This week, I celebrate my sixth year as the pastor of an amazing church. In those six years, I’ve earned a doctorate in humility. Not the kind of humility found in a humble spirit, but the kind of humility that has broken you, bettered you and prepared you. The kind of humility that requires extensive work in the fine art of failure.
I’ve learned a million lessons, but here are three that made my top ten over the past 72 months:
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If you think you are prepared and ready to lead – you are not! I truly thought that if anybody was prepared for this role, it would have to be me. WOW! If you think you’ve arrived, you never arrived at all. Nothing prepares you to lead more than failure and criticism. You can build an altar to the god of self-doubt and pity, or you can get on your knees before the Divine and listen for His loving, corrective voice as He reminds you that you are loved and He is working in your life for your good and for His glory. And that is rarely the path of least resistance.
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If you measure your success against the rest of this world, you will always lose! The Divine has one standard of success – Obedience to His directive to “Go into the world and make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teach them everything that He has taught us.” By the way, He also said that you aren’t leading unless you are serving! You cannot serve the tiny god of personal glory and serve people in need simultaneously.
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Relationships will always matter! God believed in community in His creation, in His plans, in His purpose and in His path for your life! The church isn’t in place to simply “do church.” The church is to be a house of prayer, a place of truth, an oasis of kindness, a source of help, and a lighthouse of hope! Jesus put His church in place to lovingly lead people into a life-altering, eternal relationship with Him, to teach and learn what He has already taught us in the Holy Scriptures and what He is teaching us in His work within our own lives through His Holy Spirit. God is all about the redemption of people…in essence, He is all about people! That leaves us with a pretty clear understanding that we are to be about people…all people. Not just people that look like us, live like us, look like us, worship like us or love like us…ALL PEOPLE. The greatest relationship of all time is found in Jesus, the Lord of all.
Thank you, Sugar Hill Church! I am blessed beyond measure to serve you. We may never be the biggest church, but we will always strive to have the biggest heart.
Under the Same Wing,
AChuck
