DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT TUESDAY – GODLY LEADERSHIP.

Leadership in the local church should be determined by spirituality, not notoriety. - Tony Evans.

Be on your guard! Remember how day and night for three years I kept warning you with tears in my eyes. - Acts 20:31.

Leadership is not magnetic personality. That can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people; that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to higher standards, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. - Peter Drucker.

I was reading through the book of Acts last week, and I realised that Paul was brilliant when it came to picking leaders for his Church plants. He was the perfect example to each and every one of them. He didn’t ask them to go to Bible College or seminary to get trained, he didn’t ask them to get a diploma or a degree, he simply asked them to imitate him, as he imitated Christ!

The world needs leaders... who cannot be bought; whose word is their promise; who put character above wealth; who possess opinions and a will; who are larger than their vocations;who do not hesitate to take chances; who will not lose their individuality in a crowd; who will be honest in small things as well as in great things; who will make no compromise with wrong;whose ambitions are not confined to their own selfish desires; who will not say they do it "because everybody else does it";

Who are true to their friends through good report and evil report, in adversity as well as in prosperity; who do not believe that shrewdness, cunning, and hardheadedness are the best qualities for winning success; who are not ashamed or afraid to stand for the truth when it is unpopular, who can say no with emphasis, although the rest of the world says yes. - Paul Borthwick.

What a contrast this is, to what we see in the Churches today. Paul looked for Godly men and put them into positions of leadership, and then gave them the whole counsel of God, with tears in his eyes. It’s time to get the world out of our Churches, and start looking to the word of God, for our examples in training leaders. Just thinking about it, didn’t Jesus do the same thing?

At one time Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in America. He came to America from his native Scotland when he was a small boy, did a variety of odd jobs, and eventually ended up as the largest steel manufacturer in the United States. At one time he had forty-three millionaires working for him. In those days a millionaire was a rare person; conservatively speaking, a million dollars in his day would be equivalent to at least twenty million dollars today.

A reporter asked Carnegie how he had hired forty-three millionaires. Carnegie responded that those men had not been millionaires when they started working for him but had become millionaires as a result. The reporter's next question was, "How did you develop these men to becomes so valuable to you that you have paid them this much money?" Carnegie replied that men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn't go into the mine looking for dirt - one goes in looking for the gold.

That's exactly the way we pastors need to view our people. Don't look for the flaws, warts, and blemishes. Look for the gold, not for the dirt; the good, not the bad. Look for the positive aspects of life. Like everything else, the more good qualities we look for in our people, the more good qualities we are going to find. - Source Unknown.

IF YOU WANT GODLY LEADERS, MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE A GODLY EXAMPLE!

Loving Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be an example to my people, so that from among them, Godly leaders will arise. I ask this in the wonderful and majestic Name of Jesus. Amen.

Be Encouraged!
GBYAY