Blog

by Bill Lawrence, President of  Leader Formation International

Fear not, the prophet says to the leader.

Even when everything goes well, fear dominates so many leaders and they are afraid.

In seasons of prosperity, we worry that financial security will go away unexpectedly. In times of health, we constantly seek to avoid illness. We tend to think that good times will fail suddenly, and bad times will last forever. In moments of safety, we anticipate accidents. When things go badly, we expect them to stay bad. In those moments, if we own a company, we shrink it as much as possible, break the lease in any way we can, cut as many workers as we think must, and get rid of as much debt as practical. We may not be very effective, but we’re safe.

It makes sense to think this way because our fears are often true, and fear is God’s way of calling us to seek His faithfulness. But why is it that we focus on what we cannot do, rather than what God can do? Is there another way to respond to the struggles of life beside fear? How about faith? Remember, it is one thing to be sensible, but it is another thing entirely to be fearful. We become fearful because we think everything is up to us. Silent trust is more valuable than self-trust.  It’s up to us to solve our problems, it’s up to us to overcome our struggles, it’s up to us to make everything right. That’ what we say—and that’s how we fail.

Isaiah’s point is that nothing is up to us. Everything is up to the One who is with us and who works in and through us. We trust ourselves while we talk about God, but God wants less talk about Him and top trust in Him. Fear is either uncontrolled by us or totally in control of us, but it’s not trust in God. When we give up to it fear completely controls us, even when we pretend that we control it. Fear dominates everything, decides everything, and destroys everything. Fear, fear, fear, nothing but fear determinates everything and defines everything. Fear is the worst reality we face, much greater than the reality of God when we give into it and fail to trust our Lord.

Yet God says, “Fear not.” Why shouldn’t we fear? Because just as God restored ancient Israel when the nation changed its mind and repented, so He will restore us if we turn from going our way to living His way by trusting Him.

As leaders, we must face the tensions of life without fear and learn to see fear as a reminder that life is bigger than we are but not bigger than God is. Understand that fear has two dimensions, one that harms us and one that helps us. The harmful side of fear assumes that life is up to me, and I, as a leader, must overcome the struggles that we all face, but it’s more than we can overcome, and that’s why we are so afraid of being a leader. However, there is the other side of life and leadership, the side in which we must worship God as we fear Him because He is out to deliver us. This is the side we must show our followers as leaders, the side that moves all of us forward and takes us into deeper and deeper joy and fulfillment. This is when we discover that God acts on our behalf to enable us to overcome our struggles through His resources.

I AM is with us.

This is where God makes Himself known as the great I AM, and we can be free from fear when we remember that the great I AM is with is. Because of this we can think of the fear of God in a radically different way from how we often think of it. When we realize God is the great I AM we worship Him and recognize His greatness. We realize how much He is for us. When we truly recognize God’s greatness, fear does not relate to the hard times of being a leader, but to the greatness of God that helps us lead His way. He can guide us through the hard moments and use us to lead His followers—His followers—to move effectively through His intended hard ways. Or even the unnecessary but avoided hard ways we bring on ourselves. This means that fear refers to our reverence or awe that results in righteous behavior and the exaltation and wonder that brings to our lives. God is on our sides and His greatness is for us, so fear does not mean terror but triumph. Thus, when we say, “Fear not,” we do not speak of terror because it is against us but of confidence because God is for us, and we have nothing to doubt since this is true. We have no reason to fear life or what causes uncertainty in our lives. Remember that to fear God is not to be afraid of Him but to honor Him, to exalt Him, to praise Him, to raise Him up—and to depend on Him when we are utterly powerless. That is fruitful fear.

No matter what you face as a leader I AM is with you, beside you, behind you, under you, around you, and for you. He leads us out of the darkness of our sin and into the brightness of His grace You will never be on your own because the Jesus who died on the cross for you now lives in you and works through you as you trust Him. This is what makes all of us one of His leaders, one of us who leads His way in His will in all He does through us.

So, we say to all the Lord’s leaders,

Fear not for I am with you—but that means He is with

you, behind you, under you, around you, and for you.

Matthew 28:18-20 Again and Again

by Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

Jesus commanded us to be leaders who obey Him by reproducing leaders over and over again. In fact, our lives are all about doing what He told us to do by using our opportunities in life to accomplish what He directs us to do. So, if you are a business leader or an educator or a political leader or a pastor or an athlete or an artist or a draft man or a factory worker or whatever your task is, you are most of all a discipler and a disciple maker. In other words, you give yourself to the Lord to be used by Him to be His instrument to make those you influence His reproducers for Him as well. This is your constant purpose in life, all that you are doing with your life in all that you do.

This means that there will be many growing factors that will mark your life and make the way you relate the same way Jesus related to those He influenced when He was here on earth. That is exactly what He wants to mark us now, as He commanded. Consider the implications of His commands for you as His followers.

Jesus wants His followers to have growing relationships with our followers.

Just as He had growing personal relationships with those He called to Himself, so He wants us to have growing relationships with those we call to follow Him with us.  There was intense growth between the initial relationships of Jesus and the twelve and that is what He wants between us and those we call to follow Him. Even though we do not leave our regular way of life as Jesus and His men did, we will often be together as friends as well as in meetings and ministry and individually.

You help them become more effective as Bible teachers

You will enable them to become increasingly more useful as Bible teachers by attending their classes, seeing them teach, evaluating them in appropriate ways, identifying their strengths and pointing out their limitations, helping them understand how they could be more effective, and equipping them to become the kind of communicators God wants them to be. This would be a great encouragement for them.

Prayer, prayer, and more prayer

As nothing was more important than prayer to Jesus, so nothing can be more important than prayer to you and to the men and women you influence. As His relationships and Bible teaching were to Jesus, nothing was more important than prayer to Him. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that prayer was so important to Jesus and was central in His life. After all, He prayed every time He had an opportunity to. When He ate, when He acted, but especially when He was going to walk on water and call His men to follow Him in an intense way, He spent hours praying. And when He knew He was about to die for our sins, He asked His Father if He could avoid death, but He could not. He taught His men to live and die as He lived and died: by prayer. Everything Jesus accomplished was built on prayer.

Have an honest interaction, confrontation, and intense relationship as necessary

If you consider the kind of relationships Jesus had with His leaders as He formed them, it is more than evident to you that they became very intense and open. He did not hold back from facing them, from holding them accountable, from being confronted by them, from being questioned by Peter or John or even Judas who betrayed Him. It will be the same with all whom you influence to be the disciples of Jesus and you must strive to make them the kind of leaders Jesus wants to use, but only as they know prayer is the core of your life.

Any leader who forms future leaders according to the biblical principles of His life will produce increasingly effective leaders who will equip even more productive leaders until the body of Christ will do what God created it to do and reach the world with the good news concerning Jesus. What happened in the first three hundred years after the cross will happen today, even in the most resistant parts of the world, if only leaders will have the heart of Christ, a heart that every Christian leader is to needs leaders who lead this way.

He sent us to proclaim what He has done—reedeem a dying world, yet only as a result of prayer!

By Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

Philippians 2:5-11

1. To be Christ’s kind of leader we must become followers, something few of us do naturally.

Few of us realize that Jesus was the ultimate follower.  We may know this theologically because the Bible speaks on many occasions that He submitted Himself to the Father, especially in the Garden when He accepts the cross when He would rather not be crucified if He could escape that awful reality (Mt. 26:39, 42, 44), but it was God’s will that He drink the cup. Yet, many fail to realize that He was the Lord of all because He was always in total submission to the Father, and that He could only be Lord of all by being submitted in every way.

Jesus is our Leader because He was God’s follower, and we can only be His leader if we are His followers even as He was.

2. To be a leader we must do what Jesus did (Phil 2:5-11):

     Empty ourselves

     Humble ourselves

     Sacrifice ourselves

We only know His resurrection as we know His death.

We must turn from our longings for power, control, recognition, and all the other elements that drive us and trust Him to raise us up according to His will even as He trusted the Father to raise Him.

Ultimate humility alone meant radical exaltation.

3. To be a leader we must be a seeker, pursuing Jesus at every turn through His word and desperate dependence on Him.

The amazing reality is that Jesus knew the word—the very word He fulfilled, the very word He taught and obeyed, the very word He declared and proclaimed.  The very word His listeners knew to be the word of God was His word. in every way and God’s word made Him a leader. It is when we treat the word the same way He did that we become His kind of leaders.

4.To be a leader we must be a worshipper of Jesus, bowing before Him, exalting and honoring Him, always focusing consciously on Him in every relationship I have, every decision I make, and every action I take.

It’s amazing that the Son of God became a man of God, a human being in the most human way possible, an active worshipper of God. It’s not only that He went to the synagogue, although He did that.  Jesus also maintained the rituals of God, the Passover and Yom Kippur and all the other Jewish annual events. He fasted and feasted, He prayed intently, and He sought the Father whenever He could and did not lead without praying.

Worship was at the very heart of His leadership. If He did not worship, He did not lead. If worship is not the core of all you do, you are not His kind of leader. You may say what He said, you may do what He did but if you do not seek to influence others as He did and do not worship as He worshipped, you cannot lead as He led.

5. To be a leader we must serve Jesus in every way by being focused on His commission no matter where He puts us or what it costs us.

Jesus came with a commission. He was sent by the Father to keep the Father’s word. He was empowered by the Spirit to fulfill the Father’s will. He came to accomplish the Father’s love by redeeming us. He has given us the same commission He had to fill the world with His good news: God loves you and offers His eternal life to all who will trust His beloved Son.

We now have the commission that Jesus had, and He acts to accomplish it through us.

This is why we are leaders.

Thus, I am His kind of leader when I am His kind of follower, a humble person committed to His word, His will, and His ways. Stunning that to be His kind of leader I must be His kind of follower. That is contrary to everything we know about leadership in our world. Those around us think that to be a leader is to be in charge, to be over others, and this is true in many ways, except for one way. It is not God’s way. To be God’s kind of leader we must be the Jesus kind of leader: under Him the same way He was under God. Constantly under Him even to the point of carrying a cross and dying to everything but the Father’s will. This means that the humility of God’s kind of death results in God’s kind of life.  And this makes you the Jesus kind of leader.

How are you doing?

by Bill Lawrence, President Leader Formation International

Answer these Questions

What overwhelming situations do you face that you cannot overcome and that your followers know you cannot overcome but that Jesus can through your leadership if you trust Him?

How can you attract the kind of followers you must have to move forward in the vision you want to accomplish? Consider how Jesus attracted His followers through His teaching.

How soon can you implement the plan you have in view to get started with your aims?

Where can you gain the funds you need to move forward to success and what must you do to attract them?

What kind of facilities do you need to make the difference you aim to accomplish and what must you do to own it?

Consider These Thoughts

It’s time for you to embrace your inadequacy so you can become adequate in Christ.

Identify the “5,000” followers the Lord wants you to feed, the tasks for which you are totally inadequate, and consider your particular “five loaves and two fish.”

Consider those who don’t share your vision or have your desires or want to pay the price you know they must pay to accomplish God’s aims through your ministry.

Ask the Lord to do through your leadership what He did through His Son when He fed the 5,000 so He can influence your followers to do what He did in the lives of the original twelve and help them start to form them as His effective followers.

He is calling you to be a leader, not just to do wonderful things, which is what many of us think our aim is as leaders.

His first target in us is not for us to do great things and make us visible successes. That may be what He ultimately wants to do, but—as shocking as this is—His ultimate target is to show us and our followers how totally unable we are to do what matters so greatly. His aim is not to show others what we can do but what we can’t do apart from our desperate dependence on the One who died on the cross, who was buried in a grave as the victim of the Roman Empire and the priests of Jerusalem, but who rose from the utter weakness of death to rise from the dead in the power of resurrection.

Christ’s power of leadership is radically different from the power of political leadership or the self-advancement of business leadership or the healing of medical leadership or the insight of educational leadership or the power of any other kind of leadership, all of which is good at times and to be valued and honored in those times.

Resurrection leadership is the power of ultimate leadership, the leadership of the cross—the kind of leadership that passes through death to life and lasts for eternity.

This reality that you are facing is not a one-time challenge. It is a lifetime reality. Ask Him to help you become the kind of leader who will do what you cannot do with what you do not have for the rest of your life. Ask Him to never let you forget that your inadequacy is not the stopping point of your leadership. Your inadequacy is the starting point of His adequacy.

Resurrection Leadership 

By Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

"without me you can do nothing (John 15:5)"

"You give them something to eat (Mark 6:37)"

How do you think the disciples felt when Jesus told them to feed 5,000 men plus women and children with virtually nothing?  How would you feel as a leader if He gave you this kind of a task?

What could they have thought when everything they had was five loaves and two fish? A boy’s lunch—that’s what it was. And that’s all Jesus had in that isolated location on the Sea of Galilee. He only had that because He sent His men on a search through the 5,000 looking for anything they could find, and they knew it was all they had a chance to find when they searched. Everyone who was there knew it.  What was Jesus doing?

Jesus was about to teach His men Leadership 101, the beginner’s course on The Jesus Way of Leadership. To say it was a beginner’s discovery is an understatement. To say it was crazy, useless, a waste of time, is also true to those who chose to follow Him. It was the first course.  To say we are going to learn to be leaders in the same way is also true because this is the only way we can lead the eternal way, the resurrection way, the way that takes us through Calvary, through death, through resurrection, and through life into eternity. This is Resurrection Leadership, the Jesus kind of Leadership.

For the disciples, this happened on a hillside where the disciples were fresh off a ministry assignment in which Jesus had sent them into towns and villages throughout Israel to show them what He could do when they trusted Him to lead His way. They returned with stories of great success, which drew large crowds to them and now they were ready for even more of the same kind of provision they already saw.

John the Baptist had just been beheaded, and Jesus knew His hour was coming. It was time for Him to focus on preparing His men for the supernatural tasks that lay ahead for them. He chose a solitary place to withdraw them where He could teach them more of what they had to learn, but the crowds kept coming. Because of what the disciples had done, more people than ever wanted to see and hear Jesus, so they followed Him by the thousands to listen to His teaching as He fed them with God’s word.

The hour was late, the day was long, and the people were hungry. Dinnertime was fast approaching, and the disciples were becoming restless. Most of the people had a long way to go to get to their homes and food. If they didn’t leave now, the old and the young, the weak and needy would never get home to eat. They were in a wilderness, and these people needed to be sent on their way for their own good. They could feed their spirits on the Lord’s words, but His wisdom could never feed their bellies. Only bread could do that.

The disciples must have conferred and decided to interrupt Jesus and point out the problem to Him. It was not like Jesus to miss seeing the needs of others—no one had more compassion for the crowds than He did (Mark 8:34). So, they gave Him a quick reminder that it was time to wrap things up and send the crowd home.

Jesus’ reply to their interruption startled and confused them. “’They don’t need to go away,’” he told them. “’You give them something to eat.’” (Mark 7:37. Note: Jesus did not say ‘We—or I—give them something to eat.’ He said, ‘YOU give them something to eat.’ What? How could THEY do that? They didn’t even have food for themselves. How could they give the crowd anything?

Why did He send them to discover the obvious impossibility of their situation? Nothing He was doing made sense. They knew they didn’t have enough bread to feed these hungry people, probably close to 20,000 in all, and so He gave them the impossible task to meet their needs. Did He issue this command to make them feel foolish and futile, calling attention to the problem by sending them through the crowd to ask if they had food? He sent them searching for something they could never find.

No. He wanted His disciples to discover how little they had. He wanted to make their lack of resources utterly undeniable. He wanted them to face their inadequacy square in the face. He needed them to see their reality.

Often, we are counting on someone to tell us what we should do or to do it for us. We look for all kinds of information that we record and maybe even go back and review, but it’s rarely the same as acting for ourselves. In our Lord’s case, we want Him to do something for us, but Jesus wants us to face it, to take it on and to trust Him to do it through us. On the Galilee hillside His intent was to teach them to trust Him to act through Him as they had to do for the rest of their lives, even as we must do today. Even as they had to learn to trust Him to do what they could not do, so we must trust Him as His leaders wherever we are.

Have you ever hit a wall like this—where everything you had to give was nowhere near enough for the challenges you faced? In these times He is teaching us that without Him we can do nothing, but with Him nothing becomes everything He wants us to do because Jesus always turns nothing into everything He wants us to accomplish. That’s what He does through us today and every day as He desires for the rest of our lives.

Remember 

Resurrection Leadership means nothing always becomes

everything when we trust Him no matter what we face.