Show me some chutzpa: Leadership absent courage is a farce!
Leadership absent courage is a farce. I’m not referring to arrogance or bravado, but real courage. It takes courage to break from the norm, challenge the status quo, seek new opportunities, cut your losses, make the tough decision, listen rather than speak, admit your faults, forgive the faults of others, not allow failure to dampen your spirit, stand for those not capable of standing for themselves, and to remain true to your core values. You can do none of these things without courage. Courage is having the strength of conviction to do the right thing when it would just be easier to do things right. The moral of this story is leaders need to be honest, have a demonstrated track record of success, be excellent communicators, place an emphasis on serving those they lead, be fluid in approach, have laser focus, and a bias toward action. If these traits are not possessed by your current leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in for a rocky road ahead…
Show me Thy Glory
Regardless of my 20+ years of ministry, I would have never understood this message until two years ago, when during a youth Bible camp in Bulgaria God showed up in a way we’d never experienced before.
I wrote about this experience on a number of occasions consecutively in:
Prophetic Restoration of a Nation and the Glory of God
A New Generation Called to the Presence of God
For a night-long service with some 100 young ministers on fire for God, who witnessed and testified of entering the cloud of God’s Glory, simply cannot be forgotten…
But counting the days since that very experience, we’ve come to realize that there’s not only a cry for the Glory of God among the people. There is an urgent need today for the people of God to reconnect, re-experience and relive again the Glory. The failure to do so threatens our very identity, our existence and our future as a church of God. And as sure as our past experiences are soon forgotten, there is an urgent need to impart the experience of the Glory of God into a new generation.
For it is time to be known in this world not by our own accomplishments, but through the physical manifestation of the presence, through the cloud and the pillar of fire, of the Glory of God. And this will never happen except if we have first (1) longed, (2) prayed, and (3) been in the Glory alone with the Living God overshadowing us…
