Do You Hear What I Hear?

This past Sunday in our Summertime Stories series we took a look at Jesus’ Parable of the Sower – with the main idea being that God does speak to those that are willing and ready to listen. And the various soils in the story represent the various “levels of readiness” people have to what God is saying.

That's one thing when you're considering God's next step for your own life. But I'm wondering what you think about how God leads a church family like SummitView. What are the implications for us to consider as leaders about our collective receptivity to God’s leading? Now I’m going to make an assumption that all of us as leaders WANT to hear from God – we WANT to be the “good soil” and be receptive to God’s leading. Afterall, the role of church leadership is such a daunting task I can’t see how anyone in their right mind would want to do it any other way! But with the Biblical model of a plurality of leadership, how do we make that work in community?

So here's a question for us to consider -- Since last time I checked God didn’t have a blogspot for us to read precisely what he wants to say to SummitView, how do we as leaders responsibly translate what we hear or believe God wants to say to our specific church family? Assuming that God's desire is for us to pull in the same direction, what kinds of things can we do to better serve as cohesive conduits of God's message, calling, leading of SummitView?

Leaders are Learners

A dangerous pitfall any leader faces is reaching a point where we think we've completely "arrived" in our leadership development, and so we stop seeking to learn. The same can be said for Christians who may feel like they've heard it all before -- they know the Bible stories, they've heard tons of sermons preached, they've sat it countless Bible studies. What more could they possibly learn?

Now on one level I do share the sentiment of those that say that most Christians are educated well beyond their level of obedience and could probably do with less Bible study and more Bible-in-action. However, the truth of the matter is that the best and most effective leaders are life-long learners.

It really doesn't matter if the learning is formal or informal, individually or in a group, out of a book or from an online blog. The point, once again, is that leaders are learners. And I would add that I think Christian leaders should be on the forefront of learning and discovering more and better ways to live our lives (and help lead others to live their lives) to reflect the image of Christ.

And so begins our experimental journey as SummitView leaders here on this blog -- to live our core value of "continuous growth", helping one another take the next step!