T.D. Jakes - Excellence at Every Level - Priceless

When I have leaders meetings, I like to discuss some, teach some and play all or a portion of a killer leadership video. My pick tonight was T.D. Jakes at the 2004 Willow Creek Leadership Summit. Below are the notes I typed up for my leaders beforehand. There are some nuggets in there that are priceless, that truly change my life. The line-up for my next leaders meeting is Tim Sanders at the Catalyst conference when he taught on an abundance vs. scarcity mindset. I wish I could remember the year. That might help in locating it.

In the society that we live in today, excitement is infectious and contagious and we are never going to be able to draw the people that God would have us draw if we look bored, defeated and sorry to be in the house of God.

T.D. Jakes, “My leadership book is the Bible. I believe it’s the best leadership book in the world.”

The LORD answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink." So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massah and Meribah] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?"

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." Exodus 17:5-9

Every leader must have a personal encounter with God. You cannot take people where you have not been.

We miss who we can be by emulating other people. Are you going to be an original or a cheap copy of a great original?

You have to have a personal encounter of God – develop your own flavor, your own style of delivery and be comfortable in your own skin.

Are you willing to take the risk to be different? Nobody is attracted to ordinary and average. And if you are willing to be different, I want to warn you leaders are always controversial. Followers fit in. Leaders are controversial. Don’t be different for the sake of being different. The goal is to function independently of what others think or say about you to the point that you earn the right to be a leader…and to be comfortable in your own skin enough to know that you have seen something face to face with God that is important enough that you do not allow face to face with people to intimidate what God has placed inside of you.

Moses is fully persuaded of the power of God being with him and on his side. You need to be fully persuaded that what God gave you works. You have to have confidence in your own giftings. You have to know that God has given you what it takes to accomplish what he has sent you to do. Until you have confidence in your own giftings, you’re not ready to face Pharaoh. Do not despise the day of small beginnings. Sometimes God puts you in a small setting so you can practice your gifts. Bloom where you are planted and learn what you’re supposed to learn in the season that you’re in.

When block layers go to build a wall, they don’t set out to build a wall, but lay a course. Whether you are to lay one course or ten courses, you only can do it one course at a time.

If your leadership style doesn’t change as God sends more people into your congregation you will asphyxiate the growth of your church. You will stop it. It will be your fault.

When God got ready to change Israel, he didn’t talk to a nation, he talked to one person. The change begins with you in ever leadership situation. Until you assume the responsibility that God sent you into that situation to change it rather than to complain about it, you don’t earn the right to be a leader. Leaders don’t whimper, they don’t cry, they don’t complain…leaders make changes. Develop a list of the top ten changes that you are going to do in your area of ministry.


Three different moves that Moses makes in the exodus text

1. Moses starts out with the people in the trenches.
It’s where you inspire with your influence using a hands-on style of leadership – a family style of pasturing where you can’t commission people to go for you, you must go yourself. It’s at this point you are branding a church. Branding: What is it about your ministry that is distinctively and uniquely different? No one can determine or do that for you, Jesus did that himself. He infected, inspired and trained twelve men.

There are no bad people, just misplaced people. Putting people in wrong places is an injustice to them and an injustice to you. Be watchful of criticizing people who are at another stage or on another course than you

God wouldn’t give me a chair if he didn’t have a person to sit in it. No more empty seats.

Learning to lay the next course requires a paradigm shift in my leadership style in order to take it to the next level. Moses knew to make the shift when the people started bickering, murmuring and complaining. Moses walked with them and then he walked in front of them.

2. Moses moves in front of the people instead of walking with them.
The stage of separation. I’m no longer involved with the murmuring and complaining that are going on in the congregation. You don’t allow the bickering to become the focus of your ministry. Instead keep on doing what God told you to do.

You must wean the congregation from being totally dependent upon you for everything. It cannot be where they have to have you for everything. Weaning them from their dependency on you makes them eligible to have a personal experience with God so that they can reproduce. This place of weaning is as hard on the leader as the people. Most leaders need to be needed and draw validation and affirmation from it. This co-dependency will cut off your growth until you wean yourself off your need to have your hands on everything.

Good leadership anticipates problems. Good leadership develops solutions for those problems. That’s how you got saved, God anticipated problems. What plan do you have for the problems you will face? Any problem that you don’t conquer, will conquer you.

3. Moses goes above the people to a place of elevation.
You cannot fight today’s problem with yesterday’s weapon. New levels bring new devils, but greater is He who that is in you than he who is in the world. There is a reason they call you the watchman on the wall. If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always be where you’ve always been. Delegate the responsibility to someone else. If you are still doing what you used to do, you are stunting your own growth. The more Moses raises his hands, the more the enemy is defeated in the valley…and Moses isn’t fighting in the valley, Joshua is. Find the Joshua’s in the church. To him who much is given, much is required. You are a limited resource. You need some Joshua’s who can run things in your absence.

You need to have some support ministries who go up on the hill with you and lift your hands up. Definition of weariness: to have your sense of pleasure exhausted. Moses hands got tired, but Aaron and Hur were called to stand up under him. Moses had his hands up, Joshua had his hands on, Aaron and Hur had their hands under. Jesus had Peter, James and John. When Moses lowered his hands, Joshua was starting to lose the battle.

You will understand what you are called to do by what you can’t stand. And until you take that complaining, frustrating and agonizing feeling and turn it to something productive, your church will not be what it ought to be.