As I finished my QT & some P90X this AM, got out of the shower and began reflecting…something hit me. JESUS focused on relationships.
When you read through the gospels so many of His teachings point to KNOWING Him…BELIEVING in Him…LOVING Him! AND THEN? Then they grew in Him, learned through Him, overflowed love from Him, etc.
In other words, the outward change began with the inward life change from a relationship with Jesus Christ!
To deny that a relationship with Jesus is the most important thing would be like saying, “I can learn HOW to be a Christian, but never have a relationship with Jesus”…it just doesn’t work that way.
I believe our call to lead and be good shepherds of who God has called us to is rooted in the same truth - RELATIONSHIPS. However, after 7 years of ministry, I’ve found that the tendency is to place our focus on the “execution” of Sundays without creating & investing strong relationships with the people who make them happen - our volunteers.
Please hear me - it’s SO important that we get the execution of Sundays right! We want to make sure that we do everything possible to engage kids so that they get Jesus on their level, and it’s important that we do that to the absolute best of our ability & work to constantly improve it! THE DETAILS MATTER!! They matter SO MUCH!
To accomplish this, we have to spend an incredible amount of time, passion, and energy on helping our volunteers see the vision of our ministry and challenging them to raise the bar, and we encourage them personally and spiritually along the way, as much as we can.
I’m also learning that it’s OK (rather, BETTER) to turn the 80% of our time that we typically spend with our people on “executional” type issues into time we spend investing spiritually & relationally into our teams. Ironically, when the spirit & community are in the right spot, the conversations about improving the execution end up being owned more by the people! Because at the heart of it, they BELIEVE in what’s happening…to their core…they’ve experienced it.
Our people are hurting and being attacked by the enemy daily! It’s our call to love on them, to set up leaders and systems that make sure that, no matter how big our ministry gets, people are loved on and invested in!
Because, at the end of the day, that’s what matters most - for our ministry to bring people closer to HIM!