Serve Your Way to the Top – 7 Lessons I Learned While Serving My Way onto a Church Staff

Lesson 7 – You’re not that Bad

⁶ And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. – Phil 1:6

I heard John Maxwell say this to young leaders once, and it’s encouraged me to this day: “In the beginning, you’re not as bad as people think. Don’t you just want to say that sometimes to people, “You know I’m bad, but I’m not that bad.” But if you do things right in life – in the end, you’re not as good as people think. Somewhere in between those two, is where you should live.”

“I’m not where I’m supposed to be, but Thank God I’m not where I used to be.” -Joyce Meyer

When we’re young it’s so hard to get this, I know it’s a struggle for me. We place huge expectations on us that often, aren’t fair at all. We expect to be where others are, without recognizing it took those people 30 years to get there. Here are a few thoughts:

1.) Just Get Good – A mentor once told me, “Your 20′s isn’t for fruit, it’s a time to be developed. Follow your passion and grow as much as you can.” Get good at what you’re doing – it will pay off down the road.

2.) Remember the Faithfulness of God – it’s so easy to forget that God’s been faithful in the past isn’t it? However, when we look back, none of us can say that God hasn’t done incredible things in the past, He’s doing them right now, and He’s faithful – He’ll do them in our future if we’ll follow Him with everything we got.

3.) Surround Yourselves with Encouragers - We all want to throw in the towel at times. Make sure you have safe relationships in your life. People you can share struggles with, and don’t be afraid to ask for encouragement. Everybody needs it, and in reality – encouragement will push you through the toughest moments in your life.

4.) Enjoy the Journey – easiest thing to talk about, hardest thing to live out. Success is never a destination, success is living everyday giving God your best. Take time to enjoy where you’re at right now, because in just a little while, you’ll be saying “I love that season of my life, I wish i enjoyed it more than I did.”

So there you go – 7 lessons I learned while serving my way on staff at a church. I hope it blessed you!

What lessons have you learned through serving?

Serve Your Way to the Top – 7 Lessons I Learned While Serving My Way onto a Church Staff

Lesson 6 – It’s the Changed Life, Not the Crowd that Makes the Difference

^19-20My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.                                                      James 5:19-20

Something I’ve been recognizing lately is that whenever Jesus would heal someone or impact one person’s life, often the crowd would be wowed by the actual event other times the crowd would be upset and in disbelief. However, Jesus never really cared what the crowd thought. He cared about the person He was ministering to. Jesus didn’t care about attracting crowds, He cared about impacting individuals.

Too often – we focus on drawing a crowd and forget about the individual. While crowds are great because it means more people are hearing the Word, we forget that it’s each of those individuals being changed by God that truly makes the difference. A marriage restored, an addiction broken, someone with no purpose grabbing hold of God’s purpose for their lives – it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a compilation of changed lives that makes a move of God and a crowd an amazing thing, not a crowd of people just there for an event or experience.

Some Thoughts on this:

1.) The Crowd will Never Be Big Enough – Unless we recognize the power of one changed life and value it for what it’s worth, we’ll never think there are enough people in our ministries.

2.) When the Crowd Comes, It’s not a Big Deal - We often think if we’re able to minister to a large crowd, we’ll be satisfied. That is not true at all. We have to find our worth in Christ, so when God does bless us with more influence, we won’t be disappointed that it doesn’t provide the feelings of success we thought it would. A big deal in life is when we’re free from worrying about attracting a crowd and worrying more about impacting one life.

3.) Nothing is More Fulfilling than Touching One Life – There isn’t anything more fulfilling than knowing you’ve made a difference in one person’s life because you were obedient to God.

4.) Be Faithful with One, God will bring Many - The bottom line is that if we’ll be faithful with the one person in front of us, God will continue to bring people in front of our path so we can minister to them. In time, you’ll be impacting more people than you could have dreamed of, and it’s not because you’re so awesome, it’s because God knows you’ll be faithful with the one.

Focus on ministering to one person today – make a difference in their life!

Serve Your Way to the Top – 7 Lessons I Learned While Serving My Way onto a Church Staff

Lesson 5 – Grow Something

⁸This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” -John 15:8

This is probably one of the hardest lessons I learned and that I’m continually learning. To recognize that part of serving isn’t just showing up and doing what you’re told. It’s taking what you’re given and growing it. Making it better. Your ability to grow something will always result in your promotion. You’re inability to grow something will result in frustration and possibly demotion.

You won’t serve your way to the top just by showing up. You’ll serve your way to the top when you grow something.

So how can you grow the area you oversee?

1.) Get Coached - I’m a young leader – there is so much I don’t know it’s not even funny. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about how to grow an organization. So what do I do to make up for my incompetency? Surround myself with people who have grown something and ask them lots of questions. Experienced people will take your farther, faster.

2.) Steal Everything! – Don’t know what to do? Find out who is doing it well and steal their model! Steal their creative ideas! In time, you’ll be able to take others ideas and mold them with your own. Never stop coming up with creative ideas yourself, but never be afraid to copy someone or some organization that does it really well.

3.) Develop Potential Leaders - Find the potential leaders in your organization and develop them. When they’re ready – put them in charge of an area and help them grow it. To be honest, if you have the right leader, growth will take care of itself. Believe in people and let them go to grow!

What are some things you do to grow something in the areas you lead?