There are important reasons for motivating our ministries. Successful minitry, good leadership and effectie motivation must be PROACTIVE projects by church leaders, or elase we will more backward.
Negative personlaites tend to be powerful. Precisely because they are often drien by sellfish and narcissistic needs, neagtive personalites can be quite insistent and strong. They can confuse any organisation quickly. They can exploit, knowingly or not, the fact that no group can tolerate and absence of direction or leadership.
Every group, organisation, family or church instinctively looks for direction from someone. Groups abhor a leadership vacuum and will find someone to fill it.
Unless the virtues of successful ministry are actively sponsored, encouraged, promoted, taught and learned by church leaders, more negative personalities will rise to the top, become influential and poison the whole system.
It rarely happens from the bottom up. Good leaders must lead or more negative personalities will.
TWO CATEGORIES OF CHURCH ACTIVITIES
Chruch activities tend to fall into main categories. There is the work that comes our way, like weddings, sick calls and counselling; and the work we make ourselves, like fund raising programmes, evangelisation projects and retreats.
The first category is REACTIVE. We respond to someone asking for something. The second is PROACTIVE. We anticipate a need before anyone asks. It is our initiative to work and it does not necessarily have to happen.
A church leader who waits for something to happen is the REACTIVE type. That is not leadership. This is series is about taking initiative and proactively working to make things happen.
POSITIVE, PROACTIVE, ENERGISED leadership anticipates the future and ensures the church will be ready to meet it. That is much bigger task than passively waiting for things to take care of themselves.
Eventhough proactive leadership is challenging, we believe it is the mission from our lord. We will need his help throught to make it happen.
Motivating people is difficult. Anyone attempting to organise a team project or run a team efort will encounter stress, resistance and strain. If a leader hopes to survice the process she/he needs to know what to do.
Without good training, well-meaning, good-hearted and sincerely motivated person can quickly become cyrical, burned out and bitter.
thanks sincere hope that through your sharing on here will be more people/leadership realise what is the true calling to be a part of the body of Christ.
Sincere, i'm sorry but some things I cannot agree with you. I hope you understand... because Romans 3:4-"God forbid-yea,let God be true, but every man a liar, as it is written. " If I speak contrary to the Word of God, pls correct me.
You are right about negative personalities. Just to make it clear, personalities does not run God's church, neither does it determines if the church moves forward. Jesus bought the church with His blood. We are saved by the Blood of the Lamb. The church belongs to Him. If the church does not dwell/remain in Jesus and submit to Him, the church will not be fruitful.John 15:4-6. Negative personalities/ leaders are leaders who do not submit to the Spirit of Jesus, and so became filled with bitterness and false teachings.
About our church activities, Jesus does not place great priorities on our church activities at all- you see, what was important to Him can be found in Matt 6:33-But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
And when He sent out the disciples, He ordered them to do the TRUE church activities:
KJV(Matt 10:7) "And as you go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils, freely ye have received, freely give.Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses. Nor scrip for you journey, neither 2 coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the workmen is worthy of his meat. "
We can see that Jesus doesn't care much about worldly possession. Even more, it seems that our church activities does not add up to what Jesus tells the disciple to do-something very wrong here...
You see, our church today has been influenced by men's idea-proactive leadership and reactive leadership. I want to help you to see clearly. God does not need men's idea to run His church, but our church today has become so similar to the world that the church looks like an organisation, and even up to the point where church leaders are categorised so similar to the world.
What God has said about true leadership is this-NIV(Matt 20:26-27):"Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave- just as the son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom to many."
And this-KJV(1 Timothy 3:the whole chapter)
v2-must be blameless, husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach
v3-not given to wine, no striker, not greedy, patient, not a brawler, not coveteous
v4-one that rule well his household, having his children in subjection
v6-not a novice (meaning cannot be too young in faith)
v7-have a good report (reputation)
v8-must be grave (respectable), not double tongued,
v9-holding the mystery of the faith on GOOD conscience
v10- must prove themselves, must be blameless
v11-even their wives too must be grave (respectable), not slanderer (meaning cannot backstabbing), sober, faithful in all things
That's a lot, isn't it? I want to encourage everyone- we must see through the Word.Every believer (not just church leaders) must submit to Jesus. He owns us. He has bought us with His Blood...
It is true that it never happens bottom up, that's why the leaders must be called and anointed by Jesus Himself.
God Bless you, sincere-I hope I've helped you enough...
With all due respect, long writing is just making a boring reading. Please make a compact statement plus some personal real life experience to demonstrate your point.
I would agree to Moore that all humans have sinful desires. To err is human, as people say.
I remember this one story about a man who wanted to seek the will of God in his life. So, one day, he went to the church altar, bringing a pen and a piece of paper, and wrote down all he wants to do for the Lord. As he had finished writing, in his prayer, he asked God to sign his paper. A few times, he begged the Lord to sign it, but he heard no answer. After several attempts, the Lord finally spoke. He told him that he had done it the wrong way, and instructed him that instead of writing the list, he left the list empty and signed at the bottom of the paper. "You sign the paper, and let Me do the list". Such a wonderful story.
My point is that, despite we create all the agendas to keep our ministry moving and blooming, if they are out of God's will, the ministry will be stagnant. To think about it again, we should understand what is the benchmark to measure our success in ministry. Human quantity or spiritual quality? Still, I cannot deny that proper management is needed to establish better moving of the ministry. However, we should give spaces for God to work miracles. After all, ministries are made to glorify Lord anyway. The ministry belongs to Him, we are only the care-taker. If we need to do something within the ministry, we have to ask the Boss. Have we not dedicated to the Lord our hearts and our wills to Him when He called us first into His ministry? Then, if that so, who are we, trying to rob the Lord's right to determine how His ministry should function?
Pro-active and Re-active. Aren't those terms we use to hear during management classes? I believe those terms are made for secular business and profit-based companies. Those terms require you to work according to their rigid and inflexible system. Don't forget, the Lord works in a way we can never imagine. He doesn't really work in the worldly system.
Hope I've stated my view clearly. Don't hesistate to ask if you have any doubts.
