PV John on Spiritual Leadership

This morning the KCF staff was honored to spend a few minutes with PV John of Care India. He spent some time talking about spiritual leadership principles and sharing some incredible stories about what God is doing in India.

Here's a few bullet points. Good stuff!

1. Invest yourself in developing others. Release responsibility. Leave behind a spiritual legacy.

2. Be transparent.

3. Be faithful. To the Lord and to the ministry.

4. Be a leader of integrity. This springs from #2 and #3. Don't work for man's applause but God's approval. You are pretty much done if you compromise your integrity. All the years of working on building a reputation of consistency and integrity can be gone in a few moments of weakness.

5. Serve the Lord with JOY. Never look at ministry as work and a burden. When your perspective changes from seeing ministry as a joy, then suddenly you are trying to motivate people to help out of obligation or guilt. Remember, the greater the sacrifice the greater the joy in ministry. Our debt to the Lord is worth all that we have to give.

6. A vision that is given by God will never match our resources or budget. God will never ask you to do something that never requires His intervention. If your vision matches your resources you are simply doing an exercise of business planning!

Gatekeepers

In the Bible in Matthew 16:19, Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” Much has been said about what Jesus meant by this statement. Some scholars believe that at that moment, Jesus made Peter the head of the church. I am persuaded that Jesus was doing something slightly different.

When you have a key, you have the ability to open or close access to a locked location. Now, if everyone has a key, then it is not particularly special—you just have one more copy. But if not many keys have been made, then you become the gatekeeper. You have the ability to grant access because you hold the power in your possession.

Now, if you have the keys to the kingdom of heaven, then you become a gatekeeper. Either you can welcome people in or you can keep people out. At one point during Jesus’ ministry (Matthew 23:13), He has a conversation with the religious leaders of the day and tells them, “Woe to you...for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men....”

The religious teachers of Jesus’ day were good at making rules that kept people away from Father God. This is just the opposite of what spiritual leaders are supposed to do, their whole job is to help people connect with God. But there is something in human nature that is twisted by knowledge and power. Isn’t it amazing that as soon as someone goes to school and gets a degree, he or she immediately starts to divide the world up into those worthy to hear their great wisdom and those that are not?

Peter’s keys were not to be used in this way. They were to be used to open the doors wide to all those who were seeking to reconnect with the Father. Later in Peter’s life, we see that he is instrumental in opening these doors to three distinct groups—first to the Jews (Acts 2), then to the Samarians (Acts 8) and finally to the rest of the world (Acts 10). Because Peter was generous with the message of God’s love for people, because he opened wide the doors to the kingdom, we today benefit from that message.

I believe we can draw two conclusions from this. First, if you don’t know God personally, the door is wide open. The Father has made a way for each of us to return back to him. The Bible says, “Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Second, if you do know God, you are also a gatekeeper. You can make it difficult for people to connect with Father God (just like those religious leaders in Jesus’ day did) or you can make it easy. You can unlock and swing wide the doors and shout the good news of a God that loves the world, or you can bury the key and keep your mouth shut.

This weekend the pastors in Kings County will be seeking to help people reconnect with God, make sure you’re in church and that you bring someone along!

Don’t Be Boring

Life is too short to be boring. Life is also too fantastic to be boring. God has created this incredible world in which we live. He is so amazing He has actually arranged things in such a way that we each have a destiny and a purpose. But far too often we take this wonderful, challenging and awe-inspiring spark and turn it into a dull and dreary existence.

More than ever, it is creativity that can make the difference. A little creativity can transform something ho-hum into something memorable and fun. Because as humans we are creatures of habit, we fall into routines that get old and stale. The love that use to crackle between your and your spouse, has fallen prey to the old routine. Your job that used to be fun (we’ll okay fun may be stretching it a bit), has reverted into the old grindstone that we can turn without even being awake.

Some people are masters at the creative. They just make life fun. We all want to be around these individuals because they put that little twist on life through their humor, their work, their smile and their conversation that makes all the difference.

You see, the creativity we all need is not the kind of creativity that resulted in the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the design of the Taj Mahal. That type of genius is granted to only a few. But the creativity that can take a dull situation and turn it into a fun moment is something we can all find.

The dad that decides to do something spontaneous with his kids every once in a while instead of allowing the family to repeat the same old routine yet again. The co-worker that decides to change up the office gathering so that the people attending aren’t mistaken for corpses. The homemaker that moves the furniture, “just because.”

I think we actually work at removing the creativity from our lives. Our education system certainly does its best to turn creative, vibrant children into mind-numbed robots that can spit out the right answer for a test. And somehow we get older and decide that it’s easier to be boring than be creative.

We serve a creative God with a sense of humor. He made you, didn’t He? He is the most creative person in the universe and according to the Bible He has made each one of us in His image. That same creative spark is inside us, we just need to use it.

The pastors in Kings County would love to help you learn more about our creative God and the incredible oh-not-boring-at-all destiny He has for you. Let me encourage you to visit church this weekend...it may not be as boring as you think.