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Speaker 1: Leadership is kind of a passion of mine. I am especially passionate about it because I do feel that there is a lacking of leaders in our communities and our churches, and I think that it’s a lot easier to be a leader than maybe people think. And so I’m going to get the presentation started. So I want to challenge maybe the way people see leadership and maybe even their own strengths and their own weaknesses. And maybe start looking at themselves in a leadership role. I’m hoping that I can get through both parts because I think they’re kind of important. So I have two parts to the slideshow and I have a cracked screen, so I printed out my slides. So I’ll be reading from papers for a few verses, but for the most part, it should go really smoothly, I hope. And now I’m going to share my screen.
Speaker 1: So leadership. Now, I want to challenge the concept of leadership and what it takes to be a leader. So the first slide is leadership characteristics. There are tons of studies about what makes a great leader, what makes a really powerful leader, the way leaders think versus other people. And there’s a lot of different angles that people come to look at leaders and sometimes even the concept of some people are natural born leaders. And my first thing that a lot of people talk about when it comes to leadership characteristics is there’s this list of what makes a good leader.
Speaker 1: So I put some of them up here. Sometimes I usually do this like a back and forth, so you can even come up with some of your own phrases and characteristics that you think make up a good leader. And one of them is always communication skills. Another great one is charismatic, good listener, bold, fearless, but the list goes on and on about what makes a really good leader and how do those people have power and influence over their community, over their business, and how do they really make changes?
Speaker 1: And so there’s been a lot of studies in this area and I think sometimes there is an overleaning in the characteristics, but first thing, and which is kind of cool, I get to… Oh, I jumped the gun. Yeah. I wanted to talk about humans within your design are leaders and I think… okay here. So in Genesis 1:28, this is kind of interesting because I get to read this verse twice in one day, but in Genesis 1:28 and it says, “And God bless them and God…” Oh, here we go. “And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
Speaker 1: But I want to say that God established us as humans, as managers, as leaders, as explorers, and there’s evidence in scripture for this, but there’s also evidence around us. We are given this super capacity in our minds and your brain is actually a natural problem solver. It’s really a puzzle decoder and that’s what you have on top of your head. So one thing I wanted to say is, as a person, you have that capacity to be a great leader and to set the stage, I’m going to read three pieces of scripture. So you’re going to have to bear with me here.
Speaker 1: And the first person I’m going to talk about is Noah. Noah was a man in Genesis and he saved the whole human race by building a boat, and I’m going to read that. “And God said unto Noah, the end of all, flesh is come…” Oh, here we go. My crack. “The end of all flesh is come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an arc of gopher wood, rooms shalt thou make in the arc and shall pitch it within and without the pitch. And this is the fashion which shall make of it. The length of the arc shall be…” And then I trail off because he goes into explain exactly how to make this arc. So I’m just setting the stage. We’ll talk about it in a minute.
Speaker 1: The second person I want to talk about is Moses, and I’m going to read you this kind of key verse. So Moses was the guy who saved God’s people, led the God’s Israelites out of slavery and into Canaan, the promised land. So that was him. And so this kind of sums that up, this verse, and I jump around a little bit just to condense it. “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now come therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt.”
Speaker 1: So there’s Moses and here’s the last guy. Some of these verses… this is Paul. Now, Paul was the guy God chose to build his church, and this is one of my favorite verses. It’s just cool to see what happened to Paul. “Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am more, in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times I received 40 stripes. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day and have been in the deep. In journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the heathen, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.”
Speaker 1: So I talk about these three men and we’re going to see… So the first one was Noah and I get Noah and Moses confused. The first one was Noah. He built a ship. God came to him, gave him what to do. And then we see Moses. He takes God’s people out of the land of Egypt and into the land of Canaan. And then when we have Paul, the person that God chose to establish the churches, and I love this scripture because it just shows what he went through and what happened to him during that time. And then at the end, the care of all the churches. One thing that we’re going to see with these three people is there is a message in here that we can take away, and there’s also one message that we do not get to apply, and I’ll talk about that as well.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I want to kind of go through is what makes a really great leader, despite characteristics is these people have a vision, a purpose, and a destination. So when you’re talking about business or you often hear vision and mission, vision and mission, but I want to kind of get the jargon out of the vision part, but vision is having a clear destination for your future and a purpose for that future. And we teach this in our graduate program because a lot of the people that are going through it, they don’t have that clear vision and they do want to make an impact on their community and with their work. And so we teach them about vision and purpose, but we break it down differently.
Speaker 1: And so a vision is a crystal clear mission or purpose, or a destination for you and your future. And how this is different than other characteristics that make a leader is if we look at Moses or we look at Noah or even Paul, we see that these people did not have necessarily the characteristics that people think of as a leader. We see a little glimpse of Noah and just, he had some sin issues. And with Moses, he did not have communication skills. As a matter of fact, Aaron, he asked Aaron to speak for him. And when he did this, because he didn’t think he could do it. And when he did this, it says that God’s anger burned toward him because of it. So he didn’t have the communication skills and yet look at what he did.
Speaker 1: And then finally, we see Paul. Paul is building God’s church and yet his life isn’t necessarily going the way you would think it would go. Having a vision, having a purpose and having a destination creates traction. It creates more traction if you have a destination. So I like this picture here, because just like when you put your hand through water, when you have that destination, it’s more than just your hand that’s moving. It starts creating traction in the environment as well. And even when you pull your hand out of that water, it creates a wave in a direction. And so that’s the power of having a vision and a purpose, but I also want to talk about some of the outcomes of having a vision and a purpose.
Speaker 1: And I have actually a better list here. So one of the outcomes is it cleans up the problems in your life. So a lot of people struggle with different areas in their life and one reason to have a mission or that futuristic destination, that futuristic perspective is it will start to clean up other areas in your life. For me personally, it also cleaned up just work habits, family issues, because now you’re making decisions based on a direction versus just living life.
Speaker 1: So a good example or an analogy would be a runner who wants to be a gold medalist. That’s a perfect, really crystal goal, is if you wanted to be a runner with a gold medal. And to have that, it would change a lot of things about you as a person if that became your goal. You would change who you hung around with. It would change when you went to bed. It would change when you woke up in the morning. It would change your diet. It would change a lot of things. It would change who you hang around with.
Speaker 1: So having that goal, some of the side of secondary benefits other than the goal, other than that picture that you’re going toward is it cleans up other areas in your life. And we teach this vision, purpose, destination concept to addicts because sometimes they have a hard time. They’re maintaining their sobriety, but a lot of the other elements in their life are missing. And so once you start being able to crystallize a vision of yourself in the future, it cleans up some of the other areas that they’re having in their life.
Speaker 1: I want to say the next piece is it changes your perspective on life’s challenges. So when we see Paul floating there in the ocean or being whipped, if that was happening to me, I would be, “Wait. Maybe I’m making some poor decisions in my life.” If I’m being thrown in prison, I don’t know if I’m making good choices, and that’s the difference between having that vision, having that purpose, and having that destination. It really clears up the problems in your life related to what you’re doing. So even somebody from the outside might not see if you’re even making the right life choices, but once you have that perspective, it changes even the grinding aspects of your life.
Speaker 1: And that’s the other aspect, problems in your life aren’t just random. They become more meaningful and we’ll talk about that in a second. And the other aspects is like, Paul, you become ruggedized. Once you have that purpose and that crystallized aspect, you become ruggedized, meaning you’re able to withstand a lot more. And that reminds me of somebody who is hurt, they get hurt in the arm and it hurts them and it kind of messes up their day or something like that, versus somebody that was working out and their arms hurt. It’s that perspective change that changes the way you even see pain, the way you see suffering in your own life, and even the way you see some setbacks.
Speaker 1: And finally… not finally, but having a vision, destination, that purpose gives you a backbone. And I love the verse, and I think I put it in here. It’s in Ephesians 4:14, and the verse is talking about somebody that doesn’t have good doctrine, but the concept is the same. When you don’t have that focus or that understanding of what you’re supposed to be doing or how to do it, you become like a person tossed to and fro, hence for us, we know more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men in the cunning craftiness whereby they live, lie in wait to deceit. And so you start to have more of a backbone, where before you may not had it, didn’t have an opinion about something. Now, because you need that, you have that focus, you have an opinion about it. You have an opinion about what enters into your life, and you do have an opinion about where you go and what you do.
Speaker 1: And finally, as I showed you with that, when you’re going in a direction, it just naturally creates traction and you get more out of your labor. And there’s a really cool quote by a person called Jim Ron. And the quote is… I may not have it. The quote is, “If you don’t have a life plan, chances are, you will fall into someone else’s. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” I just love that quote because it’s very true. If you don’t have a life plan, you will be sucked into somebody else’s endeavor, and it will be very difficult for you to decipher what it is you should be doing, and you will not get the most out of what you should be doing.
Speaker 1: And that’s the other aspect of having a vision or a destination. All of us grind through life. We all have work that we’re doing, whether we have a plan or we don’t have a plan, life seems to be just as grueling, just as hard. And everybody I know has a lot of daily grinding work in front of them but when you have a destination, when you have that crystal clear purpose for your life, your work goes a long way, a lot farther. You’re not working and just tilling for no reason. So here’s another quote, “Whether you have big goals or small goals, it’s the same amount of work.”
Speaker 1: So the final thing is if you are to look and find a vision, find a purpose, or look at the destination in your life, you’ve got to make sure it’s big and big enough, or else you get bored. And especially with addicts, one of their biggest… I’m not saying you’re addicts, but we do this for addictions groups, is we tell them they have to get their goals big enough because they get bored by their own grind of life.
Speaker 1: Okay. So now that we have this… Okay, we cracked a code on leadership, not that characteristics don’t matter, but humans are born leaders by design, by how they were created. Not everybody has a mission and a vision and a destination. And also, having a vision, having a destination is like a cheat code to being an exceptional leader. As we see, Moses couldn’t communicate. Paul, he had physical ailments and we see Noah, he had some sin problems, but they all had a destination and they had a clear vision of what they were doing, and that’s what made them great people in the Bible.
Speaker 1: So the bad news about having a vision and a destination is once you decide that you are going to have goals, once you decide that you are going to have a different you in the future than the person you have now, you create out of nothing, problems in your life. You create things that did not exist before, that are going to be challenges. And I like to use this garden picture example. If I had a… and I do. When I had a picture of me in the future with this lush garden of tomatoes and squash and beans, that was my picture, but I didn’t understand that I was also creating issues that didn’t exist before.
Speaker 1: Snails wasn’t a problem in my life before. The soil wasn’t a problem in my life before. Frost wasn’t a problem in my life before, until I had that picture. Until I had that vision of my future with this lush garden, I didn’t have those problems. And so the bad news about having a mission and a vision and a destination, as we see with Paul, you are about to create more problems.
Speaker 1: So there are some strategies, but when you do have that crystallized vision of the future, your problems and your efforts, and your work are all proactive and they’re all meaningful. And so what we have, we have these three phases that we use often, and it’s gain ground, hold ground, and minimize loss. So gaining ground is where that’s the fun part of your labor. That’s when you’re starting to achieve your goals, when you’re starting to gain traction on that person you want to be in the future. That’s the fun part, that’s where all the energy comes from.
Speaker 1: But most of the time, you’re in this holding pattern and it’s just, if you work at a factory, which I have done before, there’s the day in, day out grind of what you’re doing and that’s holding ground, but it becomes a lot more meaningful when you have a vision of the future in mind, and this is where you build your team, this is where you’re looking for opportunities, and this is where you are looking for ways to advance towards your goal, or even holding back. But it’s the day in, day out. This is kind of where you live every day.
Speaker 1: You’re doing your laundry, you’re picking up your clothes, but a lot of times you’re holding ground. But when you are holding ground, when you have a purpose and you have that vision of who you want to be in the future, it becomes a lot more meaningful. I keep going back to addiction because it comes up often and this is the part where people lose hope, because it’s that long journey. We always tell ourselves, it’s going to take 10 times longer and be 10 times harder than we thought going into this, and it kind of sets our mind up for that part of it, and it’s that hold ground aspect.
Speaker 1: And then finally, this happens a lot. And it’s this minimizing loss, and minimizing loss, when you have that, your purpose in mind is a lot different feeling than when you don’t have a purpose. And minimizing loss happens. Waves come, wind blows everything away and everything down, but a lot of people when this happens or where people struggle with this, is they throw up their hands and they give up, they get discouraged and they have a hard time coming back from those parts of your life.
Speaker 1: When you have a destination, it does ruggedize you to those things. And I go back to the verse we looked at with Paul. He’s constantly being smashed, and yet it isn’t deterring him because he has that picture of what he’s doing. And recently, we’re here in Lamesa and our buildings were broken into, and they’ve actually broke into every single building but ours, but within hours, the whole community was with brooms and paint, and wood, and screwdrivers. They were rebuilding so quickly.
Speaker 1: But what happened during this time was the feeling of community wasn’t worth the damage, but it was close. It was almost worth it. People began to really come together and during this time, this minimized loss space, as we see with Paul in the verse, when he’s exploding, it really shows it’s your time to show your family, your team, and the people counting on you as a leader what you’re made of. It shows exactly how your character is and who you really are. So even when you’re being trampled, when you have that vision of you in the future, that destination that you’re trying to go to, even those times are actually not that bad. They’re in a whole different light than when you don’t have that aspect.
Speaker 1: Okay. So as I said before, make the goals big enough, so that way it’s worth it. So even in the daily grind, even all the problems, you’re not going to get bored with them, but goals take a long time. So you have to have that long road. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts are different than the long road in that they’re not sustainable. You don’t gain character and you don’t gain mastery from shortcuts. So taking the long road is the way to do, to have a long destination. And we see with Moses, they were wandering for 40 years. That is a very long road. Hopefully yours doesn’t take that long.
Speaker 1: So I want to open it up for questions, but this is just the end of part one. And I’m trying to see how good I am on time, but I just want to see how are you guys doing so far? Well, so the second part, and I don’t know if I could answer it totally, I’ll try, but in the second part, so one thing I get after I do this, it’s usually an hour long. They say, “Okay, that’s great,” but it actually brings a lot of anxiety because they don’t have that mission and they don’t have that vision, and they don’t have a clear purpose. They do know that they want to do something. Everybody has that. They want to be impactful and they want to make a difference, but they don’t know how to do it.
Speaker 1: And so at the beginning, I said that we can apply these scriptures in one way but we can’t in another way, and this is the other way. Noah had God literally tell him what to do. He told him what he was going to build and how to build it, and even out of what materials. Moses, he was told through a burning bush exactly what to do and where he was going to go, and what he was going to do, and he was literally given to him through a burning bush. And Paul was blinded by a light and told that he was going to build his church.
Speaker 1: The difference between them and us is I’ve never been told exactly what to do like that, and that’s where we can’t apply it. And so I do think it is difficult to find that vision and purpose if you’ve never done it before. Unless somebody has a question, I don’t mind going through the rest of it and trying to give some direction on how to find that vision, destination, and purpose because I do have some tools for that. Do you want me to try to blast through them real quick? I will, but if you have a question, stop me. So part two.
Speaker 2: Dr. Ray, we have one question in the chat box.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Can you-
Speaker 2: It says, “What about leaders who have multiple failures? Should they look inward or change their vision?”
Speaker 1: No. I always have this in my brain. I do believe that failure is the precursor to success. That’s how you gain mastery, is through failure. I think a lot of Christians, and me too, bow out. I think they bow out a little bit too early in the fight because they think that maybe God’s closing a door, but really, this world is hard. Any type of achievements are done through a lot of hard work. During the curses in Genesis and everything… Our labor is through the sweat of our brow and it will produce thistles for us, thistles and thorns.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a missing element sometimes. You got to have grit. You can’t just quit, especially if you have a clear vision of what you want. And so does that kind of answer that?
Speaker 2: And he says, “Yes, that answers.”
Speaker 1: Oh good. So I have four techniques for trying… because I cannot give you the burning bush like Moses, but I think that there are ways that you can find a vision and a purpose. And one of them is looking at finding your vision and purpose, looking at the domains in your life is one way to do it. So I mentioned earlier about a sprinter who wants to be a gold medalist. Well, that’s a very one dimensional goal. Sometimes those people who are successful as in sports or CEOs, or in business, the rest of their life doesn’t look like what you would want. So I would suggest looking at the different domains in your life as a way to try to find the purpose.
Speaker 1: So what I mean by that is me, I’m a husband, I’m a father. I own a business. I have multiple domains in my life. I also am a Christian and I have convictions for certain things, that might be family or it might be work ethic. Looking at those domains in your life is kind of a roadmap to looking at your destination in the future because who you are today is going to be part of that. So you’re on step one and the person you see in the future is probably different than who you are today. It is for me.
Speaker 1: So I know for a fact that I’m a father, I can be a better father. I have weeds in my garden that I can tend right now and just haven’t. As a Christian, as a church member, as a husband, there are things now that I will still be in the future. So I’m going to be a husband even in the future, I very hope so, but I can start to piece together that destination with what I have right now. So am I the husband that I imagine I should be, or I imagine that I would want to be? So these aren’t going to give you that vision, but these can set you toward piecing that together.
Speaker 1: Another domain in your life is your gifts. There’s spiritual gifts, but there’s also natural abilities. And so starting to piece together those things you like doing, things you’re already doing. Now, if you’re a student and you’re studying to be an engineer, well, that’s a domain in your life and you can think, “Okay, I want to be the best bridge builder in the future. So what am I going to have to do to get to there?” So having that destination is going to start… having a look at your domains in your life today can help you crystallize who you want to be in the future because people do have a hard time. They’re like, “I just don’t know what to do,” but you can look at the domains that you have now.
Speaker 1: And then I want to say another aspect, another tool is to look at the problems in your life. So the problems in your life now are actually a roadmap to who you want be in the future as well. So I’m like, try not to run out of time because it’s a little bit of an explanation, but I do believe that the problems in your life right now can point you into the person you want to be in the future. And I guarantee you, the person you want to be in the future, if you were to imagine it in the future, doesn’t have these problems. And the way to get rid of those is to be able to think proactively about the problems in your life. Most people don’t do this. Most people ignore their problems… not all their problems. They ignore the problems that they don’t know what to do with.
Speaker 1: They don’t think they have the resources and they don’t think they have the capabilities to overcome them. So what they want to do is turn away from them. They want to ignore them or they want somebody else to deal with it. And instead, I would encourage people to go stare at those problems. You don’t have to fix them, but don’t ignore them, and slowly but surely start to understand it and having a mindset that problems that are too big for you, if you can look at them and examine them, that is being proactive, and that is a work, is to do that.
Speaker 1: And you’ll notice a lot of leaders that do have a lot of problems. They’re able to have loose ends hanging around them, where people that cannot get to a destination, they can’t handle those types of problems. So that’s one way to start looking at how to find your purpose, your destination, and your vision is actually looking at your problems even if you don’t have solutions for them.
Speaker 1: And the third thing I will talk about very quickly is in counseling, we call it the magical question. The magical question is actually different types of questions, but it’s one way actually to not look at your problems. It’s, “If my problems were to go away today, what would my life look like?” Because some people can’t even identify their problems. Or another one is if I were to have a guarantee from a genie in a bottle… oh I have it here. A guarantee from a genie in a bottle not to fail, what would I do?
Speaker 1: So these are some tools that can help you start to piece together that purposeful destination for your life. And the final thing that I want to make sure I bring in is prayer and meditation because even though I’m talking in linear fashion, it’s all working together. And normally, the answers to your problems, if you’re addressing them and looking at them and trying to find what you want to do and try to find where you want to be in the future, it comes in the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of the night when you’re alone and meditating with God. And so those are some tools that you can use to try to piece together your mission, your vision, your destination for the future.
Speaker 1: I hope that helped. It was very fast. I do think it’s important that we do have more… I do believe that people can be leaders within their family and their communities and that having that perspective of themselves is an important aspect that I think could help communities, is people having that ability within them to see what needs to be done in the future with themselves and with their environment to make a difference. So I think all of us need to be doing that type of stuff, despite having problems in our life, despite having sin in our life, despite having physical ailments or even all the problems that we still have in our life.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for joining my breakout session. I appreciate it.
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