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!

I recently heard about this book from a John Maxwell Lesson. He said it’s one of the books that have influenced him the most in his life on leadership. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read it.

This was probably the best leadership book I’ve read. The title makes it obvious, but it’s because it concentrates on being a spiritual leader, not just a leader in general. I’ll be going back through this book often. It is definitely a book that will mark my life. I’d make this required reading for anyone who wants to go into ministry.

Big Takeaway: If God’s called you to lead, go after it with all of your heart, but recognize that leadership is a responsibility, not a game or for your glory.

Final Grade: 10/10      Buy it Here

Some Highlights:

• God assigns places of spiritual ministry and leadership in His sovereign will.

• If the disciples figured to learn about leadership on the fast track and with appropriate perks and bonuses, Jesus soon disillusioned them.

• “It occurs to me that perhaps the best test of whether one is qualified to lead, is to find out whether anyone is following.”

• One should inquire of a potential leader whether he or she 1) does little things well; 2) has learned to focus on priorities; 3) uses leisure well; 4) has intensity; 5) knows how to exploit momentum; 6) is growing; 7) overcomes discouragement and “impossible” situations; and understands his or her weaknesses.

• The secular mind and heart, however gifted and personally charming, has no place in the leadership of the church.

• To reach this goal, a spouse must fully share the leader’s spiritual aspirations and be willing to join in the necessary sacrifices. Many a gifted leader has been lost to high office and spiritual effectiveness because of an uncooperative spouse.

• Jesus’ classrooms were the highways of life; His principles and values came across in the midst of daily experience. Jesus placed disciples into internships (Luke 10:17–24) that enabled them to learn through failure and success (Mark 9:14–29).

• Before we can conquer the world, we must first conquer the self.

• We cannot learn about prayer except by praying.

• The character and career of a young person depends on how he or she spends spare time.

• Minutes and hours wisely used translate into an abundant life.

• Our problem is not too little time but making better use of the time we have. Each of us has as much time as anyone else. The president of the United States has the same twenty-four hours as we. Others may surpass our abilities, influence, or money, but no one has more time.

• ‘Well, I just had two hours to kill here in between trains, and I thought I would come and see you.’ That used to bother me. Then the Lord convinced me that He sends people our way.

• Unless our reading includes serious thinking, it is wasted time.

• Those who lead the church are marked by a willingness to give up personal preferences

• Only one Leader holds office forever; no successor is needed for Him

These highlights surely do not give justice to the book – there were so many that I probably have 5-6 pages! Buy this book!