Dispatches from Exponential 08, day 3.1

A really great session this morning at 8 AM with Shawn Lovejoy, Lead Pastor of Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Georgia, entitled “Healthy Leader…Healthy Church.” You can read his blog here.

Shawn built his message around the story of David and Goliath, with David’s temptation to use Saul’s armor in approaching Goliath. You can find it 1 Samuel 17:38-40. While I’ve included the outline of the message below, here are three highlight statements from the message.

1. “We’re often trying to fight the battles of ministry in someone else’s way.” – borrowing from their resources or talents -copycatting them – without working out of from who God has made us to be
2. Could it be that because a lot of us are trying to wear someone else’s armor, we are limiting what God wants to do in us and our churches?
3. Could it be that for a lot of us, it’s not that we’re really waiting on God, but that God is waiting for us to be secure in who He has made us to be?

———

Here are the notes:

Planting a church caused me to doubt myself, my abilities, and my call more than anything else.
We deal with self-doubt. We get insecure in our own leadership.

Doubting ourselves can cause us to begin to:

· Compare ourselves to other leaders: numbers in attendance; have they written a book?; etc.

· Copy other leaders: same sermon series; same approach with videos; same clothes

· Condemn other leaders (or ourselves): something’s not right with what they’re doing; they’re watering down the gospel; negative things to say about pastors in our city; turning it inwards and condemning ourselves – “maybe it’s just best that I resign and quit”

1. Someone else’s armor can be someone else’s personality.

· David was not a soldier at this point in his life; David was a shepherd at this point in his life.

· Soldiers – aren’t counselors, but are driving visionaries

· Shepherds – care for people

· Some of us are soldiers trying to be shepherds; some of us are shepherds trying to be soldiers

2. Someone else’s armor can be someone else’s testimony.

· “if this is the way such-and-such a leader has always done it, then this is how God wants to do it with me.” – not true

· See 1 Samuel 17:34-37 – David was clear about what God had done in his life in the past

· Many of us discount our past – our testimonies

· “Everything God has done for us in the past is because of what he wants to do with us in the future.”

3. Someone else’s armor can be someone else’s context.

· We need good counsel from others, but we can’t simply transplant it into our context b/c each of our context’s is so different from one another

4. Someone else’s armor can be someone else’s expectations.

· Saul might have said, “you can’t do this – you play the harp and write poetry; you’re a bit feminine”

· His brothers might have said, “you don’t even belong here, go back home!”

· The voices say, “If you were a little more like so-and-so, then … [you’d be more successful]”

· Jesus told those voices “get behind me Satan”

· We need to be able to get mean about the vision – “we’re not going to be that kind of church”

· Have confidence in who you are.

5. Someone else’s armor can be someone else’s talent.

· We don’t live the parable of the talents: we can’t embrace and live with the idea that some people have more talents than we do.

· All we need to be is God’s person in His place with His calling with His talents. The sooner we embrace this, the sooner we’ll be at peace with God and His calling on our life.

· Embracing who God has made us to be – with our specific talents, limits, and abilities

How can we begin to do that? – ask these self-assessment questions:

· Whom am I, really?
· What’s my testimony? – what is it that God has been up to in my life?
· What are my strengths or gifts? – not what are my personality flaws and what am I not good at?
· What’s unique about where God has placed me?
· How does this all make me and my church unique?
· Am I more of a soldier or a shepherd? – we all have some of both in us, but what am I more of?
· How does all of this affirm or go against the way I’m doing ministry right now?

“And the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Sam 17: 46)

We don’t need to wear someone else’s armor to win.