision.
And I think that's so important even here
on the ship, that we develop this capacity
to initiate ideas, to have vision of what
can be done.
For instance, someone gets a vision to reach
this ship in front of us.
Now, when he gets that vision, the second
thing he's going to do is move into
leadership.
Even if he doesn't lead the team that
goes on to that ship, he is going
to have to spread his vision.
He's going to have to get someone to
go along with him, even if eventually he
says, now look, you lead the way, and
he lets that guy do the speaking.
And in the ship, there's all kinds of
scope for people to get a vision of
things to do, and then to muster a
few people, and to do it.
Because it's impossible for one leader, or two
leaders, or three leaders to begin to respond
to the total challenge of our situation.
And so I think that's very important.
Two, he must have the initiative to take
hold of that vision.
It's no good to think, oh, we're going
to have a team to reach this ship
in front of us, and then sit in
your cabin daydreaming about it.
The leader must be able to take hold
of that vision.
Three, must have the ability to get the
team in on that vision.
Now, of course, there's two types of leaders
in this area.
One of them doesn't even have a team
yet, and that's the way some of you
may be when you go home.
We've had XO Embers say, when I get
back, we're going to get a door-to
-door team, yeah?
Boy, you get back and you try to
organize a door-to-door team in your
local church, and you more likely move Mount
Everest.
And so, of course, it's a lot easier.
And this is where OM has been used
in leadership development, because we take all kinds
of green people in the summer crusade, we
hustle them through five leadership sessions, we give
them a manual, and then plop, we give
them a team of 10 people.
And boy, they learn.
They learn.
And I'm convinced that OM is one of
the best leadership training things going in these
days.
And there's quite a few missions that have
acknowledged that.
So, if you already have a team, that's
easier.
Otherwise, you've got to round up a team.
Next number, you must have not only an
idea of what God wants him to do,
but a sensitive spirit to know how it
is going to affect the others in the
team.
Being sensitive to people makes a difference.
Now, this is very, very important.
All of us offend far more than we
know.
I offend people far more than I know.
People don't tell me.
In the past, fortunately, I have had some
who have told me, and so I've learned
a lot of things.
I used to be much, much more offensive
than I am now.
Oh, and still, I'm sure, I offend.
But if we're going to be a leader,
we have to learn what it is to
be sensitive to people.
In other words, it's possible.
I remember in the early days of the
ship, one out of every two announcements given
in this place offended someone.
I didn't.
When I came to the ship, somebody was
already making announcements.
I never thought, well, announcements, that's not important.
And I made a mistake as a leader.
I didn't take over the announcement.
Different people were making announcements.
Sometimes one guy got it, sometimes another.
More people were upset over those announcements.
People stood right up after the dinner, and
people were trying to digest their food and
shout down the guy who's making an announcement,
or disagree with him, or tell him he
doesn't know what he's talking about.
And we discovered in the very early days
of the ship that the announcements are a
very important thing.
And when we make announcements, we need to
try to be sensitive to the problems of
the ship, to the situation of the ship,
to what others feel, others think, and not
just run roughshod over people.
I remember once an announcement was made by
a man who had nothing to do with
the deck department.
Stern made an announcement, everybody in the deck
will meet me at the gangway after supper.
This is a complete breach of the way
you operate on a ship.
A non-deckman doesn't get up and tell
all the deckmen to meet him after supper.
And of course this brought almost a revolution.
Imagine how the captain felt, and a few
other people felt they did have some authority
in the deck department.
And so leadership is learning to be sensitive
to the needs of people, learning to be
sensitive to their position.
You don't run over another man's position.
You don't give a man a job and
then run roughshod over the job.
You don't delegate to a man a task
and then when his back is turned, take
the task back and do it yourself.
You don't give a man a job to
do without teaching him or giving him some
training how to do it, unless he's a
professional or he knows it.
You don't give him a job to do,
no training, and then blast him out of
his shoes when he doesn't do it right.
And that's very, very important.
So being sensitive to people is a very
important issue.
As hard as you try, you'll still make
some mistakes, so don't be discouraged.
1 Thessalonians 4.11, the next point, teaches
how important it is for the team leader
to ask members to do something, not in
a way that gives offense.
Team members want to confide in the leader,
but not to have the leader probe into
their affairs.
Here again, the balance is not easy to
find.
If I've been still trying to learn this
in about 19 years of Christian leadership, I
hope you won't be discouraged in your first
year.
The balance between taking an interest in people
and putting them off because they think you're
nosy and you're probing into their affairs.
Here again, you have different kinds of people,
and you have to learn.
That's why, as I've mentioned before, one of
the most important things in leadership is getting
to understand people.
What makes them tick?
What makes them laugh and what makes them
cry?
What makes them run and what makes them
sleep?
What elates them and what depresses them?
What encourages them and what discourages them?
If you can learn that, boy, you're going
to go places.
Very important.
So, learning how to give orders without giving
offense.
That's a ten-year program.
And then also, not probing into their affairs.
Next point, working with a team and setting
the example.
The Lord Jesus was a shepherd, not a
dictator.
Working with a team.
The key in O.M. leadership has been
teamwork.
The leaders are out on the doors, the
leaders are in evangelism, the leaders are working.
Of course, the bigger a movement gets, the
harder it is for the guys at the
very top to be right in with a
team.
But this is one of the miracles of
the ship, is that the main leaders of
O.M. are right here with you.
Many, many missions, the leaders are totally isolated.
A high percentage of all leaders of American
missions live in six-room houses in Wheaton,
totally isolated from their people, except for visits.
And they stop in and visit them.
And we have the privilege in O.M.
of living to some degree with our leaders.
Of course, this has advantages and disadvantages.
It's especially rough if the leader doesn't have
the life.
Leaders who don't have a degree of reality
in life do not make it in a
movement like O.M. You can't, you can't
do it.
And you can be sure it's one of
the great struggles many of our leaders have.
Next point, in being an example, he needs
to be a great encouragement to the team
in every sphere.
That's five reasons why you want to quit,
huh?
Faith, encouraging the team to set their marks
high in spiritual life.
Showing real confidence in the sovereignty of God.
Leaders should thank a member who does something
right.
Or if it is not right, you should
give a word of encouragement to do better
next time.
That is rebuke in love.
But if you never pay any compliments, you
may not find your rebukes go over very
well either.
I find that a high percentage of people
sense a great amount of failure.
They've failed so many times and they've been
told off so many times, they've had very
little encouragement because people tend to be negative.
If you do four things right, nobody says
anything.
You do the fifth thing wrong, boom, they're
on top of you.
So that's an area where we need a
lot of help.
A leader must have a good sense of
humor, try to develop one.
And he must have the ability to laugh
at oneself.
You're going to make mistakes as a leader
and if you have the ability to laugh
at yourself, that's going to release a lot
of tension because one of the greatest enemies
of leadership is tension, pressure.
And a leader must know how to get
release for his tension.
Next point, the ability to delegate jobs.
The key word is controlling yet having confidence
in the one to whom the work is
assigned.
Ultimately, the leader is responsible.
The job is done.
Who do I blame?
So as a leader, and we see this
in the Old Testament, we must learn to
delegate.
What time is it by the way?
I can't see the clock.
So a leader must know how to delegate.
On the other hand, he must follow up.
I have directly and indirectly, I would say
over 1,000 projects delegated at this present
time.
Apart from all kinds of things leaders are
doing, which I don't know about because the
total job is delegated to them, so they
just carry on.
So I don't know much about them.
But apart from that, I have about 1
,000 things that I know about.
I keep track of these with memory God
has given me, with files, lists, notebooks.
I review them, pending projects files, super urgent
files, and I send out remarks.
I find in OM less than 50%
feedback on delegated jobs, less than 50%
returns until I follow up.
Now you find that in an organization where
people were paid a higher salary, where the
leader could get tough with people, which I
can't do, I have to use the win
them, coax them, encourage them, dance for them,
whistle at them approach, memo approach, question approach.
Whereas in a secular job, I could just
call people on the car and say, look
Joe, you're the state now, more faithful in
this, or that's it, we got 20 more
men that want your job.
And more people shape up under those conditions,
and there's a lot of unemployment these days.
Or of course you have bonuses, you have
all kinds of things in the world to
motivate people, and a lot of that's missing.
And so in Christian leadership you really have
to dance the jig.
I get less than 50% returns on
assigned jobs until I follow up.
Then I jump up to about 75%.
So that's very interesting.
So if you're going to delegate, have a
system of follow up.
Things get lost, things get forgotten, and that's
important.
The leader must be systematic and organized.
I know, you've just dropped out.
Systematic and organized.
And I can't put enough emphasis on that.
It's very, very important.
Planning is important.
Make a list of jobs to be done.
Make sure they are all being done.
Fix the time regularly when jobs are given
out, or else erode it.
And I think that's very, very important.
We all have certain things that we've got
to do.
I have certain things I have to do
every week.
One of them is my weekly report.
I've been writing it for 17 years.
I hate it, but it's part of my
job.
I believe in it, and I adequately believe
in it.
I still hate it.
There's often a very fine line between what
you love and what you hate.
Remember that.
But there's certain things you have to decide
you're going to do them every week.
There's other things you have to determine to
do every month.
Make a list, and don't miss anything.
Each thing you miss eventually will probably cost
you more time than what it would have
taken you to do it.
So why miss it in the first place?
A good leader keeps the team informed as
to what is happening and why.
I get a lot of feedback from team
members.
I'm always interested in feedback from team members.
Quite a few complain, we don't know what
we're doing.
Leader doesn't tell us what we're doing.
You know, we have a very big ship,
a very big team here on the ship,
the biggest in the land.
This ship and the team on this ship
gets more information about what we're doing and
what's ahead than certain small teams.
And we, of course, have room for improvement.
But that's a big area, and remember what
you don't like others to do to you
now, if you're not careful, you may do
to them someday.
Some of the most militant followers became very
meek after a couple of months in leadership.
They finally realized what it's all about.
Of course, a lot of harm can be
done in between.
Well, there are many other points, but I
want to give some time for questions, and
we're going to have our prayer meeting.
So let's just open for questions.
I've given you a mic.
I'd like to know if you have any
questions.
Delegating, delegating the work and following up, being
able to laugh at yourself, release
some tension, knowing how to get, knowing how
to stay free from pressure and tension.
I don't think that's your greatest problem, Billy.
I've heard about some of the teams you've
led, Billy.
Yeah, anybody else have a question?
Yeah, I think especially a leader who is
new, though anybody, any leader should be open
about areas where he feels he's weak.
At the same time, he should not overemphasize
that and drag the whole team into a
position of insecurity in which, you know, one
of the leaders, he's thinking and I'm thinking.
Should you be open with your team about
your weaknesses and some of your struggles?
I think you should.
I remember one particular leader who tended to
be very hard on his team and tended
to lose most of his team members.
His greatest victory was when he just sat
down one day and he just confessed that
he was really uptight.
He was really sorry for certain things he
had done and he really asked for forgiveness
as a team.
I tell you, that just broke in.
That just broke into that team because then
they realized they also needed really to ask
for forgiveness because they didn't have the right
attitude either.
And I know that in my leadership, it's
such a failure many times that I've had
to just at times ask the team to
forgive me and to bear with me and
let's make, do what we can.
But don't dwell on that and sort of
go into that as a pool of introspection.
I had a girl just write me from
Germany.
So you have two German brothers here.
This girl said, what can I do?
There's not a man in our church, not
a single young man who will lead anything.
And they want me to be the leader.
I'm a girl.
What is the position?
What state is Germany getting into?
And I wrote back to her.
I said, look, if there's no man in
your young people's group, then by all means
lead it.
Do try to find a young man and
get him going.
Get behind him or marry him or what.
I didn't tell her that actually.
But really, it's pathetic in some places that,
and this is often true in the church,
no young man can take the leadership of
the youth fellowship.
Now how many youth fellowships I know of,
the girl is the leader.
My wife, who's the last person to think
of herself as a leader, she was the
president of a young people's group.
There's no boy who wanted to do it.
Another question.
Yeah, well, there are many, many things I
didn't mention.
Certainly, brokenness is one that is basic.
Humility, brokenness, willingness to admit you're wrong.
And you know what I try to do?
Somebody's hammering at me and try to see,
well, maybe I'm 95% right and only
5% wrong.
If that's the case, the main thing I
have to worry about is the 5%.
So get right on the 5%.
And many times when someone is really upset
with your leadership and they come torpedoing in
on you, what they say is not their
real problem.
They're just upset and they don't know how
to express themselves.
So don't attack them.
The worst thing you do generally when someone
comes to correct you and walk in the
light with you is to sort of counterattack
them saying, look, you don't realize what the
situation is.
You don't realize what I'm up against.
You put this big defense up.
That generally doesn't improve your situation.
Try desperately to see what his position is.
What is this guy facing?
Why is he thinking this way?
Why is he feeling this way?
And see where you can say, look, I'm
sorry, you know, I think you're right on
that.
I should have been a lot more careful
on that point.
And forgive me.
And generally that will open up the way
for real communion.
You see, if you're going to lead a
team in Christian work, there's got to be
communion.
There's got to be fellowship.
Not just a matter of you giving orders
and him taking them.
It's got to be communion and there's got
to be exchange.
And that isn't easy.
That takes time.
Say some married couples, they spend their first
five years just learning how to communicate.
So if you think that's going to come
easy for people on your team, different temperament,
different background, different lifestyle, different manner of thinking,
well, you're wrong.
It's going to take time.
And we do, we do switch each other
off.
I've had people often tell me how something
that so-and-so did switches him off.
And I think we have too many points
where we're switched off.
We need to be more optimistic and have
more points where we're switched off.
I have found things that bothered me eight
years ago and switched me off today switch
me on.
Because I've allowed my whole mentality and lifestyle
to become far more optimistic and to see
the good in people.
And one of my, one of the things
that's helped me the most in my leadership
is that I believe in people.
I don't find it hard to believe in
people.
Because I just, I believe that God is
working in people.
I believe that God is working in some
of the most weak, crippled that you'd ever
imagine.
It's the whole history of the world.
What blasphemous unbelief if I, who have seen
this movement for 15 years, don't believe in
people.
After what I've seen God do in people.
If I don't believe in people, I'm disqualified
from continuing in what, what I'm doing.
Another question.
One or two more questions.
Go into the prayer meeting.
Our leader has come.
Talking about leadership.
We haven't discussed you.
Any other questions?
Last minute or two.
Very good point.
One we're all learning.
To be able to keep calm and to
keep our heads.
Especially when everyone else is losing theirs.
And I think this is why the leader
must have a tremendous grasp of the sovereignty
of God.
And I found that the greatest help in
the last five days.
These last five days, some years ago, would
have been much more pure torment for me
than they have been now.
Because I have a, by God's mercy, a
much wider view of God's total program of
and though to me this is a very
upsetting experience.
These five days and you know, everything has
gone wrong.
That in God's total overall program, it really
isn't worth getting all upset about.
First of all, getting upset isn't going to
improve it anyway.
So I've been trying to take extra time
in the word, prayer, and just making use
of what I can do.
And not getting all uptight about the things
I can't do.
Preach to the teams, do this, do that.
All kinds of things I was expecting to
do these past five days.
And I find that a tremendous help.
Once I arrived at the Iran border, can
you imagine this?
And discovered I left all the money, all
the passports, all the car documents, 1,000
miles behind next to my chair in a
restaurant.
And I was 10 miles from the Pakistan
border on the southern route in the middle
of nowhere.
And I tell you, there was a whole
team, a whole team of us trying to
get to India as quick as possible.
And boy, if I didn't just about want
to go out of my mind.
And yet in many, many experiences like that,
especially over the last years, I just found
it tremendous relaxing to realize that in eternity,
this really isn't that important.
And not allow the devil to take that
particular situation you're in right now and blow
it up in your mind, pushing out eternity,
pushing out even one year's viewpoint, much less
God's sovereignty.
And this is something very important for a
leader to be able to always see the
long-term, the long-term, God's overall plan
and his tremendous power to overrule even your
mistakes.
And we saw even there at that border,
God overruled in so many ways.
And this is a great temptation when your
team members really drop the ball to really
pace them, really let them have it.
But that is the worst thing a leader
can do.
Maximum you should do is have, give a
loving exhortation, try to explain that this really
isn't good.
We need to try to improve.
To lose your cool, to lose your temper,
to shout at people, this is completely out
of place in leadership.
If you do, you should immediately apologize and
put it right.
Because God's leadership isn't that way.
Let's take a few minutes break for the
prayer meeting.
Hopefully a few other people will come.
And each one of you come up and
take one or two books that you definitely
will read.
These books that build leadership.
And then we'll go into the prayer meeting.
George Miley said he's tired of leading prayer
meetings, so he's asked me to lead the
prayer meeting.